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Written by Gerard Way, and illustrated by Gabriel Ba, both of whom have storied histories of vastly different backgrounds, it’s been interesting to take a moment to drift back into the comic book world and get that surge of nostalgia and recognition – even if the modern comic universe looks almost nothing like the one I knew when I was a kid. But in particular, it has been interesting to note just how much is left up to your imagination in comic books, how you’re only getting a brief snapshot of this whole other world, and whatever else is going on is only alluded to between the lines. In Umbrella Academy, the main storylines are actually very brief, but you can imagine the lives of these characters and the worlds they live in outside of the focus narrative, which makes it a more engaging, and dare I say it, obsessive experience for those readers who connect with the work. I’ve checked out some of those over the years (did you know that Chuck Palahniuk’s two Fight Club sequels are both available in graphic novel form? ), but they’ve always felt, to me, like a hybrid form that straddles the line a little too much, which has left them, in my mind, less satisfactory.

Two simple pointers to help you improve your fiction writing are: The first point is fairly obvious – your writing will be more mentally engaging if you can add more to your descriptions, and provide context, as opposed to instruction. On my second edit, I changed it to: “Back before I was old enough to drive, I had this girlfriend, and one day she didn’t want to go home. By pushing yourself to think of a more engaging description, as opposed to relying on prescriptive detail, you add more creativity to your work, and offer more ways for your readers to connect. That’s an average example, but it illustrates the point – instead of relying on simplistic description, it’s an opportunity to provide a simile, a way for the reader to ‘see’ what you do, as opposed to simple noting the detail.

I was able to establish a good daily routine which enabled me to allocate time to fiction properly when writing ONE, and since then, I’ve tried to stay active, to keep working on new projects, so I don’t end up filling that time with something else. A Home follows the story of a father who chooses the latter path, hunting down the man who hurt his son in order to confront him, and his own regrets in failing his boy. A modern-day take on a Western-style story, A Home explores themes of protection, retribution and healing, and how we come to live with the hardest of realizations. In a time of personal data tracking, political confusion and larger concerns that impact the very future of our planet, it’s easy to get lost in the vastness of it all, to feel powerless, floating in the middle, hoping for the best.

At this week’s announcement of the 2019 Stella Prize longlist, author Emily Maguire delivered a speech about literary snobbery and the cultural expectation around reading the ‘right’ books. What I look for in a book is likely very different to what someone else seeks – and that’s really what’s most important, that you find the work that speaks to you, which aligns with what you want to read, when you want to read it. Some look for realism, some escapism – as a writer, the key point of reading as widely as possible, in my opinion, lies in finding writing that sticks with you, that catches in your soul and ignites your own thinking, connecting with you on a deeper level than the mere words alone. Of course, if you want to actually be a writer who sells books, there are certain commercial realities, but those can and do shift, things change in the marketplace, new readers raised on different stories and formats grow up to expect books and movies to do different things.