DCML digest #893

[Don Rosa]

From: "Olivier" <mouse-ducks at wanadoo.fr>
>>>Technological progress is quite a two-edged thing for scholars. On the
one hand, it makes all sorts
of information more readily available. But on the other hand, lots of things
disappear, major stages
in an author's creation. Letters have virtually disappeared and many writers
nowadays use a word
processor to type and edit their texts; consequently, the way their work
evolves from an idea to the
finished work, the decisions and changes he made may be lost forever.

For your future reference, if you're interested in the development of my
stories from original sparkle in my eye to finished product, I have
preserved every single particle of the process. I do nothing on a
word-processor or tripe-writer... I do it all by hand. I have stacks of
500-page hand-written notebooks which is where I begin the thinking process,
including many pages for each story where I make notes of reams of facts,
gaggles of gags, and bazillions of story/plot ideas... just writing down
whatever pops into my gourd... later using about 1 % of the mess. Then in
the same notebooks are the original scripts with numerous X-ed out dialogue,
panels or sequences. After that is when I create the storyboard-scripts
which is how I show the editor the entire story in pictures and dialogue...
just like the finished product only, well, reeeaaally fast and scribbly. And
when a rewrite is requested to add or change a scene, there will be
additional pages of same. The next step is to pencil the final pages and
send copies of those pencils to Byron so he can have a quick look at what
I'm doing, and though I later ink over and erase those pencils, Byron
archives all of those pencil copies just for "historical" purposes, he sez,
so even that stuff is preserved.
In other words, the entire process of each of my stories is so well
preserved that it would turn your stomach.
On the other hand, we always hear that Barks preserved none of his scripts
and gave away his art... but he kept thorough records of exactly when he
submitted each story or cover and when he was paid for it. I keep *none* of
that info. There have been Donaldist-historians who've asked me about this
and begged me to keep such records, but I'm just not interested -- I make
sure I get paid (!), but once I do, I no longer have any interest in
remembering when or by who.