What is the value in my work?

May Blues

I've often wondered about my own value
ever since I was a child.

It's not that you don't have the right to live if you don't have inherent value.

It's not that you need a reason to do something.

However, lately, I've been feeling an indescribable sense of impatience as I spend my days drawing manga without it really amounting to a job.

What is the point of me drawing manga?
What is the point of creating work?
What on earth is the meaning of it all?

I have almost no income, and I just spend all my time drawing,
only causing trouble for my family.
In the end, isn't it just self-satisfaction?

…This is no good, it's the May blues.
The snow has melted and the flowers are blooming,
and even though it's refreshing outside with warm sunlight shining down,
my heart just keeps sinking lower and lower.

It can't be helped that I'm feeling down.
But it's a problem that I have no motivation to create work.

I feel like I used to be much clearer about what I really wanted to draw,
but lately, I haven't been able to remember at all.

That was until a past work I happened to post
suddenly opened things up for me.

It's a piece I drew in the past for a Cork Lab assignment.

This work got a surprisingly good reaction when I drew and posted it for an assignment, so I did a little bit of independent serialization. However, with assignments coming one after another and the year-end rush approaching, I didn't have the leeway to carry the manga through to completion.

Although the reaction to the first chapter was decent, the reaction grew duller with each subsequent chapter...
Even so, a few followers told me they were looking forward to it.

As long as there were people saying that, I wanted to draw the continuation.
But time-wise, there was no way I could draw it.

I wanted to somehow give shape to the concept I had solidified in my head for the people waiting for the continuation. So, I thought about 'connecting the manga to a novel'.

That is this work.

But the people who said they were looking forward to the continuation in the manga form barely gave it a second look once it became a novel.

At the time, I received almost no feedback on the novel via Twitter.
There were no 'likes' on the article at all.

I worked hard because there were people who said they wanted to read the continuation, so I felt empty wondering who on earth I wrote this for and for what purpose.

While I was at Cork, this feeling became increasingly distorted.
I was supposed to be drawing what I wanted to draw, but I ended up drawing to be well-received by someone.

If the reaction from those around me was bad, I would get depressed, thinking my work was bad.
I envied and was jealous of works that were praised by everyone.

While there was an exchange of feedback among my peers,
there were few people who said they liked my work.
(There were a few who said they liked it! I'm grateful for that)

I started thinking only about how I could get everyone to say they liked it.

I became less and less sure of what I wanted to draw.

I became unsure of what I was thinking and what I wanted to express.

I think this is like a curse that I was trapped in the entire time I was taking the manga course.

Even though the manga course wasn't the whole world, for some reason, I felt like I had to draw things that would be well-received by my peers and instructors.

Passing the intermediate judging for the Creative Awards

I decided to enter my manga and novel into the note Creative Awards since I had the chance.
It's easy to participate just by adding a hashtag.

A few months later, after I had even forgotten I participated.
They told me my work had passed the intermediate judging.

A work I thought no one would look at had caught someone's eye, even if just a little. I was very happy.

However, the final judging results a month later showed that I was ultimately not selected.
It was frustrating. In the end, my work didn't spread any further from there.

The manga had various failures.
I am well aware that I was too conscious of "what might be well-received by someone" rather than "what I want to draw."

This is something that seems to be the case for most of the assignment manga.
When I look at it, I feel self-loathing, wondering why I made a work like this.
That's why I had no plans to repost it.

However, I quite liked the novel.
That's because I was able to write exactly what I wanted to write.

Doesn't the fact that it passed the intermediate judging mean it's not that bad?

Since I had the chance, I wanted as many people as possible to see it, so with just that thought, I tweeted the novel by linking it to the manga.

Then, it grew more than I expected.
When I first submitted it as an assignment, it got about 1,000 likes.
Since this time it's four chapters put together, it might grow a bit more.

But I didn't really believe in my own manga.
It wouldn't grow that much anyway.

If I try hard and it reaches 3,000, that would be a success.

The manga went viral

While I was thinking about that, before I knew it, it had exceeded 10,000 likes.
And the number of "likes" on the novel linked to the manga kept increasing.

Many comments were also left on the Twitter replies.

”It is the reader who creates the value of a work”

The words Taro says at the end of the novel.

How warm the words are from those who commented after reading that.

On this day, a lot of value was added to my work.

I am so, so grateful.

If I posted everything, it would become a mess, so I have narrowed it down to the ones that made me particularly happy (though I feel like I couldn't narrow it down completely).

Comments on note after my Twitter buzz.

Next, some excerpts from messages sent by people who supported me on note.
Support messages are something only those who have contributed money to cheer me on can send.

They read my work and were moved.
Isn't it incredibly grateful that they would choose to spend their own money on it?

Triggered by my work,

'I wanted to live'

Isn't it incredibly grateful to have someone feel that way?

'If I could save someone with my manga'

Before I joined Cork, I was creating work with that thought in mind.
At some point, that changed to 'I want to be popular with many people.'

I sometimes thought it was presumptuous to think I could save people with my work, but there are people who say things like 'I was saved' or 'I decided to live' like this.
There are people who felt that through a novel packed with my own thoughts.

I don't know how true those thoughts I wrote in such a short text really are.

However, I still want to believe in these words.

"I was saved."

"I decided to live."

Being told things like that saves me too, makes me want to live, and makes me want to create work again.

I think a buzz on Twitter is something that surely ends right there for the people who read it.

For me, I wanted to keep this experience deep in my heart, so I wrote it down in this note article.

If I ever lose sight of the direction of my work again, I want to read this back.

Thank you so much for all the feedback this time.

Perhaps it's superfluous, but it's important to me.

It might be incredibly superfluous compared to the text so far, but to those who have read this long piece to the end.

I think that if an interesting manga happens to appear on Twitter, many people will easily say,

"I want to read the continuation." There were several such comments this time as well.

Those words are truly grateful and happy words for an author.

But they are also words that carry pressure.

I was happy to be told that, so I draw thinking there are people waiting. But even if I draw the continuation, there is no reaction from the people who said they "wanted to read it." Even if there is, it's just a "like."

There are also people who just say "I want to read the continuation" without even following me. Perhaps it's just a feeling of reading it if it happens to flow into their timeline.

The manga I mentioned this time, as well as the manga I drew for my graduation project, were in a serialized format. A serialized format is one where the reaction clearly drops as you continue the series. It's the moment when you are painfully made to realize that even if you draw the continuation, the number of people waiting for it is decreasing. That is quietly painful when trying to continue.

Once again, there were several people who casually said things like, "Why don't you make a manga for the second part too?"
Even if I want to draw it, manga isn't something you can just draw that easily.

Moreover, most manga uploaded to Twitter are free for the creator.

For the reader, Twitter manga might be something they can read as much as they want.
And it might be something they finish reading in a few minutes.
That might be why it's so easy to say, "Draw the continuation."

But I also want you to know that the creator spends a lot of time and mental energy on that free work.

That is because I "want someone to read it" and
"I want what I want to convey to reach the people who read it."

That's why I feel so happy when I feel that my feelings have been conveyed.

The words Taro-kun said at the end are my own feelings.

Furthermore, being able to give monetary value to a work that previously couldn't be given tangible value is also something that makes me so happy I could fly to heaven.

There were 13 people who supported me this time.
Thankfully, the support amount reached nearly 4,000 yen.
With this, I would like to study drawing again and create even better work.

Support is not a form of payment where you pay because you can't read it otherwise.
It is money given with the feeling of "I want to support you after reading," out of gratitude for the work. Even 100 yen has immeasurable value.

Of course, I am happy that people think, "I want to read it."

But if you say, "I want to read the continuation,"
I also hope that you don't just say it in the moment,
but that you properly wait for it.

Just as you are waiting for the continuation, I am waiting for your thoughts on the continuation.

Just as there are readers whose hearts are moved by my work, my heart is moved by the readers' thoughts.

Therefore, if you truly look forward to the continuation, I hope you will react when you find it.

This is a request from me, the creator, to all the readers.

For those who haven't read it yet, I will post the work that became this article again.

I would be happy if you could read it.