Having finally finished the Lone Wolf & Cub project, and submitted it, I found myself shocked by the emotional effects of the process. It almost was like I had an angry writer’s block throughout, and then a solid layer of stress through the editing process, and experienced some weird variant of sadness after I submitted it. Sad that it was over, difficult as it was? As my wife pointed out, it’s probably because Lone Wolf & Cub is so important to me — more emotionally resonant with me than any previous story I’d written about on assignment. I’ve read the nearly 9000 pages across 28 volumes three times in my life so far, and re-read certain stories countless times. It's an incredible, sweeping, emotional epic that’s taught me a lot about how to write and how to think about ethics in my own life and also how to be inspired to create something ambitious and new. Perhaps I just felt I wasn’t going to be able to do it justice. But I think more than that, it was confronting something that’s accrued such importance to me, on a unconcious level, over the years. To pick it apart or make definitive statements about it didn’t feel right, like it might disrupt the relationship or diminish the relationship I have with it in some abstract way. I had to really become self-aware and examine my process in order to get through it. Well, now that it’s over I’m starting to realize I can just look at this as a positive start — one can tackle their favorite stories (or histories/people/topics/etc.) and just know that even if they fail or betray themselves in some slight way, they’re still adding to the dialogue about the thing, still marching towards a better understanding of the thing, and training oneself. I wonder if this will make other projects of similar emotional resonance easier, or if it’ll be difficult in its own unique way each and every time.
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