We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Christian Angeles. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Christian below.
Alright, Christian thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
I think one of the biggest misconceptions about being a writer is that it doesn’t take much effort to become one. You just start writing and congratulations, you’re a writer.
What does take effort, is learning how to become a working writer. Let alone someone who writes well. Which I think I’m okay at. Good but not fantastic at what I do. Regardless, it takes years of effort to learn the craft, and even that isn’t necessarily the most important skill to have to write professionally. Just look at a lot of what’s going on with BookTok deals. Almost everyone is a personality and social media followers are becoming a form of currency though not necessarily talent.
However, if you really want to learn what I do, and write like how I write, simply spend years trying to become a psychoanalyst in academic psychology, then abandon that goal but end up working seven years in the field with the most extreme clients, and then realize how broken the system is and take every sort of writing class you can find. Everything from short story writing at Gotham Writers Workshops in NYC to sketch comedy at UCB. All to fulfill the dream outside of the day job. Which sounds harsh, but was necessary for my journey.
More than anything, what I learned in developing my process over the years was how to network and meet professionals and ask for their stories about how they became famous. Even then, I ended up spending another seven years as a struggling journalist making below minimum wage while depleting my savings just to find the courage to meet professional people. It’s truly not a path I suggest anyone undertake but that is in all honestly, my journey on how I became the writer I am.
If I could go back and do something to speed up the learning process, I’d probably just move on quickly. Embrace failure. Find a place that valued my work and more than anything else, refuse to be taken advantage of, which has happened many times throughout my career between trying to build up a production company and better yet, writing at outlets that ended up being more than exploitive.
What I learned from all of this, and the small gift of hope I bestow on you: is what became the most essential skill along my journey, and that was: how to handle failure.
Failure was something I spent most of my life avoiding. It was learning to let go of my ego which got in the way of avoiding the risks. Worse was my inability to ask for help and learn to ask questions when early in my career. All of this became my most essential lesson. Not how to overcome obstacles, but be willing to tackle them in the first place – knowing full well the risks of never having a consistent source of income, and hardest yet, seeing everyone around you move on their journey.
Every writer’s story is different. The only way you can learn is to try… and fail. Many times over.
Christian, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
What I provide is that I know this business better than most journalists, particularly when analyzing finances, seeing which players and people are producing and signing contracts, and better yet, what trends are hitting both in social media and in search. The latter of which will be a valuable skill the more AI proliferates everything that we do (you are what Google search tells us who you are in this brave new world).
Beyond my journalism expertise is what I want my company, Monomythic to be known for, which is my ability to craft stories about products of modern times. To write about current issues and soon-to-be problems that I think we avoid in the media. I can also write in any style really at this point but I mostly prefer to take a down-to-earth approach. Meaning I write intimate stories about people and the problems of our world.Atop of this, my most recent accomplishments are some of my latest published works. Recently, I’ve been included in an anthology called “The Tomb of Baalberith: Volume 2” which I helped crowdfund and scripted our video for on Kickstarter. Created by legendary Inker of both Marvel and DC comics, Mark McKenna, this debut comic work is my launch as a creator and was created in the styles of EC Comics. Very Tales from The Crypt type of horror. The story is about a beauty influencer obsessed with becoming famous and is sort of my critique of why I think influencer culture has gotten toxic in ways. This comic is out right now, and I’ll be selling it at conventions, with potential digital copies for sale once I get my website going again via christianangeles.com, as there’s a lot for me to add from these past few years.
I also have two new projects I’m happy to announce right here.
The first is as a part of the Brave New Girls anthology. A book anthology by editors Paige Daniels and Mary Fan, that helps raise funds for Women in Stem. My short story to be published is called, “Whatever Happened to The 9 to 5?” and is a story about a super genius young girl who’s created an AI meant to replace skilled labor. Her father is the CEO of the company she creates products for, and although she’s one of the most brilliant and hardworking minds of our times, she finds herself sad. Lacking a life filled with meaning and being with people you care about. If it’s not obvious, this story is a critique of AI and its future not just for creatives, but also, for the modern work culture. It’s a wholesome but shocking little story about some of my concerns regarding technology.
The second announcement I have to make is that I was just accepted for a 4-page short for LimitBreak comics. Which is a Dublin-based comics collective and small press out of Ireland. The story anthology theme for this one is a futuristic take on fairy tales. My story that was selected is called “1001 Nights Before The World Ends” and is a take on the tale of Scheherazade and “1001 Nights”. I’m also excited to announce that tackling this project with me is the incredible artist, Chandra Free, who was someone I met online during the pandemic and is nothing shy of an amazing talent all around. Chandra has done work for companies like Image and SYFY and is honestly a super nice friend and one of the people who helped me get through that very dark time in history that was 2020.
If that wasn’t enough, currently I’m also a senior editor at ComicsBeat and am understudying from the legendary comics journalist, Heidi MacDonald. Who is one of the greatest comic book journalists of our times. One of my recent articles on disruption in the streaming services industry was discussed by a slew of professionals, including Aaron J. Waltke, the co-executive producer of Star Trek: Prodigy.
Hopefully all of this is enough to prove my point that I’m pretty serious as a creative and journalist. By the latter half of the year, I’ll also be more open to tackling new projects but am completely booked right now with both a book deal and comic book deal to be announced in the future. This is all, atop the big flagship project that I’m using as my creative debut called “Dead on The Inside”.
Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?
The fundamentals behind Web3 and Crypto and by proxy NFTs was a very basic premise: a form of currency outside of the US dollar standard. It’s that sort of idea that I support because as someone who understands business, and just how much leverage major corporations and even some nations have because of the US dollar, I can see the problems with the way we do business right now. Which I’m sure we’re all feeling in some sense: feels exploitative.
More importantly, I can see how the way we do things now depends on the exploitation of labor, especially regarding the creation of products on the cheap, especially internationally. I do think there can be a better way of doing business in the future and a currency outside of any one country’s influence or a single world power’s regulation, is not that terrible of an idea to me. If we’re operating the way that we think we are, which is, as a globalized economy co-dependent on one another, then in theory having fair trade was supposed to end all wars. Capitalism prevails and everyone lives a good life with enough means. It was this idea we had regarding our original view of economics and free market capitalism: that competition drives good business and innovation improves society. That narrative feels pretty false to me these days given a look at how much war and turmoil is happening today. And none of it makes sense whatsoever if we’re as ‘dependent’ as we think we are upon one another – this system simply is not sustainable.
That being said, as it stands I don’t support the current structure of NFTs. However, like most technology, I do think over time someone may find a better way of doing it. That there may be a good idea here but as it stands, it’s one that was executed improperly
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat and Syd Field’s works on screenwriting are great places to start in getting to know story structure. If you want to go deeper than that, read Aristotle’s poetics. However, if you just want to dip into learning how to write a scripted work, just look up tutorials on Dan Harmon’s story circle, which is an easier approach to the craft.
If you’re seeking to be an literature author, a great book recommendation to me was Bird-by-Bird by Anne Lamott. Which goes over the reasons of why we write.
in terms of the importance of writing. I also highly recommend Stephen King’s memoir: On Writing.
For self-encouragement and mental health, I’d look into The Subtle Art of Not Giving Fuck by Mark Manson.
However, if you’re looking to get into comics, any of the books about comics by Scott McCloud are a great start. However, I will openly share that what’s helped me the most in my break into this writing world has been learning from Batman New 52 comics writer Scott Snyder and his classes and community that Scott’s built via his BestJackettPress Substack. I also really loved Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass and Alan Moore’s class on writing via BBCMaestro regarding comics as well.
I also have to give the biggest shout-out to Disney Villain’s author Serena Valentino. Whose first class with me back in 2016 helped get me along on my journey today. Her class is no longer available but her lessons helped teach me I had so much more to learn. An important life lesson: to always be learning.
Though a final bit of advice regarding resources that will impact you: just find a mentor. Take their words of advice. I can’t stress how much all of these creatives and communities have helped me on my journey to becoming the writer I am today. It’s a lesson I hope to pay forward, that one day if I can become a famous enough writer, I can teach another set of students as well.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.christianangeles.com
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- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianangeles/
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