Comic-book writer Jim Ottaviani, creator of science-related comics such as Two-Fisted Science: Stories About Scientists, posted this flow chart yesterday to shed some light on his working methods.

I’m out of the comic-book loop for the most part these days, so I’ve got to sheepishly admit that until discovering his post, I’d never heard of Ottaviani. But since I’m a major fan of Richard Feynman—I long ago took up the title of Feynman’s autobiography What Do You Care What Other People Think? as a mantra—I’ll have to keep an eye out for Ottaviani’s upcoming graphic novel about the physicist.

It seems to me, though, that the road map laid out in these squiggles, arrows, and boxes speaks to the journey of non-comics writers as well, and so I decided that it was worth sharing here.

The only thing missing from the chart seems to be the part where we spend time blogging about what we should have been doing instead of actually doing it!