Tomorrow, I’m turning another year older. Almost half a century on this planet, and I don’t know a goddamn thing.
The Mungk got me when I was a child, and has scraped me clean.
I am a shadow, visible, but without substance.
Target: 700 words
Written: 470 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Elfstones Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Postal 8-9, The Tithe 7, Symmetry 1
Music: Ultra Rare Trax, Volumes 2 and 4, Lou Reed and The Velvet UndergroundI mean, there’s room for improvement, but seventeen words?
Can’t do much less than that.
Target: 700 words
Written: 17 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Living Dead In Dallas, Charlaine Harris
Comics: Think Tank: Military Dossier 1, Think Tank 5-7
Music: Ukulele Songs, Eddie VedderIt’s a question I’ve wrestled with since the day I decided I wanted to be a writer.
I want to be authentic. Open. There should be nothing between you and my thoughts but the desire to keep other people’s secrets secret, because they’re not mine to expose.
Of course, we all present ourselves through a filter, either by intentional omission or unconscious deceit (or vice versa – intentional deceit and unconscious omission.)
I don’t like to do either, but at the same time, I don’t want to be a martyr anymore than I want to be a charlatan. I’d like to write for a living, but there are two non-negotiables:
First, what I write is what I want to write. I hate the idea of being tied to a particular genre, and I don’t want anyone else to dictate the content of my stories. No Hollywood motherfuckers who think they know better or need to “sex it up” (although I am heavily fixated on sex, so that seems like it might not be an issue), or publishers/editors who want a happier ending or something more “clever”.
Save me from clever art, as Palahniuk would say, while being weirdly over clever, yet somehow, managing to hold that instinctual, emotional raw nerve. (It is a brazen and wondrous talent, those who can do this, and I am in awe of it.)
Secondly, I don’t want to be someone I’m not. I’m not perfect; if anything, I’m terribly broken, complex and boring, typical and atypical simultaneously; unique, in the worst and most generic way.
I am a work in progress. I’m an ugly piece of granite, in the process of seeing what’s underneath.
It might be a toad.
It might be Psyche.
I don’t know, but I know what I’m trying for.
How on track I remain will determine whether I’ve the smooth and incredible detail of a Cellini or the clumsy stack of a inukchuk (although, given the spiritual connection to the land and to honouring what is, in nature and spirit, that is totally cool). Maybe shattered gravel would be a better metaphor.
Or a pile of crumbling mud.
Anyway, how to tell the world of what I’ve written, while not compromising my self into something I don’t want to be?
I want to be honest, in work and in life.
Anything else isn’t worth it, and bullshit.
Target: 700 words
Written: 98 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The $100 Startup, Chris Guillebeau
Comics: Saga 49-52
Music: Outcesticide, NirvanaWell, I mean, it’s eight more words, so good, right?
How many hours is it to mastery?
Ten thousand?
So, roughly, at the rate I’m writing, about 1.5 million words.
I’ve written just under a hundred thousand this year thus far.
I may need to speed up, if I want to be a master before I’m dead.
Then again, I could die any second, so what’s the use?
Life is a series of bludgeons, slowly reducing us to mush.
Target: 700 words
Written: 26 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Just A Geek, Wil Wheaton
Comics: Saga 41-44
Music: Out Of Time, BlurI’ll admit, I’ve been mailing it in a bit. I’ve been still doing one thing a day, and I’m roughly fifteen thousand words ahead of where I wanted to be to this point (building up slowly), so I don’t feel horrible about it, and overall, I’m ahead of the game.
But yeah.
This might be the least I’ve written in a day… ever.
Target: 700 words
Written: 24 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Just A Geek, Wil Wheaton
Comics: Saga 33-36
Music: Out Of Our Heads, The Rolling StonesThan to be in a v… wait. No.
There’s nothing finer than a cup of coffee, a mix of David Bowie/Rise Against/Nine Inch Nails in your ears, as you finalize the edits on the fourth draft of your novella.
Thirteen scenes I hope to combine to six.
I know you can’t sell a novella. I’m hoping to package it as The Mungk & Other Bullshit, which I realize will be a tough sell on bookstore shelves, but it’s also an eyecatcher. It was suggested to me to call the book The Little House In The Country, but that sounds fucking boring and generic.
The Mungk is a weird name. And people love swearing.
You see the word Mungk and ask, what the fuck is that (although you might be one of those people who don’t swear like longshoremen, so you might say, “what a strange looking word, perhaps I should inquire as to its meaning” and then drink some tea with your pinky out and adjust your monocle, you fucking weirdo), and then pick it up.
Pick it up and maybe buy it. And then maybe that money goes through the various systems of skimming off the top from the store, the distributor, the publisher, agents, managers and probably some grifting professional organization that claims to advocate for authors, but actually keeps them poor and begging, like the RIAA and MPAA do to movies and music, and then finally, that pittance will arrive in my bank account, where it’s probably already been paid out in an advance and I’ll actually get nothing extra for it at all.
But if enough of you do it…
Well, shit.
Break out the fucking tea.
Target: 700 words
Written: 302 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter
Comics: Saga 21-24
Music: Out In L.A., Red Hot Chili PeppersFourth time’s the charm, is that it?
I suspect I have five or six iterations to go.
It might be eleventh time’s the charm.
Or twentieth.
Or nine hundred and seventh.
I suspect I am a poor scribe. I am in progress.
Aren’t we all?
Target: 700 words
Written: 200 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way
Comics: Danger Girl: Revolver 2-4, Danger Girl/Army Of Darkness 5
Music: Open Your Eyes, Goldfinger (so underrated)I know it probably looks like I’ve completely checked out on writing, but I’m just in a lull.
My overall total of written words and time spent on The Mungk still exceeds its target by about twenty thousand words, so if I take a few days to regroup before the draft, I have the leeway. It’s one of the reasons why I keep a daily target and a total target.
That way, if there’s days where things go off the rails and the demands on my team leave me with barely time to take a piss, let alone crank out a few hundred words, I have the room.
And this past week?
I’m near to bursting from holding it.
This can’t be healthy.
Target: 700 words
Written: 54 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy Tales
Comics: Danger Girl 0-3
Music: One Foot In The Grave, BeckThat’s what I think when I hear super rich people are having children, especially when they’re known to have been shitty little people themselves.
That poor fucking child.
And here I am, writing the length of a tweet for the thing I love.
Poor fucking child.
Target: 600 words
Written: 140 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Yellow Birds, Karen Green
Comics: Aphrodite IX v2 4-7
Music: Odelay, Beck (the jet fresh flow... wait... get fresh? I like jet fresh better)