Category: canon

writing

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I finally feel like I’m moving in uncharted waters.

Like this first draft is starting to take real shape.

It needs massive overhaul and a total and complete rewrite, but hey, that’s what first drafts are for. They’re really just insanely overdone outlines, technically.

Brainstorming in real time.

Making shit up based on the loose guidelines given in the prep.

The raw paints and easel, with a word on a sticky note: bowl of fruit.

This is the blue pencil sketch, before the ink, the colour and the word bubbles.

(Of course, everyone uses Photoshop now, so you know, that’s outdated).

Fuck it. Let’s go.

Target: 1100 words
Written: 1473 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Joy, Osho
Comics: Cyber Force v3 0-3
Music: Ignition, The Offspring

it’s fun when you can have fun

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Especially when that fun is a full circle diagram with the thing you’re working on, in this case, the very enjoyable wife and the very enjoyable mayor I’m writing.

The main character still needs a lot of finesse, as does the central villain and supporting characters, but these two?

Perfect.

So much fun to write.

Thank god we’re still in the first draft.

Books are made in the edit.

Target: 1100 words
Written: 2232 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs (enjoying this so much as well)
Comics: Ripclaw v2 5, Cyber Force v2 21-23
Music: I Will Always Love You: The Best Of Whitney Houston, Whitney FUCKING HOUSTON HOW DID THIS HAPPEN GODDAMNIT MY EARS

anger baby

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Some days, I look at everything I’ve ever written and thought, what a pile of garbage.

I am a talentless fuck who will not improve with any amount of work, focus or practice.

Many of you will agree with me.

But then I do something like birthing an anger baby, and I think, you know what?

Maybe.

Just. Fucking. Maybe.

Target: 1100 words
Written: 1226 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children
Comics: Cyber Force v2 19-20, Ripclaw v2 3-4
Music: I Was/I Am, Noah Kahan

heart tests

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I feel like I’m going through one right now.

And I literally went through one this morning.

I am trying not to give up, but damn. It’s so hard.

I can’t even bring myself to submit anywhere. Even though every single thing I’ve ever written has been accepted and published somewhere, since I first decided to start sending them out (minus comics – I don’t have an artist to work with and the one with whom I’ve considered working in the past – whose style is ideal for Romance #1, is entirely unreliable), I can’t bring myself to do it.

I worry.

Get Back Again was banned for, you know, being told from the bad guy’s point of view, and since that view was super misogynist, it was considered ban-worthy. Like, have these people ever read fiction?

Good fiction doesn’t insist all their villains act like good people.

It’s kind of the whole point.

Anyway, fuck it.

Who wants some?

Target: 1100 words
Written: 1050 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
Comics: Cyber Force v2 16, Cyber Force Origins 3, Ballistic 3, Velocity 1
Music: I Should Coco, Supergrass

it occurred to me

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That it might be funny to make little haikus out of the post listings on the right.

It currently says

i am also eating shit
we know you’re eating shit
never let it be said

Which isn’t traditional haiku, but it’s followed up by

so i went off the drugs
dogsittin’

Which in itself is kind of fun.

Something to think about.

It would lock me into the site’s look and feel, which is kind of hilarious.

Mornings are fucked when you’re thinking about barking dogs and yoga butt and the lack of porn in a main character’s movie collection.

Writing is weird.

Target: 1100 words
Written: 986 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
Comics: Shadowhawk v5 6-9
Music: Nowhere, Ride

conflict

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It makes a good plot device, and in real life, is entirely unavoidable. As much as we’d like to eliminate conflict, the best I think we can do is minimize its impact on us, which means learning how best to handle it.

I’m filled with conflict these days – my desire to fight oppression, my desire to avoid people who suck, my own internal resistance to doing what it will take to actually take all these thoughts and dreams in my head and start shaping the world to them, instead of the other way around.

Then again, the Tao teaches doing-not-doing, so forcing the world into a shape it cannot be may be counterproductive.

Would that those would not listen break, and find the plugs in their mind falling free.

Would that we all fall free.

Would that we all love.

Would that, would that.

Target: 1100 words
Written: 1733 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Proof Of Collusion, Seth Abramson
Comics: Shadownhawk 0, Shadowhawk v4 13-15
Music: Acoustic Stuff, Stone Temple Pilots

beginning to realize

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This blog cannot be a vent for whatever my personal random shit is that day.

It’s meant to connect, to put out into the world what I want to say, to be honest about myself.

This ain’t the Mungk no more.

The Mungk was fatalism; bemoaning the state of the world was par for the course.

Now that I’m into Bad Neighbours and spending my days thinking about the nature of conflict, consequences and the lack thereof, this will have to get more intellectual.

More “into it”, as the kids say.

I don’t hold controversial views; I believe in peace, cooperation, and respect for our fellow beings.

At least, that shouldn’t be controversial.

These days, though, petting a puppy is considered evil by someone, and that someone is almost definitely MAGA.

Here’s another view that shouldn’t be controversial.

MAGA is bad. Fascism is bad. Bigotry is bad. Corruption is bad. Trump and Elon are bad. All Republicans should be removed from power at the earliest possible opportunity.

These are things that should not be controversial.

But then again, if they were actually considered as they are, we’d never have been in this position in the first place.

Target: 1100 words
Written: 180 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Proof Of Collusion, Seth Abramson
Comics: Shadowhawk v3 3-4, Shadowhawk Gallery 1, Shadowhawk v4 12 (yes, that's correct; in the original numbering, they decided to make it an ongoing, folding in the first three miniseries, eleven issues' worth)
Music: NOFX/Rancid BYO Split Series, NOFX/Rancid

draftin’

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I started the first draft of Bad Neighbours yesterday. I surprised myself in that I did not represent the characters at all as I wanted, but also, the writing isn’t bad.

It needs adjustment, which is why I’m doing a post mortem on it today. I mean, just the first scene, but hey.

I captured the mayor well.

Target: 1100 words
Written: 200 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Personal MBA, Josh Kaufman
Comics: Shadowhawk v2 1-3, Images Of Shadowhawk 1
Music: No. 4, Stone Temple Pilots

comfort

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I miss the comfort in being sad, as Kurt Cobain once opined.

Being sad is bad. But it’s better than in a constant of conflict. One can accept sadness as it is, live in it, find one’s way through it.

Conflict for the sake of conflict?

It’s going to be a tough go while I’m working at Bad Neighbours and it’s the constant contemplation of the incompatibility of viewpoints, left and right, and the futility of anger.

The inability of consequence. The pure rage of missing justice.

The absence of karma, or rather, its lethargic, procrastinating nature.

It may come around, but when? And how fucking long?

Quite frankly, too many assholes have died peacefully in their sleep on top of their piles of money, surrounded by a beautiful wife, successful children and a mistress with glittery fake boobs.

Karma does not reward waiting.

Justice is not automatic.

Target: 1100 words
Written: 920 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Amatka, Karin Tidbeck
Comics: The Maxx 20-22, Gen13/Maxx 1
Music: No Security, The Rolling Stones

unsatisfied

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I’m not satisfied with my performance. Obviously.

I’ve got several pieces that need to go out, but I can’t find the time or the energy to actually do it. I mean, it’s ridiculous that I won’t.

How the hell is anything going to get published if I don’t let anyone else look at it?

Also, I’m really unhappy with what I did today toward the novel.

I have this whole Grumpy Old Men concept breeding with a “state of politics” idea brewing, but instead, I wrote the main character as a stuck up ass-kissing effete.

He’s supposed to be modern liberal satire; a Democrat who thinks rules actually mean something to the boorish neighbour who has bought off the police and local government.

But instead, it’s shit; I have a feel for the character. What I wrote wasn’t it.

The only thing I can think of is to move on. Rewriting at this point is always an option, even if it’s not happening today.

Fuck. Today sucks.

Target: 1100 words
Written: 2545 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Ready Player One, Ernest Cline
Comics: The Maxx 1-3, 0.5
Music: The No Fun, Local H