Category: canon

nothing finer

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Than 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: On Your Own, The Verve (sometimes, it's all so appropriate)

next draft

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Fourth 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: Oh No, OK GO (so underrated, these guys)

bite sizes

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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 life 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: Odds & Sods, The Who

oh god that poor child

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That’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: Viva Wisconsin, Violent Femmes (I don't know what it is about these guys, but I connect so completely with literally everything they've ever done, except Vancouver, which sucks)

second draft

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Hey, chipper self.

I don’t know if it was waking up to find out the Leafs actually won in OT and live to play another day, or finishing the second draft of The Mungk, but I feel marginally better today.

The deck is shuffled, time to re-deal.

My body is still “depressed”, but I’m going to fight the cognitive dissonance of a body and mind telling me I should snuff it and focus on focus.

Get things done. Try new things. Use the mind. Let things go. It’s good for the soul.

Move, maybe a little. Enjoy my cats and dogs.

Are you buying this? I’m certainly trying to.

Target: 600 words
Written: 538 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Gate Of Ivrel, C.J. Cherryh
Comics: Monstress 47-50
Music: Vessel, Bjork

i go through all this

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Beeefooore you wake up.

Sorry. Bjork phase. I do like to get up early. I like the quiet. The alone time. If I can get that, and get enough things I want to get done before I engage with the world, the world and me are both infinitely better off for it.

I don’t go in rushed and angry, upset and falling behind. Frustrated and distracted.

And, the sense of peace is palpable.

That, of course, is not today. 

Target: 600 words
Written: 797 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: People Of The Deer, Farley Mowat
Comics: Monstress 31-34
Music: The Very Best Things 1995-2008, Filter

the science of trauma

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It’s the science of impact, not influence, but impact, IMPACT, something smashing into you so hard, like a monster asteroid that slams you off course, out of your steady elliptical orbit, to plummet out into space, away from your neighbours, away from the source of your light and heat, away from where you’re supposed to be, out into the endless void, where it is dark and frozen and immensely lonely and the only hope is that somehow, there’s something close enough, large enough, with enough gravity to suck you in and put you back on your axis, but the void is so big, and so empty, and there’s no guarantee you’ll be close enough to centre in your new rotation, that you’ll be in that sweet spot where life can bloom, but instead you’re cold, cold, cold, shivering without relent, or on fire, burning, bleeding, blisters bursting in poison gas…

This is the nature of trauma, and it pays to remember: there’s a hell of a lot more void than stars.

Target: 600 words
Written: 269 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: People Of The Deer, Farley Mowat
Comics: Monstress 17-20
Music: The Very Best Of The Smiths, The Smiths

and immediately, fallen on my face

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Metaphorically speaking.

It’s a Sunday. I don’t know how it got so far away from me. Being completely caught up yesterday, doing all the things I’ve wanted to, in order to get where I need to be and now, here I am; back behind again.

My face is bruised, blood spews from a cut over my eyebrow; I think my orbital bone is broken.

Metaphorically speaking.

My face swells, my brain too, inside my skull. I swirl, lurch and stagger.

The tasks are piling up.

This is the thing I didn’t want.

This is the pressure I was trying to avoid.

I don’t want to reevaluate.

I want to push through.

I want to make it all mean something.

But it means nothing, like a Wes Anderson film, without the whimsy and quirk, and Scarlett Johansson flashing her naked body.

Yeah, we watched Asteroid City, so I guess, technically, it does include that last thing.

Literally speaking.

So, it’s not all bad, I guess.

Target: 600 words
Written: 498 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: People Of The Deer, Farley Mowat
Comics: Monstress 9-12
Music: The Very Best Of Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead

alone in a room

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I’d like to spend most of my days that way. An empty room with nothing but me and a good book, a laptop for writing, maybe a corkboard for plotting and visualization. Access to a beautiful woman for companionship. The ability to leave whenever, but the ability to get lost entirely in whatever I’m doing, without interruption.

The ability to be fully and completely present within my little empty box, with the option to go outside on occasion and visit the good parts of the world, and leave the shitbags behind.

Target: 500 words
Written: 127 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 33-36
Music: Veni Vidi Vicious, The Hives (as wake-up music goes, none better. I think Hate To Say I Told You So would be my entrance them if I were a professional wrestler)

cigarillo #1

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I think I’ve earned it – a first draft complete, writing up my notes for the second run? That’s not a small thing; completion is an elusive, moving target in art, particularly when you’re one of those nervous, depressed artists like myself. It’s very easy to scrap the lot and go back to scratch.

I’m saving the Gran Corona for the publication date, but I believe in the art of the small reward. Plus, The Mungk is a novella, a tiny project, and therefore, its rewards should be appropriately sized.

I don’t smoke as a matter of course – I quit cigarettes years ago, but I love the smell of a good cigar, so a cigarillo every couple of months probably isn’t going to hurt me.

My liver or my heart will give out far before my lungs, after all.

Clean livin’, y’all.

To the next one.

Target: 500 words
Written: 256 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 29-32
Music: The Velvet Underground & Nico, The Velvet Underground (& Nico)