Long, long day. Full flight to Amsterdam, then a short hop to Basel, Switzerland.
You know, as one does.
So, not much time to write today, so what time I have will be dedicated to the novel.
Also, Basel, kinda cool. Never been to Switzerland. It’s pretty sweet. Zurich, maybe, someday.
Target: 1100 words
Written: 1352 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: The Road Through The Wall, Shirley Jackson
Comics: Cyber Force v4 2-5
Music: Irvine Plaza, New York, Anti-FlagI had a brilliant little first draft of a scene written out, absolutely perfect (I mean, it would need editing, but for a first pass, I was in the zone), and then, I went to save it.
All OpenOffice locks up, leaving me unable to even copy the text into Notepad, let alone save the file. I tried to let it sit, let it run out whatever putting a period on a sentence made it do, but to no avail.
I prayed the autosave function that automatically restores files after they’d crashed would bring it all back, but nope. You had to apparently save at least once in order to get that back.
Eight hundred words down the drain, to be replaced by a second version coloured by my frustration and nowhere near as good, though it followed the same lines.
That’s annoying. Technical issues should never be the difference between something good and something mediocre. OpenOffice has served me well over the years, and I fucking hate Microsoft Word, for more reasons than their nonsense policies and anti-user standpoint (it’s the fucking UI and functionality I hate; it’s like they’ve never watched anyone try to create a document before).
But it may be time to think about finding something else. Something more basic. Functional.
Intelligent and user friendly.
But mostly, stable. Reliable. So flawless as to be almost unnoticeable.
Is that too much to ask?
Target: 1100 words
Written: 1186 words, novel: Bad Neighbours (officially, who knows what I was at before the crash)
Read: Adam Bede, George Eliot
Comics: Cyblade 2-4, Fusion 1
Music: The INXS Collection 1980-1993, INXSI started writing a sex scene, then realized, it actually makes for a better story to hide the sex act that is causing our main character such grief.
It’ll be revealed later on in the book, but for now, mystery is the way to go.
Target: 1100 words
Written: 1569 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: Adam Bede, George Eliot
Comics: Ripclaw v3 1, Cyblade: Pilot Season 1, Velocity v2 1, Cyblade 1
Music: Invisible Lantern, Screaming Trees (so underrated)Not because I need to get some (I do) or that I’m particularly feeling my oats (I am), but that’s mostly because for the first time, I’m writing a sex scene.
(Well, not the first time, but the first time in canon. I alluded to the father’s use of a late night laptop session in The Mungk, and a couple of the short stories referenced sex – Get Back Again’s misogynist ghost threatening/chastising his murderer with abuse/promiscuity, Forest Edge’s main victim being a prostitute, its villain getting what comes to him at the hands of the prostitute’s best friend after being seduced, oh, and Western Cradle, which deals almost exclusively with a woman’s revenge for the murder of her family and her own gang rape).
Okay, well, then, this is the first time in canon, and also, the first time where the character is engaged in a consensual act that they really have no love for.
It’s something I would do without hesitation, and would hope my partner is open enough to find fun and sexy, but Walter, the main… he’s a little repressed. Well, a lot repressed.
And so, this is hard for me to write, because I don’t have a lot of boundaries, and it’s difficult for me to get into the mindset of someone who does. For me, it’s no big deal; it’s play.
For others, it’s world shattering.
For me, it’s fun; for Walter, it’s disgusting (hygienically and morally).
And believe me, we aren’t talking anything that weird here.
You’ll see when it’s all done.
When it finally comes out.
When any of this comes out.
Most of it has gone nowhere.
I might be getting a little stale.
Target: 1100 words
Written: 685 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: Adam Bede, George Eliot
Comics: Cyber Force v3 4-6, Cyber Force & X-Men 1
Music: Invisible, EverclearI 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: An Introduction To... Elliott Smith (fuck yes, also, by, you guessed it, Elliott Smith, comma, comma, comma)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: International Pop Overthrow, Material IssueSome 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: Intergalactic, Beastie BoysI 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 – 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: Instrument Soundtrack, FugaziThat 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: In The Chamber: The String Quartet Tribute To Linkin Park, String Quartet (this is a real thing, no shit)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: In God We Trust, Dead Kennedys