Category: personal

post scene one

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I was really hoping, thirty-seven days into this new year, that the first draft of the first novel (well, novella) I wrote in the canon of me would be a real banger.

Instead, it’s a steaming pile of dog feces.

I suppose we must walk before we run, crawl before we walk, and lay around screaming incoherently before that.

Weirdly, we end that way as well, most of us. We come in screaming, and go out spent, withered husks.

Hump day positivity, folks.

Target: 300 words
Written: 193 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Face It, Debbie Harry
Comics: Sex Criminals 13-16
Music: Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg (is je t'aime me non plus the sexiest song ever, or what?)

in training

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Back into it. I guess I must be doing okay at work, since they’re offering me extra work most people don’t get (or want, perhaps).

It’s not the greatest job, but as I learn more about who does what in the government and our division, I’m beginning to see that there may be other options.

I mean, as long as this writing thing isn’t paying the bills, which it’s not.

I’ve made exactly zero dollars thus far.

Of course, I don’t expect to make anything off poetry and short stories. Maybe comics. Maybe the hip little ditties if I compile them into a larger volume.

A book of short stories or poetry might work, but I’m a long way from that, and let’s face it – it’s not going to land me on the moon.

That’s the novel prerogative, and even then, it’s dicey. You gotta be good to be great and great to make any cash, which is bullshit.

We massively undervalue art in this world, always have. The absolute cream can make a living; the rest of us are scraping by.

And I don’t believe in the starving artist. I do believe that too much wealth corrupts.

But making a living?

That shouldn’t be something we have to fight for.

Target: 300 words
Written: 176 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Face It, Debbie Harry
Comics: Sex Criminals 5-8
Music: A Jackknife To A Swan, Mighty Mighty Bosstones

home again

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Quick’ems.

Fun weekend, too much food, too many snacks. My blood pressure and my waistline have suffered.

My soul has not.

Children are good for the heart.

Grandchildren even more so.

Target: 300 words
Written: 239 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Face It, Debbie Harry
Comics: Sex Criminals 1-4 (I wish I was Fraction)
Music: You've Come A Long Way, Baby, Fatboy Slim

fun fun fun

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Until the daddy puts the T-Bird away, I think. Or, in this case, the granddaughter.

Man, that kid is something else. Total ham, smart as a whip. Freakin’ adorable.

Starting to go through that “big feelings” stage, where she’s trying to learn how to deal with things beyond the absolute basics.

Really didn’t like the idea of being a “pre-schooler” soon. I hope one day I’ll be successful enough as an author, so she can say, “My Bop-Bop wrote THIS” and then be ashamed by all its darkness.

Wait. Was this a good plan?

Target: 300 words
Written: 689 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Face It, Debbie Harry
Comics: The Necromancer 5-6, The Necromancer: Pilot Season 1
Music: Your New Favourite Band, The Hives (most appropriately named album title ever, possibly)

packin’

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We are off to see the wizard tomorrow. And by wizard, I mean granddaughter.

And by off, I mean, I’m having massive anxiety about leaving our new rat terrier for the first time. She’s a nervous girl, and absurdly attached to me, so I think she’s going to have a meltdown or panic attack when we go.

Luckily, it’s just two days, but man, poor girl. Her pain (or my assumption of her pending pain) is breaking my heart. Naturally, she’ll probably just super-attach herself to my brother, after a short period of being a real fraidy cat.

Best case scenario really, but man, is she going to be stoked to see us on Sunday. Or not.

Maybe she’ll be pissed.

Target: 300 words
Written: 1832 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Is Your Genius At Work?, Dick Richards (Dick Dicks is the man, great book)
Comics: The Necromancer 1-4
Music: Your Genius Hands, Everclear

old schooling it

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Listen, I get it. This is a 2006 blog in a 2024 world.

People don’t want to hear about your whining, or your ideas on hope and achievement.

I’ve some interest in that stuff, but once you’ve read the basics of things intended to inspire you, and you’ve moved beyond it, because you realize it actually sets unrealistic, non-real world expectations (requiring riches and bitches, as I like to say), for most of us, it makes you feel bad.

Unworthy.

So, it becomes about finding the softer voice, the one that speaks to you without imposing its own views of success. Success isn’t a requirement of happiness. Neither is money or love or great sex with girthy members or gravity-defying breasts, or whatever you’re into.

(Both? Simultaneously? On the same person?)

These are nice to haves.

Right now, I’m writing about the crushing weight of the world, or the way trauma knocks us off our axis and fucks up our magnetic fields, so we’re forever pushed away from the thing we want most.

And it sucks. That sucks.

(Not the writing part – the crushing weight/trauma part).

It sucks that people, like us, like me, like many of you, have to go through this. And sometimes, it doesn’t get better.

I’m not sure what hope I could offer. There will be some good times, but it might not go away. It doesn’t, for a lot of people. Some eighty-year olds still bitch about how their parents messed them up.

A lifetime has passed to get over it. Why are these things still dictating behaviour?

But they do. They still do.

They fuck you up, your mom and dad.

Not my mom and dad – I fucked myself up. I’ll take credit for that.

Target: 300 words
Written: 1143 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Yours, Cruelly, Elvira (way better than you'd expect, given, but then, I've always been fond of Elvira - even as a child, she gave me tingles in parts that maybe shouldn't tingle at that age, but then, I was always girl crazy - see above note about gravity and defiance - her humour was equally sexy though - like a dad joke with boobs.  Anyway, it turns out, she's pretty cool, and she's lived a hell of a life.)
Comics: Fight Club 2 8-10, Fight Club 3 1
Music: You Forgot It In People, Broken Social Scene

a real boy

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I’m kind of excited. I mean, I’m writing about ruining a kid’s life, but also!

Published! In a real book of poetry. It’s a physical copy. You can touch and feel it. It can’t be deleted in a moment when the website goes out of business.

That’s pretty cool.

But anyway, back to destroying a young boy’s entire family, so he can be eaten and/or consumed by a monster.

You know, same old, same old.

Target: 300 words
Written: 1439 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Yours, Cruelly, Elvira
Comics: Fight Club 2 0-3
Music: You Could Have It So Much Better, Franz Ferdinand

so begins canon

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I’ve been poking at it for a while. Haikus and flash fiction are all good, and comic book scripts and thinly veiled political rants are something else, but proof of life, proof of concept, of talent, skill, hard work, dedication, adaptability, open-mindedness, and good old fashioned sex appeal lay in the pudding.

(Or Jello wrestling mud pit, if we’re talking that last thing).

The point is, there’s no me, as I want me to be, without books. Reading is only halfway to completion. It’s the act of creation (which is really just exploration and discovery, connection and understanding), that’s the thing that fills the cup.

(Or Jello mud wrestling pit).

The bottom line is, me as I am now? I’m not happy with that person. That person sucks. That person writes split-sentence haikus and pretentious shit about hats.

(I love them both dearly).

This person that I want to be? He gets dark. He gets into it. He understands subtext and trauma and helplessness in the face of adversity.

He knows how to crush you – your soul anyway.

(He’d likely lose in the Jello pit).

I want to make you uncomfortable; to remember that happy endings are not the only endings, and neither are grand tragedies.

Sometimes, it’s the little tragedies that wreck us whole.

Target: 300 words
Written: 794 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Getting Things Done, David Allen
Comics: Southern Bastards 9-12
Music: Yo! Bum Rush The Show, Public Enemy

improvement?

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I may have improved that dreadful third draft of Get Back Again. I hope I did. It still looks like it needs a lot of work, but hey, gotta manuscript sometime, right?

Fuck it.

I’ll be the first to admit I have no idea what I’m doing, most of the time. I’m lost, alone and largely confused.

Unskilled.

I never learned to buckle down.

I never learned to commit.

I never learned follow through.

It’s enough to make a man want to weep, but fuck it. I’m not the weeping type, except when it comes to memories of the people and animals I’ve loved that are no longer with us. I weep for the fact that they won’t ever be anything other than a memory ever again (a truism for all), and for the fact that the memory of me might not be worth the recall.

I want to make a mark, a slash across the sky, a rift in space-time that cannot be ignored, that lights up the night sky with things of wonder and beauty that no one can deny.

But instead, I’m writing about angry ghosts who can’t accept that their outmoded style of governance is on the outs.

And it’s far past time for something better.

Target: 300 words
Written: 2135 words, short story: Get Back Again

Read: Getting Things Done, David Allen
Comics: Southern Bastards 1-4 (I wish I would create atmosphere like these guys - damn well done.  You can practically smell the barbecue.)
Music: Yes, Virginia, The Dresden Dolls

determined to make it better

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Or to *wink, wink* get back again to the spirit of the thing.

Bad people lamenting how they can’t go back to the way things used to be, and good people moving forward, content in improvements, however small, so long as the monster’s out of the room.

My monster is a motherfucker. We don’t get along.

And it’s rarely out of the room. The monster inside your head cannot be expunged.

Maybe exorcised?

Is depression simply demonic possession by another name? Only instead of shooting pea soup and stealing souls, it’s content with the slow crumbling of the soul it already has?

Jesus, dark. 

Target: 200 words
Written: 518 words, short story: Get Back Again

Read: The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher
Comics: Fanboys Vs. Zombies 17-20
Music: Yer Favourites, Tragically Hip (gave me my #VeryCanadianMoment as I slid around in the snow on the way to my free health care with Bobcaygeon and Nautical Disaster blasting over the speakers.  If I'd been apologizing to someone with a hockey bag and a two-four in the back, I'd have broken the Canadian stereotype meter permanently.  Before you ask, I was already wearing a toque).