That’s when I wrote a short story for the first time, about a caterpillar who’d fallen into a bowl of popcorn and couldn’t get out.
The sides were slick with butter and he had to dodge the hands that descended again and again, to avoid being eaten.
I guess metaphor was an early love, and an accurate one.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 977 words, short story: Broke Down Car
Read: Permanent Record, Edward Snowden
Comics: Chew 31-34
Music: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion, VariousI don’t know what my purpose is; I know I have to write. I have to challenge – myself, the world, whatever.
Devil’s advocate, without a limit on the number of views he’s willing to explore, and the number he’ll excoriate.
Getting through this, doing the work, the canon.
That’s why I’m here. It’s all I care for. I pray I’ve enough time left to do it; I suspect no such time is forthcoming.
I’ve driven pretty far to realize where I am; I only know this is the thing that screams inside me, and if everyone else could just give it a rest for a moment, that’d be great.
I know what must be done.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 563 words, short story: Broke Down Car
Read: Permanent Record, Edward Snowden
Comics: Chew: Secret Agent Poyo (POYO!) 1, Chew 28-30
Music: No Surprises, Radiohead (one of my all time favourites)We are falling
falling down
falling under
rising up
The wind lifts us
a tempest against a fading storm
We spread our feathers
a wild beating of wings
Against the throngs below
they are not us
they are ages old
They wish a return
We wish a future
And time is on our side
If they haven’t used it all up
They cannot last forever
We have flown so far
We have seen the moon and the stars
We have risen
We will not be dragged low
We spread our feathers
a wild beating of wings
They cannot contain us
We will soarTarget: 1000 words Written: 108 words, poem: Feathers Falling Read: Permanent Record, Edward Snowden Comics: Chew 24-26, 27.2 Music: No Substance, Bad Religion
It tears at me. This urge to drive myself forward, to drive myself into something better, while simultaneously fighting not to give in to all the shit people of the world (and there are many).
It’s the dream of free people everywhere; it’s the slavering desire of every monster to put a stop to it.
It’s those close to us who behave in ways that benefit only themselves; who’d screw over their own blood for their own sick self-interest; who are so lost in their own little world that they fail to see that other people are not simply NPCs in the game of their lives, to be slaughtered or ignored as needed (or at a whim).
My biggest concern is that I’m one of them; my biggest fear is that I’m not serving myself by consistently taking myself out of the equation.
I know I need to help more. I know I barely have enough energy to hold my insides in. It’s a virtual certainty that if I stop holding it together, my body will burst and disintegrate, spilling my entrails to the floor.
Is it too much to ask for wings to emerge from the viscera?
I don’t believe in God or heaven, in no small part because it sounds fucking tedious and hypocritical, but I’d like to think peace is the end result, rather than an eternity of regret.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 432 words, poem: Feathers Falling
Read: Constellation Games, Leonard Richardson
Comics: Chew 20-23
Music: No Security, The Rolling StonesI’m trying to be more hopeful in the face of a rising tide.
The forces that have colluded since Reagan to undermine freedom, integrity and basic human rights (AKA fascists, bigots and corporations) are peaking, and threatening to drag us all back to the fucking Stone Age.
I am trying to find the inner hope that says, this too shall pass.
We shall rise again, as we inevitably do.
As long as they don’t kill us all first.
Motherfuckers.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 108 words, poem: Feathers Falling
Read: Constellation Games, Leonard Richardson
Comics: Chew 17, 18, 27, 19 (what? I swear it's right)
Music: No Reason To Complain, Patton OswaltI want to leave behind a body of work that people can dig into and enjoy, even if it’s just in the dissection of me as a person.
I’m sure it won’t all be flattering; I’ve behaved terribly at times.
Such is the life of a drunken wannabe punk kid from the small towns of Ontario. You’ll say and do shit to regret later; apologies don’t mean it didn’t happen.
It also doesn’t mean it’s who you ended up.
I don’t know how I’ll end up.
But I’m worried I don’t have the stamina or force of will for the long run.
Please don’t let me end up one of these cozy mystery writers, or some detective or spy novel fuck, churning out the same formulaic CSI bullshit each week.
It’s always the goddamned butler.
I want my legacy to be more complex than that.
More compelling; equally pathetic, mildly horrific, one long cringe punctuated by the occasional, “Okay, he’s growing on me.”
He’s getting better.
Please let me leave it behind.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 326 words, poem: Roses And Violets
Read: Constellation Games, Leonard Richardson
Comics: Chew 9-12
Music: No Joke!, Meat PuppetsIt started off as a riff on a couple of classics, as so many of my things do: the monster under the bed and it was a dark and stormy night…
I can’t seem to help postulating on other ways to see things; it’s a gift and a curse. The need to play devil’s advocate and constantly ask what other ways a thing can be seen is so ingrained in me, it’s just about impossible to keep from indulgence.
The monster under the bed merged with the concept of little things draining the life and verve you’re born with, and grew to encompass loss, abandonment and trauma.
The Mungk is a meditation on the birth of resignation, of fatalism.
Hopelessness, as seen through the guise of a children’s story.
It’s a exploration of how, as we grow, the world reveals itself to be far less well-meaning and static than we presume as children, where parents are gods, friends are forever and it’s one adventure after the other.
I won’t claim to have been abandoned or abused or any of that good stuff. My parents were pretty good. We had our fights, but nothing like what other poor souls have been through. I was disemboweled by a tree when I was eight; it didn’t make me grow up vowing revenge against improperly cut stumps.
(What a shitty superhero that would have been – the Leveller!)
I was more traumatized by the loss of faith; as I’ve said before, if you want to lose your religion, read the Bible. If you’re not out by Leviticus, there’s something wrong with your basic human decency.
The Mungk is trauma on trauma on trauma.
It’s overwhelming, it’s so much bigger than something we can deal with, in a child’s parable.
I’m sorry to unleash this on the world, but well, it’s the thing I’m most proud of, to this point. It’s good.
I think it’s great.
I could be wrong.
That’s the risk a person takes in creating anything. We build, we create, we connect the dots. We put it out into the world and now, it’s something for the jackals. Their noses twitch, their lips pull back from their teeth.
They pounce.
Anyway, the Mungk is born, for better or worse.
Only time will tell if this post is the beginning of something huge, or just another whisper in a storm.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 1618 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success, Carol Dweck
Comics: Chew 1-4
Music: No Exit, Blondie (ha!)The Mungk should be finished in ten to fourteen days.
Then, onto the scarier phase – trying to fucking sell it.
Writing it is the easy part, compared to all the gladhanding and sending and trying to build audiences and dealing with the constant rejection.
And it’s a lot of rejection.
I think maybe sometimes that the whole universe has looked at me with the most cursory glance and said, nah. Not interested.
Dismissed out of hand by god.
The question is do we disappear, or do we get pissed and say, oh yeah? Look at me now, while smashing everything around them.
How you like me now?
Target: 1000 words
Written: 1173 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: I'll Be Gone In The Dark, Michelle McNamara
Comics: The Boys 47, The Boys: Highland Laddie 1-3
Music: Night Music, Tones On TailThis is it.
The separation of M.T. Williams and his first grand creation (though not his first creation).
We are on the last draft prior to manuscript.
A dozen misfires and then the final blow.
Kind of exciting, if not also terrifying.
Funny how those two always seem to be in cahoots. Everything exciting should scare the shit out of you, right?
Right?
Hello?
Target: 1000 words
Written: 2040 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Good Sex, Jessica Graham (not been helpful for focus, but hell on the libido)
Comics: The Boys 43-46
Music: Night Crawlers, White ZombieEvery day, I tell myself the same thing:
This, too, is the way. This, too, shall pass.
It’s a mantra that keeps me from screaming, or worse.
It’s ringing a little hollow these days. Perhaps it’s just another way to avoid taking action on the things that haunt me.
Perhaps.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 2287 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Uncertainty: Turning Fear And Doubt Into Fuel For Brilliance, Jonathan Fields
Comics: The Boys 31-34
Music: Nice, Rollins Band (I saw this listed as their worst album, and all I could think was, "if this is their worst, how fucking bad is everyone else?" Rollins is the shit.)