Like, let the world burn.
I’m just going to write and read and figure out how to be happy.
Maybe I’ll get it by the time I die of old age.
Maybe I’ll die before then and never know, but then, at least it will be over.
Target: 900 words
Written: 832 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Hepatitis Bathtub And Other Stories, NOFX
Comics: 100 Bullets 89-92
Music: New Born, MuseI almost misspelled that as talk. Freudian slip, anyone?
But I do mean walk. I’d like to throw some shit on, grab the only things important to me, and just start walking.
Just. Gone. Tramping down foreign roads with a backpack and a laptop, a Kindle full of books.
In peace. Listening to the birds sing.
Praying for nature to remain unsavage.
It’s savage enough out here.
Target: 900 words
Written: 466 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Shining, Stephen King
Comics: 100 Bullets 65-68
Music: Never Surrender (From Kickboxer), Stan Bush (if this is the best you got, surrender, immediately, because you suck)My parents showed up unexpectedly last night for a porch visit, which turned into three bottles of wine and the complete derailing of any plans I had for reading, writing, et al, etc, et whatevera last night.
And now I’m hungover.
This is not shaping up to be the catch-up weekend I was hoping for.
Target: 900 words
Written: 1990 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Queen Of Sorcery, David Eddings
Comics: Die 3-5, The Wicked + The Divine 42
Music: Utopia, BjorkI got a little ahead of myself for a bit again, with the longer edits, but now, I’m back to having to meet actual targets again.
Hence the bump in target words.
I’ve been trying to build it like a muscle. Every once in a while, bump the target up, increase the reps, the duration, the requirements for the cardio and endurance and lifting power of the thing.
Hell, it’s everything I do.
Slow increase in exercise, in meditation, in the difficulty of the material.
More beautiful desolation. More tragic pathos.
More little nobodies, thinking they’re somebodies.
More me, thinking I’m not nothing.
Feeling empty and alone, the best and worst feeling in the world.
Target: 900 words
Written: 888 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Hilarity Ensues, Tucker Max
Comics: The Magdalena: Seventh Sacrament 1, The Magdalena v4 1-3
Music: Unreleased Album, Screaming Trees (so underrated, these guys - Lanegan's brilliant)Maybe today, we don’t have anything to do. I mean, it’s supposed to rain, so no point leaving early to go to the pool…
Or wait. Nope. Out at one. Gone. Reading time ripped away like an old, cruddy bandaid.
Save me from other people’s needs, universe. They are smothering my own.
Target: 800 words
Written: 985 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: 'Salem's Lot, Stephen King
Comics: I Hate Image 1, I Hate Fairyland 12-14
Music: Live Shit, Flogging MollyIt’s really irritating when you find a good book (and I adore C.J. Cherryh’s worldbuilding and characterization), and no one gives you a second to read it. Sure, it’s a bit denser because of the created language and custom and all, so it might have read longer and more difficult than the average two hundred and fifty page book, but damn, son.
Give me time.
Two pages a day is no fucking success.
Thankfully, I’ve been able to steal time from work to dive in, and finally, I’ve managed to complete it. It was a bit less revelatory than Gate Of Ivrel, but still.
One of the best, in my opinion. One of the absolute best.
Target: 800 words
Written: 483 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Brothers Of Earth, CJ Cherryh (complete!)
Comics: I Hate Fairyland 4-7
Music: Random Covers, Spacehog (I've hit a very strange area of my playlists)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: Out In L.A., Red Hot Chili PeppersSo, my whole day was hijacked. For the first time in a long, long time, I got to the end of the day and realized, I hadn’t read a thing, so I sat down and did five minutes before bed.
(This is not helping me get through the 1140-page complete fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson, already a more tedious read than the bible, but I am a completist and it is “research” for a project down the road).
Did you know Anderson once visited Charles Dickens and turned into the houseguest from hell, extending a short stay into a five week hellscape that forced Dickens to tell him to get the fuck out?
I guess Dickens’ platitudes about charity don’t extended to irritating houseguests.
Anyway, after a morning concert for my father-in-law, some running around, a lengthy dog walk and some pool time with homemade teriyaki burgers and grilled pineapple (made by yours truly), we followed that up with a campfire at my sisters.
The dogs are spent.
And so am I.
Why is it, again, that I am involved with people? Oh right, I actually enjoyed the day, but still, it doesn’t do well for one’s goals to enjoy oneself all the time.
Target: 700 words
Written: 104 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Hans Christian Anderson's Most Tedious Fucking Stories
Comics: American Vampire 7-10
Music: One Fierce Beer Coaster, Bloodhound GangOh, God, it sounds so horrible, like some kind of Tolle/Robbins platitude, meant to sound deep and meaningful, but actually being somewhat of a scam.
I mean, I don’t want to go too deep into it, because I’ve got a whole idea percolating that I don’t want to spoil the punchline on, but you know how we often try to teach the things we most need to learn?
Next to the dictionary entry beside ego, I suspect there’s a picture of Eckhart Tolle. The Power Of Now and A New Earth practically drip with his ego, his unhinged desire to be a messiah, don’t they?
I’m not sure stealing a bunch of ideas that have been around for thousands of years, or basic common sense ideas, and drenching them in an insipid slurry of rancid toss to pretend you’ve found some special knowledge, is messiah material.
Honestly, it sounds exactly like the kind of bullshit I was writing in my late teens and early twenties, when I was also trying to be a messiah, but was actually a schmuck who didn’t live any of the platitudes he was spouting.
I guess I was too busy with sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll to make the millions he did.
Anyway, my point is: The Practicing Mind by Thomas Sterner is the better option if you want to learn about presence. If you strip all of the bullshit and pomp from The Power Of Now, and replaced it with humility and practicality, there you go. And Mr. Sterner isn’t trying to sell you on being Jesus.
Or Buddha, or Lao Tzu, whom Tolle seems to only mention in passing, despite having ripped off the Tao Te Ching extensively (though not anywhere near as well, and with added layers of unnecessary drivel). I guess he doesn’t want anyone to realize he hasn’t actually generated an original understanding, but rather, stole everything he purports to have discovered from luminaries long dead?
Anyway, my thought was: I’m such an insignificant, microscopic piece of the universe, why am I carrying its weight?
I know, right?
Target: 600 words
Written: 576 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Comics: American Vampire: Survival Of The Fittest 3-4, American Vampire 19-20
Music: Old Plaid Shirt, MudmenThere are certain authors and creations that I’m in absolute awe of.
The ability of the Jasons to capture the feel of the South so completely in Southern Bastards. Chip Zdarsky and Matt Fraction’s incredible wit and compassion for their character’s rich internal lives in Sex Criminals. Chuck Palahniuk’s ability to create complexity out of simplicity, to blend “clever art” with something more raw.
The sheer fucking depth and expanse, both internally and in the world-building of Monstress.
Marjorie Liu has created something truly incredible, a world so full and dense that it’s hard to believe it belongs to a comic book. I’m not sure that Game of Thrones is this massive, and the written word allows for much greater detail, in general. Sana Takeda’s extremely detailed art gives that same sense so beautifully, that one almost might believe it’s building the mythos and the world on its own.
I love stuff that requires multiple readings in order to catch all the details, things where that second, third, fourth reading continues to add to the understanding, to improve the experience, to heighten the depth of one’s immersion into the material.
I’m so on board with this series, I kind of don’t ever want it to end (though it inevitably will need to, as all things do, save Batman).
Target: 600 words
Written: 68 words, novella: The Mungk
Reading: Gate Of Ivrel, C.J. Cherryh
Comics: Monstress 51
Music: The Observer, Bjork