All done.
There’s still some afterwork and maintenance to be done, but hell, by this time next week, I’ll be compiling a list of agents/publishers to send this bitch to.
Good night.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 885 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Sorrows Of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Comics: The Boys: Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker 6, The Boys 60-62
Music: Bootleg Nirvana 90-01-06 Seattle, Nirvana, I guess, probablyNo time for love, Dr. Jones.
This should be epic (and probably not be done today).
Intense concentration incoming.
So we pray. Bring on the Patti Smith and the Kurt Cobain. Gonna need all the classics for this level of focus.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 9100 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Sorrows Of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Comics: The Boys: Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker 2-5
Music: Nirvana, NirvanaTechnically, it’s the Dresden Night Market, but whatever. It snowed all day yesterday and is slated to all day today and tomorrow and the next and the next, etc., etc., etc., until climate change murders us all.
Assuming our new fascist overlords don’t get there first. My hope is that Trump’s ego pisses off the rich and they start using their influence to fuck him over.
But for now, it’s winter markets and praying the world doesn’t collapse before I get a chance to finish all that I desire to do.
It’s just too goddamn bad I decided to leave the starting line after most people have already run the race.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 1559 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: I'll Be Gone In The Dark, Michelle McNamara
Comics: The Boys: Highland Laddie 4-6, The Boys 48
Music: Night Time, Killing JokeThe 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 ZombieAnd so, the new prologue and epilogue goes.
Fuck ’em.
They’d make a cool short story in an expanded edition later on (as would the history/future of everyone else involved), but fuck it.
It ain’t relevant to the story of a little boy and the monster that loves him.
Well, love is a strong word.
More like takes malicious pleasure in turning him into another wasted shell of a human being, staggering through life like some kind of George Romero creation, pieces falling off, guts long ago fallen out, dead-eyed stare focused on nothing, save mere sustenance.
But that’s a preview, and we only do previews for good boys and girls, and expansion for the truly sexy beasts.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 355 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Good Sex, Jessica Graham
Comics: The Boys 39-42
Music: Nico, Blind Melon (talk about sexy)That’s what I feel like. I’m thinking about chapter identifiers, and I thought it would be cool to have a cartoonish (but disturbed/disturbing) little sketch to delineate each chapter/scene.
(I’m working on a vibe; I like the whole thing to be an event/theme.)
Of course, there’s an art to making art that looks like a child did it (but somehow still cool – sorry kids, you’re not hanging in the Guggenheim anytime soon).
And I feel like I’m drawing with crayons.
Which is sort of the point.
We all start with colours all outside the lines, and somehow, they teach us to stay carefully between them.
Of course, the best of us figure how to say fuck lines altogether. I draw my own lines.
The question to consider is: am I one of those, or just another hack?
Target: 1000 words
Written: 316 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Good Sex, Jessica Graham
Comics: The Boys 35-38
Music: Nice Guys Finish Last, Green DayI think The Mungk might actually be done soon. By my estimate, mid-December at the latest. And then it’ll be on to the next thing, the next year’s projects. More and more, all the time.
I do not make things easy on myself, even if I never follow through with selling them (notwithstanding the fact that three of the four pieces I wrote this year before The Mungk have been published, in a non-paying manner).
The comic is the only one that hasn’t, and it was originally an idea for a friend, who is a very good artist, but spends too much time online and is kind of a right wing nut now, which is disappointing. I wrote it exactly for his style; a calling card for both of us that will likely never happen. Maybe Jerry Gaylord or Jonboy Meyers would like to do it as a favour.
Yeah, right.
Anyway, exciting times.
I might have to draw, ink, letter and publish the damn thing myself.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 2255 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Uncertainty: Turning Fear And Doubt Into Fuel For Brilliance, Jonathan Fields
Comics: The Boys: Herogasm 3-6
Music: Next Year, Foo FightersI guess we’re just abandoning the bathroom sink.
Moving out probably.
Whatever’s stuck down there is stronger than me. Possibly primordial. Almost definitely of the Seventh Circle, or some ancient mystical Lovecraftian shit.
Crap.
Is the Mungk in my pipes?
No, that bastard would never be so goddamned silent.
Target: 900 words
Written: 410 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Swiss Family Robinson, Johann David Wyss
Comics: The Boys 1-4
Music: New Times, Violent FemmesSo, I’ve been writing for a long time. I’ve published a couple of things, written many that I’ve never sent anywhere, but I’ve never run into a piece that I wrote, but of which, I have absolutely no recollection.
Like none.
And here’s the thing. It’s fucking tight. It’s polished. It’s not revelatory or mindbending or anything, but it’s very good, for what it is.
And I remember absolutely nothing about it.
Even the topic isn’t one I’d usually write on – a serial dater who falls madly in love, then loses love, goes into a Young Werther style depression, then meets the next one and does the same thing.
It’s not long, but the characters are well fleshed out, the story has solid details and telling moments. The whole thing comes a nice full circle.
And as far as I can tell, I went into a fugue state to write it, printed it off, gave it to my wife to read and then wiped it from my memory so completely, I might as well be one of those walking, tired tropes from a Hallmark movie, that gets bonked on the head and loses the ability to remember anything except the skills they had and how to speak English.
Fucking. Weird.
And yet. Still somehow good enough to be published?
What. The. Fuck.
Target: 900 words
Written: 921 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Hepatitis Bathtub And Other Stories, NOFX
Comics: 100 Bullets 93-96 (so close, I'm practically giddy)
Music: New In Town, John Mulaney