Category: writing

alone in a room

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I’d like to spend most of my days that way. An empty room with nothing but me and a good book, a laptop for writing, maybe a corkboard for plotting and visualization. Access to a beautiful woman for companionship. The ability to leave whenever, but the ability to get lost entirely in whatever I’m doing, without interruption.

The ability to be fully and completely present within my little empty box, with the option to go outside on occasion and visit the good parts of the world, and leave the shitbags behind.

Target: 500 words
Written: 127 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 33-36
Music: Vitalogy, Pearl Jam (still an all-time favourite - every word floods back like total recall)

cigarillo #1

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I think I’ve earned it – a first draft complete, writing up my notes for the second run? That’s not a small thing; completion is an elusive, moving target in art, particularly when you’re one of those nervous, depressed artists like myself. It’s very easy to scrap the lot and go back to scratch.

I’m saving the Gran Corona for the publication date, but I believe in the art of the small reward. Plus, The Mungk is a novella, a tiny project, and therefore, its rewards should be appropriately sized.

I don’t smoke as a matter of course – I quit cigarettes years ago, but I love the smell of a good cigar, so a cigarillo every couple of months probably isn’t going to hurt me.

My liver or my heart will give out far before my lungs, after all.

Clean livin’, y’all.

To the next one.

Target: 500 words
Written: 256 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 29-32
Music: Virus 100, L7, Vision Valley, The Vines

silence from the censorship party

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I guess censorship doesn’t require a response in Wattpad’s world. It’s been over a week now since I filed an appeal with them regarding Get Back Again, and crickets.

What a nice world they must live in, to pull any story they feel like or don’t understand, and then just ignore the cries of the creator.

I’m a lefty McLefterton (with caveats), and in my world, the censorship of art is a no-fly zone. I know Wattpad thinks it’s protecting people from outrage and offense, but to not even respond to their own appeal process?

That’s straight authoritarian bullshit, and anyone with a true desire for freedom and justice would never engage in such tactics. Do something wrong, then pretend like it never happened, while maintaining the new status quo? That’s some cowardly energy right there.

Avoiding the consequences of your ill behaviour is not a becoming trait, supposedly forward thinking company.

Target: 500 words
Written: 570 words, novella: The Mungk

Read; High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 25-28
Music: Violent Femmes, Violent Femmes

first drafts

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I finished my first draft of The Mungk a few days ago.

It’s an outline, glorified and in extreme detail, which is what all good first drafts should be, in my opinion.

You can write character studies and scene settings and world build all you want. You can play connect-the-dots, map out plot matrixes and timelines and motivations and whatever, but at the end of the day, all you have is a blueprint. At some point, you have to start laying foundation and raising beams and running wires.

And unless you’re building something entirely formulaic, that never truly goes as planned, not in a work of art.

So, we write a first draft. And in the draft, our characters begin to tell us who they are, what direction they want to go. Motivations and reactions you didn’t expect rear their ugly heads. Plot holes you didn’t catch in the outline sideswipe you, throwing the whole thing off track.

It’s rather like birthing a child and living a life; you have a plan for it, but you can’t control other people or whatever circumstances the world likes to throw at us. You can’t break the laws of the universe, whatever that universe may be.

In the end, a first draft is nothing more than a prototype; a raw, unfinished thing with quirks and bugs and massive failures that need correction.

A outline/novel hybrid, bleeding, organs in places they shouldn’t be, begging to be put out of its misery, or repaired in mercy.

Target: 500 words
Written: 433 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 13-16
Music: Vessel, Bjork

seeding

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I’m seeding herbs today, and it makes me think that maybe I’m seeding stories, little poems and things to grow my writing career.

However, like seeding, one needs the right fuel and the right ground, the soil, the nutrients, in order to sow the ground with something fertile enough to allow things to grow.

And I’m not a green thumb.

But I think that’s how I need to start thinking of my writing career. Create fertile ground. Find the right nutrients, the right level of sunlight, water as needed.

Pay close attention if the leaves are wilting.

Pray for little babies to push the soil.

Target: 500 words
Written: 818 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 9-12
Music: Vespertine Live, Bjork

some music

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Some music just moves you. I just finished writing and while James Brown and Night Train was cool, I definitely funked out more to Modest Mouse and Steam Engenius, because SO. FUCKING. GOOD.

My tastes range, and it’s fine. I don’t mind following up Minor Threat with Rihanna or Dean Martin with Henry Rollins. There’s nothing wrong with an Eminem and Beatles mix, or Pink Floyd and NOFX.

It’s all about being open, and enjoying the moment. Falling into it and letting it happen, letting it be what it is and letting go of whatever else is happening.

Music is the most powerful presence creator; there’s a reason we love it in all its forms. It speaks to something primal within us that just wants to live. Here, now, forever in the groove, connecting and commiserating with our fellow humanity, free from all the rest of the world’s shit.

Target: 500 words
Written: 209 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 5-8
Music: Vespertine, Bjork

censored?

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Well, this is a first. I wish I could say it was unexpected, but I knew Get Back Again straddled a line I wasn’t sure I hadn’t crossed.

I mean, it’s a story told from the perspective of a right winger who has been murdered by his liberal girlfriend. I mean, I thought it was clear that the right winger was the bad guy, but I knew that to tell it properly, I would have to hew more tightly to the man’s anger and prejudice than I would normally be comfortable with. I actually made notes to myself during the revision hoping that it would be taken as it was meant, and not become some kind of right wing manifesto.

Wattpad’s a pretty liberal place, which is part of the reason I like it, even though most of the literature posted there isn’t exactly my jam. I mostly followed Cory Doctorow there. If he thought it had value, it must not have been terrible, because you know… Doctorow. He doesn’t suffer tech companies lightly.

Of course, left-leaning places such as Wattpad also mean the kind of people whose outrage tends to not think before it blasts nuclear waste out into the atmosphere.

(And don’t get me wrong, the right is pregnant to bursting with outrage, only they don’t realize that they’re not actually pregnant, just morbidly obese with self-inflicted unhealth).

It appears that’s happened to me.

Either that or Get Back Again wasn’t as clear as I hoped (and I know it was opaque).

So, yeah. I’m anti-censorship for any reason. It’s one thing to know something is immoral and not want to read it; it’s another thing to say to everyone else that reading it is bad. Things can be learned even from things you vehemently disagree with.

If they allow it back, I guess we’ll have to put a disclaimer on it. Trigger warning and a brief explanation: hey, the racist, homophobic misogynist threatening violence against women and minorities?

He’s a baddie.

Duh.

Target: 500 words
Written: 203 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 1-4
Music: Very Proud Of Ya, AFI

targets

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I should explain about the targets thing. I’m very much a proponent of starting small and building to bigger, in order to increase tolerance and get oneself used to increasingly hard and more intensive levels of work (like exercise – if you don’t exercise every day, trying to run a marathon right off the hop isn’t going to work; you won’t be able to crack out two hundred push-ups right off the bat. Maybe start with 5, or a minute on a treadmill).

As you get used to it, and at the lower levels, it doesn’t take long, you gain stamina, and your ability to do more gets easier. Brain work is no different.

However, I know a lot of days it looks like I’m not meeting what are fairly meager targets, but there’s a running total that I’ve more than doubled, so in the interest of reminding myself this is a marathon, not a sprint, if I’m over the total target to start, the goal becomes: do one thing. Doesn’t matter how much it is, whether it’s a hundred words or a thousand, just to ensure you remain in the habit of doing something daily.

As the targets grow, that buffer will likely disappear and I’ll get more done, but having ingrained the habit and built up tolerance, that should be less of an issue.

So yeah, I don’t meet the daily target a lot of the time, but I’m blowing the total target out of the water, and that’s the one that matters.

Target: 500 words
Written: 222 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
Comics: Rat Queens v2 16-19
Music: The Very Best Of Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead

focusin’

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I seem to slipping into the zone more easily this morning. Maybe it’s an illusion, but I killed my workout this morning, and focus seems to be top of the pops when I’m doing my morning work, my morning commute, as I would say.

Writing’s going well, I’m tuned in, tuned on, and the music flows through me without being a distraction, but a driver.

It’s nice. This doesn’t happen that often.

Maybe the funk is breaking. Hold on long enough and it will; all things pass, as they say, including the bad stuff.

Target: 500 words
Written: 365 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Art Of Non-Conformity, Chris Guillebeau
Comics: Rat Queens 15-16, Rat Queens v2 1-2
Music: The Very Best, Nirvana

possible

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So, I guess it’s possible to get published after all. Not that I had any doubts of my sister-in-law’s ability to do so, we’ve definitely gone about it in different ways. She’s networked her way to support for her book, and that’s the smart way to do it.

I’ve apparently opted for the struggling artist in silence, waiting for discovery somehow from the confines of my attic.

These two things are not particularly compatible. It is unlikely that I will ever be discovered, sending out screeds from my basement; it is a matter of personal disgust to whore myself out.

I know it’s about making a genuine connection with people, with those that may be into the things you’re creating. I know that.

Humanity hasn’t exactly been showing its best side lately and I wouldn’t even know where to look to find a tribe or like-minded folks without running into the kind of awful people I seek endlessly to avoid. I can’t do anymore myopic right-wingers or self-important snoots. I want genuine; I don’t want people who look down their nose at others, or those who want to drag everyone into the muck.

I can’t do it.

The time and energy commitment, when I have so little of either, is a real bummer; how could I possibly have less and survive?

I don’t know.

I am my own worst enemy.

I am my only protector.

Shit.

Target: 500 words
Written: 194 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, Seth Grahame-Smith
Comics: East Of West 36-39
Music: Vans Presents: The General Strike EP, Anti-Flag, Popcorn, Muse, The Vegas Years, Everclear