Category: writing

drawing with crayons

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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: Natural History: The Very Best Of Talk Talk, Talk Talk (talktalktalktalktlkatlkatalktaltkaltkallfuck)

getting there

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I 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: The Natch'l Blues, Taj Mahal

given up

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I 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: Us Against The Crown, State Radio (me against the plug, really)

serial

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So, 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: The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, Red Hot Chili Peppers

maybe i’ll just focus on enlightenment

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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: Up To Here, The Tragically Hip (fucking seminal, man - if Gord Downie is ever outed as a rapist or racist or whatever, I will lose all faith in humanity.)

taking a break

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The knowledge that we’re about to plunged into a hellscape has made me withdraw a little.

I was hoping we were finally done with these assholes, but nope. At least another four years (and who knows how much longer because the fuck wants to do away with elections) of them.

So, I’m taking a break. I’ve got probably a month or less before I’ve got a presentable version of The Mungk (at least, that’s the target). I’m going to focus on that for now before rejoining the fight in the only way I know how.

Writing, and not being a complete piece of shit.

I mean, I’m a little turd, but maybe there’s some leftover corn in me?

Anyway, not a total piece of shit, like those guys.

Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em forever.

Target: 900 words
Written: 331 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Hepatitis Bathtub And Other Stories, NOFX
Comics: 100 Bullets 85-88
Music: Up On The Sun, Meat Puppets

i think i’d like to walk

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I 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: Unreleased: From A Basement On A Hill II, Elliott Smith

still sizeable

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Like, top of the bell curve, I imagine, for most.

Not horsecock, just average white guy.

That’s how we measure size in the internet era. In the Nineties, you would have said, Nicole Eggert pre-Baywatch, not Pamela Anderson mid-Baywatch.

And now it’s weird.

Target: 900 words
Written: 1631 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Hunter Of Worlds, C.J. Cherryh
Comics: 100 Bullets 25-28
Music: ¡UNO!, Green Day

big one today

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That’s a big one, Mazy, we always say after my granddaughter’s iconic reprimand to Mazy when they came face to face (she’s a hundred and twenty pounds – the dog, not my granddaughter).

Today was a big one for me as well, as you’ll see in my target numbers.

Someday, that will be de rigeur, but not yet.

Not yet.

Target: 900 words
Written: 4623 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Hunter Of Worlds, C.J. Cherryh
Comics: 100 Bullets 21-24
Music: Uno, Muse

nine down

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Probably hundreds to go.

How many drafts could a drafter draft if a drafter could draft drafts?

The number is endless; we writerlies are a pile of muck abouters.

Never satisfied; always restless.

This is not in keeping with the Tao.

Target: 900 words
Written: 971 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, Jules Verne
Comics: 100 Bullets 17-20
Music: The Rolling Stones Rock 'N' Roll Circus, The Stones et al