Category: writing

improvement?

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I may have improved that dreadful third draft of Get Back Again. I hope I did. It still looks like it needs a lot of work, but hey, gotta manuscript sometime, right?

Fuck it.

I’ll be the first to admit I have no idea what I’m doing, most of the time. I’m lost, alone and largely confused.

Unskilled.

I never learned to buckle down.

I never learned to commit.

I never learned follow through.

It’s enough to make a man want to weep, but fuck it. I’m not the weeping type, except when it comes to memories of the people and animals I’ve loved that are no longer with us. I weep for the fact that they won’t ever be anything other than a memory ever again (a truism for all), and for the fact that the memory of me might not be worth the recall.

I want to make a mark, a slash across the sky, a rift in space-time that cannot be ignored, that lights up the night sky with things of wonder and beauty that no one can deny.

But instead, I’m writing about angry ghosts who can’t accept that their outmoded style of governance is on the outs.

And it’s far past time for something better.

Target: 300 words
Written: 2135 words, short story: Get Back Again

Read: Getting Things Done, David Allen
Comics: Southern Bastards 1-4 (I wish I would create atmosphere like these guys - damn well done.  You can practically smell the barbecue.)
Music: You Don't Come Close, Ramones

determined to make it better

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Or to *wink, wink* get back again to the spirit of the thing.

Bad people lamenting how they can’t go back to the way things used to be, and good people moving forward, content in improvements, however small, so long as the monster’s out of the room.

My monster is a motherfucker. We don’t get along.

And it’s rarely out of the room. The monster inside your head cannot be expunged.

Maybe exorcised?

Is depression simply demonic possession by another name? Only instead of shooting pea soup and stealing souls, it’s content with the slow crumbling of the soul it already has?

Jesus, dark. 

Target: 200 words
Written: 518 words, short story: Get Back Again

Read: The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher
Comics: Fanboys Vs. Zombies 17-20
Music: You Could Have It So Much Better, Franz Ferdinand

just bad

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I’m a bad writer. I’m re-reading the third draft of this story and it sucks. I somehow took a bad first draft, made it into a workable second draft and then fucked it all up and went too far, shitting the bed entirely in my third.

Even this story wants me to get back to where I was; and then find a way out again.

Getting lost in the light is better than never being found (so say the Hip).

After all, it’s the foundation, even if this story doesn’t necessarily reflect that. It’s better to do the thing you love and not have the world’s acknowledgement than not to do it at all.

Not quite the same thing, but close enough.

Thanks, Hip.

Target: 200 words
Written: 1168 words, short story: Get Back Again

Read: The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher
Comics: Fanboys Vs. Zombies 13-16
Music: Yield - Pearl Jam, Yo! Bum Rush The Show - Public Enemy, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots - The Flaming Lips, You Broke Me First (Single) - Tate McRae (it's been a musical kind of day)

pushing over the anger

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I’m not sure I like the violence in my writing right now. I’m a big fan of Brian K. Vaughan’s sentiment that real violence is awful, fake violence rules, but right now, the sheer vitriol in my regressive anger piece is starting to disturb me.

Perhaps I should scale it back a bit. I’m all for extreme characters, but someone so full of hate; it’s as comprehensible to me as a Trump supporter (and it’s pretty well the same thing, because I based this character on a right wing bigot).

It’s just… I don’t feel that way. I’ve never wanted to dominate anyone, let alone someone because of their gender, race or sexual preferences. Who gives a shit who someone wants to fool around with?

It’s really none of my business.

I’ve never given a shit about whether immigrants are coming to our country; I just kind of assumed they were like the rest of us and looking for something better than they had. Not exactly nefarious shit, that.

People are just people. Their relative quality and whether they deserve respect depends entirely on what they do and say and how those two things mesh and affect the world around them.

Our actions are the only things that define us; not what we say about ourselves, but what we actually do. Say you’re a pacifist while punching someone and you’re a violent thug. Say you believe in pacifism while staging a sit-in protest and it shows your commitment to your beliefs.

I don’t know. I guess we inhabit the mindset of the characters we create, at least for a little while, and like a method actor gone too far, it can be hard to shake off. I don’t like this persona; the sooner it’s over with, the better.

Target: 200 words
Written: 1609 words, short story: Get Back Again

Read: The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher
Comics: Fanboys Vs. Zombies 9-12 (leaning in hard to geek today)
Music: Yes, Virginia, The Dresden Dolls

stuff from before

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I’ve been reading a lot of stuff I’ve read before. And listening to stuff I’ve heard before.

Some of it is like a warm hug, a familiar reminder, a keyhole into a presence I once had, discovering the music all over again.

Some is it is tedious and hasn’t aged well.

Once again, I find myself thinking of a way back – to a feeling I used to have, or a way forward from a feeling I didn’t want.

Nostalgia doesn’t suit us; it can be revealing. I’m yet to be certain that’s a bad thing, or a good one.

All I know is we want what we can’t have, we want what we used to have, and we want everything else instead.

Target: 200 words
Written: 783 words, short story: Get Back Again

Read: Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach (starts well, turns into generic mystical bullshit)
Comics: Fanboys Vs. Zombies 5-8
Music: Yer Favourites, Tragically Hip (gave me my #VeryCanadianMoment as I slid around in the snow on the way to my free health care with Bobcaygeon and Nautical Disaster blasting over the speakers.  If I'd been apologizing to someone with a hockey bag and a two-four in the back, I'd have broken the Canadian stereotype meter permanently.  Before you ask, I was already wearing a toque).

ideas

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The news has been so dominated by the left/right divide for so long (at least since Clinton/Starr, but it became hyperactive and all-consuming with Trump) that it’s hard to separate any art from it.

Want to write a cutesy murder mystery? It almost feels dishonest if you don’t make the villain a right wing nut.

Cozy romance? Too innocent for a world bordering on implosion.

Sci-fi? You better make those future times corrupt as fuck.

Fantasy? Well, everyone’s awful and the only good people are those that actually care about others (and they inevitably get killed, don’t they, George R.R. Martin? Finish the series, man!)

Even a short story about a ghost stalking a woman feels like the ghost should be about a January 6 insurrectionist.

Which is where I am now. Great. Fuck you, Trump. Not everything needs to be fraught with social collapse.

Target: 200 words
Written: 358 words, short story: Get Back Again

Read: The Power Of Less, Leo Babauta
Comics: The Strange Talent Of Luther Strode 5-6, The Legend Of Luther Strode 1-2
Music: Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D, Nine Inch Nails (why must every remix album include one mix that is just complete garbage, but for some reason, goes on for 12-14 minutes?  Does the creator just start with a beat and sit staring at his setup, completely unable to decide what to do next, before going fuck it and turning in a quarter of an hour's worth of pure shit?)

one man’s war

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Is another person’s bowl of Corn Flakes he doesn’t even realize he’s eating.

I started writing Romance as a one-shot goof-off. Now, I realize it’s a one-shot goof-off as metaphor for how doing something in one person’s life can feel like fighting World War 3, while in another’s, it’s something they do by rote and forget they even did seconds later.

One man’s Everest is another man’s small puddle.

Probably why so many “nice” guys feel so entitled; the mental and emotional struggle, the days of build-up, the pining, the obsessing, the fantasies, the creation of a mythos around a particular girl that has no bearing in reality to who she is, what she’s done or what her motivations are… when it doesn’t work out, it’s devastating.

From the other side, the woman might be aware of the guy’s infatuation, she might not be. It might be an irritation to her or something that goes completely unnoticed because, you know, she has her own life and it’s not up to her to play the role of trophy for some dude. Unless she’s specifically using him for free shit or whatever, there’s no blame on the person for this (and I’ve known women like that – one in particular who knew damn well who had the hots for her and turned it to her advantage for all kinds of free stuff).

Ultimately, it’s up to the dude to reconcile fantasy and reality; to control his mind so that he doesn’t put so much stock in something that likely isn’t attainable, or at the very least, won’t be what he thought it was. The onus isn’t on the woman. Even the user, taking advantage as she was – it was the boys that had the power, really.

They just had to decide she wasn’t such a big deal, that there were other opportunities, other women, ones more likely to be interested and to be compatible. You know, someone that actually wants to be with you and treats you well, and who you want to be with and treat well in return.

They exist.

They’re just not that one.

Target: 200 words
Written: 3756 words, comic: Romance #1

Read: 5 Steps To Controlling High Blood Pressure, Mayo Clinic
Comics: Mind The Gap 13-16
Music: Quake, Nine Inch Nails (why??)

working for disappointment

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Rejection is a thing. I’m a wannabe writer and I’m not Brad Pitt or Wayne Gretzky, so naturally, rejection comes with the territory. Nobody’s beating down my doors because I’m so good at what I do or because I have a terrific eight-pack or symmetrical face.

Interlude: I’m married to a wonderful woman, so don’t take that as looking. It just means pre-wife, things weren’t so super easy. I did okay sometimes, but yeah. Nice guys finish last for good reason (and I have a lot to say about the mistaken belief that somehow the “nice guy” is getting screwed by the “asshole” – it’s a largely false narrative propagated by John Hughes that ultimately drives a level of delusion and entitlement in normal men that is absolutely toxic. Thanks, John Hughes, for inspiring incels).

Ultimately, it has nothing to do with nice or asshole, anyway. Lots of “nice” guys are actually dicks, and the “asshole” may actually be a great guy. The asshole may also be an asshole, and the nice guy may be a nice guy as well, just super insecure or shy. Like I said, false narrative.

Anyway, #rantoff. Back to writing.

Target: 100 words
Written: 182 words, comic: Romance #1

Read: Choose Yourself, James Altucher
Comics: Pretty Deadly 9-10, Pretty Deadly: The Rat 1-2
Music: Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Zephyr Song (like, 3 different single versions.  I have a problem.)