Category: writing

second draft

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Hey, chipper self.

I don’t know if it was waking up to find out the Leafs actually won in OT and live to play another day, or finishing the second draft of The Mungk, but I feel marginally better today.

The deck is shuffled, time to re-deal.

My body is still “depressed”, but I’m going to fight the cognitive dissonance of a body and mind telling me I should snuff it and focus on focus.

Get things done. Try new things. Use the mind. Let things go. It’s good for the soul.

Move, maybe a little. Enjoy my cats and dogs.

Are you buying this? I’m certainly trying to.

Target: 600 words
Written: 538 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Gate Of Ivrel, C.J. Cherryh
Comics: Monstress 47-50
Music: Vessel, Bjork

the science of trauma

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It’s the science of impact, not influence, but impact, IMPACT, something smashing into you so hard, like a monster asteroid that slams you off course, out of your steady elliptical orbit, to plummet out into space, away from your neighbours, away from the source of your light and heat, away from where you’re supposed to be, out into the endless void, where it is dark and frozen and immensely lonely and the only hope is that somehow, there’s something close enough, large enough, with enough gravity to suck you in and put you back on your axis, but the void is so big, and so empty, and there’s no guarantee you’ll be close enough to centre in your new rotation, that you’ll be in that sweet spot where life can bloom, but instead you’re cold, cold, cold, shivering without relent, or on fire, burning, bleeding, blisters bursting in poison gas…

This is the nature of trauma, and it pays to remember: there’s a hell of a lot more void than stars.

Target: 600 words
Written: 269 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: People Of The Deer, Farley Mowat
Comics: Monstress 17-20
Music: The Very Best Of The Smiths, The Smiths

and immediately, fallen on my face

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Metaphorically speaking.

It’s a Sunday. I don’t know how it got so far away from me. Being completely caught up yesterday, doing all the things I’ve wanted to, in order to get where I need to be and now, here I am; back behind again.

My face is bruised, blood spews from a cut over my eyebrow; I think my orbital bone is broken.

Metaphorically speaking.

My face swells, my brain too, inside my skull. I swirl, lurch and stagger.

The tasks are piling up.

This is the thing I didn’t want.

This is the pressure I was trying to avoid.

I don’t want to reevaluate.

I want to push through.

I want to make it all mean something.

But it means nothing, like a Wes Anderson film, without the whimsy and quirk, and Scarlett Johansson flashing her naked body.

Yeah, we watched Asteroid City, so I guess, technically, it does include that last thing.

Literally speaking.

So, it’s not all bad, I guess.

Target: 600 words
Written: 498 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: People Of The Deer, Farley Mowat
Comics: Monstress 9-12
Music: The Very Best Of Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead

catching up

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Not that I don’t love my niece’s dance recitals but they are all day affairs, so I’m somewhat happy that I didn’t end up having to go.

It’s given me time to catch up on all the things I fell behind on as this week spiraled out of control.

It seems like a great deal is spiraling these days.

Drains and lives, swirling, sinking, disappearing into the void.

Target: 600 words
Written: 1383 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks (the man can be tedious and expositional, but he knows how to write an ending and a battle)
Comics: Monstress 5-8
Music: The Very Best Of Echo & The Bunnymen: More Songs To Learn & Sing, by (holy shit) Echo & The Bunnymen

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: Veni Vidi Vicious, The Hives (as wake-up music goes, none better. I think Hate To Say I Told You So would be my entrance them if I were a professional wrestler)

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: The Velvet Underground & Nico, The Velvet Underground (& Nico)

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: The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground (my pretense is better than your pretense)

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: Vans Presents: The General Strike EP, Anti-Flag

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: Vanishing Point, Mudhoney

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: The Vanilla Tapes, The Clash