What It Is – week ending 18 January [2015]

With apologies to Dave the Thune (as well as Mike Baron & Steve Rude).

WRITING:

Every day.  1000 words.  That’s the goal.

Shifted back over to the novel.  I ended the first part toward the end of November and knew that December would be busy.  But now that we’re past the holidays, it’s time to dive back in and get this first draft done.  Initially, I planned to start adding to the manuscript on Monday, but that didn’t happen.  Typically, when I’ve completed one story and it’s time to move onto something else, it takes a few days of procrastination (possibly writing something for this site or taking a day or two off from writing) to get past that fear of the blank page – this one only happened to be on manuscript page 197 of this document, but it was still the same.  Anyway.  By Thursday, I had exhausted all other writing avenues and re-entered the world of Ledge Island, Maine.  It was tough, a fact that wasn’t surprising.  I needed jus the right sentence to lead me back inside, which involved rewriting that opening sentence at least a dozen times.  It was frustrating, but I now have three days of writing within this narrative world again, and every day it comes a little more easily.  I hope to have this draft completed by the end of March so that I can think about doing a heavy revision beginning in October.  We’ll see how things go.

That said, I still have my streak intact – 18 days into 2015, with 18 days of writing.  Feeling good about this year.  We’ll see.

As for that ancillary writing that filled the gap, prior to getting back to the novel, I polished up three pieces for the website (each needing varying degrees of polish):  a look at where I’ve had stories published, a reminiscence ten years on from the publication of the first issue of Warrior27 by Dan and me, and a special 400^th post looking at Superman’s 400th issue, from 1984, one of my all-time favorite single comics, if not my favorite.  Check ‘em out. I think you’ll like them.

READING:

Finished reading The Martian by Andy Weir this week.  Big thanks to Dan Fleming for recommending this to me.  It’s a phenomenal piece of work – a near-future look at an astronaut stranded on Mars, after the mission is bolloxed by a huge sandstorm, and how he survives a year and a half on that desolate planet, while awaiting a rescue operation that may not be successful.  The intelligence behind the scenarios and the distinctiveness of the myriad characters’ voices was impressive.  I look forward to Weir’s next offering to see if he can achieve a similar storytelling success. 

WATCHING:

Over at the ITMODcast, the guys recently offered their cinematic resolutions for 2015 – films they want to watch for the first time, in order to broaden their horizons as movie fans.  For me, I want to watch all of  Quentin Tarantino’s oeuvre (or re-watch, as the case may be) as well as Wes Anderson’s body of work (I’ve only seen Tenenbaums) and continue working through my Akira Kurosawa box set from Criterion.  To that end, I rewatched Reservoir Dogs this week and was just as impressed this time around as the first.  The way Tarantino used the camera to pull away from the grisliest of scenes to burn it more hotly into the viewers’ brains, as well as his ability to have a heist movie that never showed any of the heist but still allowed one to perfectly visualize it, is a master class not only in filmmaking but in economic filmmaking.  Great stuff.  Can’t wait to check out Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown again, and then move into new territory.  Thanks, Netflix. 

SIGN OFF:

And, as always, check out my friends – Brad & Matt and Don McMillan for their own weekly recaps on things comic-y and geeky, and we'll see what's what in seven.  

-chris