WHAT IT IS: week ending September 12 (the "get back on the horse" edition)

It's been a long time since I've written one of these. For almost three-and-a-half months, during this COVID pandemic, I haven't done any writing. This week was my time to try and get back to doing what I do in my spare time, write. (though, to be more precise, it's not that I utilize my spare time to write as much as I carve out writing time from my daily schedule . . . it's work, and you need to make sure to do it, or you won't. Pretty simple) 

So, this is day 6 of my return to the writing habit. Let's go.

VISUAL MEDIA --

My wife and I finally watched the Downton Abbey film, from a couple of years back. Having enjoyed the original series, this was a must-see, and it was like coming home again to see some old friends. The story revolves around the fact that King George V is going to pay a visit to Downton Abbey, during a tour through his kingdom. This puts everyone on high alert, in order to get the house in order for such a Royal visit. 

It's interesting to see how Julian Fellowes moves characters around, so that they can all get their moment in the spotlight. Managing to craft a narrative that allows for so many characters to stand out, in only a 2-hour film, is commendable. That said, there were many instances where I was thinking about how quickly things progressed in a certain storyline -- for example, Tom Branson's budding affection for Lucy Smith. It felt, to me, that this could have been better done as a seventh season of the series. Allowing things to progress more slowly would certainly have added to the emotional resonance and satisfaction of watching these characters "living their lives" once more. But, when watching a film, one should be cognizant of the inherent constraints of the medium. 

In the end, as is to be expected, everything turned out for the best, for all at Downton, and Lady Crawley, as is her wont, had all the best lines. She, most assuredly, had to have been the character Fellowes look forward to writing the most. 


WRITTEN MATERIAL --

Ducks, Newburyport was recommended to me by a friend, Johanna Barrett, who runs the bookstore in Castine, Maine. So, I picked it up, and upon completing Alan Moore's gargantuan tome, Jerusalem (clocking in at 1256 pages), I moved onto Lucy Ellman's latest novel, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize and only runs to 988 pages (minus glossary). 

This book is amazing, propelling me along with every page. Thus far, at 200 pages in, it's a day-in-the-life story, but taken to an extreme I've not experienced before, in that it is a rolling internal monologue of the main character. Mother of four, living in Ohio, an adjunct professor at a local college who also has a pie business, she is an overly anxious woman whose life has been overcome by hardship, in the form of her mother's death, her failed earlier relationship, and her own battle with cancer. 

The book is primarily a single sentence, wherein the narrator rolls through the needs of the day, the past experiences that have shaped her, along with non-sequiturs and random strings of words that often take on a poetic feel, with their connective tissue often being a rhyming scheme or an aural similarity. It's a brilliant bit of writing, to my mind, in that the continuous stream of consciousness manner of the narration, coupled with Ellman's facility with words, pushes you along its narrative thread, while also feeling very much like the way that my brain will often be working, jumping from idea to idea, shifting mid-sentence, and making connections that nobody else would readily make. It's a propulsive book that also feels familiar, and I'm anxious to continue on with it. 

INSPIRATION(s) --

Tom Taylor (not the DC comics guy). 

I discovered Taylor when I started listening to the great podcast, Indiana Jones Minute, which examines each Indy film, one minute at a time, which he co-hosts with two of his friends. It's great fun, and through listening I discovered that Taylor was a writer and had self-published a YA novel, In Memory of Todd Woods. I bought it and read it, and it was pretty good. I was really impressed with the characterizations in the book. Taylor managed to make them feel genuine, and there was nobody who was fully good or fully an asshole. It was terribly impressive. 

So, when I heard he was starting a patreon, I jumped on. The promise Taylor has put forth is to share a new short story every month, at the $5 level, and if you support him at the $10 level, he will also share a new short-short story on a postcard mailed to you. I know how challenging this can be, and so far he's hit the mark. I applaud Taylor for challenging himself in this way, and I look forward to seeing what he has coming next -- one of those things being his second novel, The Nearly-Useless Powers League. Judging by the initial chapter he shared in his patreon, it should be a lot of fun.

MUSIC TO WRITE BY --

Getting back to writing means getting back to music without words. How I love my soundtracks -- and my jazz and flamenco and classical playlists. John Wick, chapters 1-3, have been playing loudly when I've been writing this week. The heavy bass and dance music vibe adrenalizes my fingers as they play across the keyboard. It's energetic and exciting and just what I needed to get me back into the habit. 

ON WRITING --



Filed under:  Taking too literally the old saw of "write what you know." 

All of my writing, this week, has been in public, with six blogposts (this one being number 6; THE PRISONER!) Two of those involved making writing a habit, and why that's important. (very meta) 

The first was: ON WRITING: The Habit's the Thing.

The second:  ON WRITING: Why the Habit?

Basically -- and obviously, though it took me years to get to this point -- without making a daily habit of writing, the work won't get done, and you won't begin to recognize problems with your writing. Only through doing it, living with it, working on it will you ever get to a point where your writing will be ready for primetime. 

-chris

What It Is – week ending 22 March [2015]

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

WRITING:

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

Passed 100,000 words on draft one of the novel this week.  At this point, I can see the end fairly clearly.  I figure I might top out at around 120,000 words, which would be good.  I’d definitely be able to revise that down to under 100K, which is the point where most first novels come in.  Over that, and odds go down precipitously that they even get read – odds that are already pretty damn slim, at best. 

Oni Press will be opening up to submissions  from all in May, at Emerald City Comic Convention, as well as online.  I’ve got a pitch that’s been sitting on the hard drive for a little while now.  Time to work that into something worthwhile.  I’ll plan on the month of April for that, to make it really sharp, and then we’ll see what we see.

READING:

Finished up Bill McKibben’s Oil and Honey this week, the story of how he went from environmental advocate to environmental activist, with the advent of the Keystone XL pipeline debate.  McKibben interweaves that fight, centered around Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, with the work of a good friend of his in Vermont, Kirk Webster, who has managed to rediscover, on his own, how to sustainably raise bees in the wilds of Vermont without the use of chemicals or other “modern” techniques, such as wintering them in California or Florida or some similarly warmer clime.  It’s intriguing and depressing, at the same time, as the reality of climate change and what is happening to the planet colors the entire narrative.  Worth reading. 

Also completed the Grendel cycle, in comic form, this week, with Grendel: War Child and Grendel: Devil Quest.  Again, Wagner chose a new approach to the storytelling with each of these, in order to enhance the main narrative.  With War Child, he and artist Patrick McEown offer a sharp, quick story that, though it runs ten chapters, may be the quickest read of any Grendel tale.  It’s a flight narrative, as the heir to Orion Assante, the Grendel-Khan, is taken from his home by a Grendel warrior programmed to protect Jupiter Assante.  From there, Jupiter’s mother, and then her aide, work to get him back.  Through it all, readers get to see parts of the devastated world not seen before, which includes zombies and pirates.  It is told thorugh action, with many of the panels silent, and it moves quickly from place to place and scene to scene, ramping up the tension, while it hurtles toward its climax. 

In Devil Quest, it is farther on in the future, with the latest Assante a worthless leader.  But factions within the bureaucracy, and outside it, wish to find the Grendel-prime, the one who took the original Jupiter Assante in the last story, and utilize that as a symbol of their rightful claim to rulership.  It, again, is a fast-paced story, told in 8-page chapter, fully painted by Wagner.  It’s another interesting chapter in the story of Grendel, revealing a series of different perspectives, as a different, new character takes center stage in each chapter, and it all comes together in the end, once you’re able to ponder the entire narrative, as a whole.  It’s a nice capper to the comics.  Though I still have the novel, Past Prime, written by Greg Rucka, as well as some remaining Hunter Rose tales, and the Batman/Grendel crossovers.  Looking forward to those. 

WATCHING:

Finished season 2 of Downton Abbey.  The characters continue to be fleshed out, with new facets revealed that surprise and engage.  The family, and their servants, have come through the first World War, and they are all changed from that tumultuous time.  While some characters discover untapped worth within themselves, others are bowed down by indiscretion, disease, injuries from battle, and poor choices.  It’s fascinating to see how Julian Fellowes – I am fairly certain he wrote all the episodes for this season – juggles the multiple narratives, and to see how he manages to tease out the romantic tension between two of the leads, Matthew and Mary.  Engaging and frustrating all at once (when will Mary throw over the cad, Sir Richard?!?)

Feeling a bit nostalgic this week, I watched a couple of sports documentaries:  Stop at Nothing: the Lance Armstrong Story and 30 for 30: Requiem for the Big East.  If you are at all familiar with the Lance Armstrong story, you may have been disappointed in him, may have thought he was wrong to have used drugs to win those seven Tours de France, may even feel some ill will toward him.  After watching this, you would realize he’s a reprehensible human, whose ego and need to win blinded him to anything else, and who, as one lawyer puts it, is very probably a clinical sociopath, with the manner in which he continued to not only lie about his transgressions, but actively work to discredit and ruin the lives of those who spoke against him, including those he once called friends. 

And if you grew up in the 80s, like me, and were a fan of college basketball, like me, then you know about Big East basketball.  It was king.  The 30 for 30 documentary was intriguing.  It delved into the beginnings of the league, which started in 1979, its ties to ESPN, which began around the same time, and the way in which the meteoric rise of both intertwined one with the other.  Syracuse, Villanova, St. John’s, and Georgetown; Ed Pinckney, Chris Mullin, “Pearl” Washington, and Patrick Ewing.  This was a great league, with big names on the floor and big names coaching.  And just as quickly as it rose to prominence, it eventually succumbed to the reality that, for all the wonder of “March Madness,” football is what drives revenues in college sports.  And the Big East couldn’t survive that. 

SIGN OFF:

As always, check out my friends – Brad & Matt  and Don McMillan, as well as Dan’s foray into podcastdom, the Potato League Podcast, for their own weekly recaps on things comic-y and geeky, and we'll see what's what in seven.  

-chris

What It Is – (beware) The Ides of March edition [2015]

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

WRITING:

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

A week ago I took my second day off from writing for the year.  Since then, I’ve plugged away at the novel, which, though it progresses, is wandering through the weeds.  I can see the end approaching, but the space between where I’m at now and where I need to end up is murky.  I know some very specific things that need to happen, but I haven’t got the connecting threads mapped out, instead discovering them each day, as I complete one scene and start to conjure the next.  It’s been a challenge and a bit scary, but there have also been exciting revelations and inspirations, while I have also picked up a thread I’d dropped off earlier in the manuscript believing I would not come back to it.  But this thread represents a fairly heavy emotional moment that is coming right up.  I’m anxious to write the scene, but feeling a bit of trepidation too, worried I won’t be able to fully evince what I’m aiming for.  At least I’ll have a chance to fix it in revisions this fall. 

READING:

Read Shakespeare’s ­Comedy of Errors this week, and it was great.  Not as dense or layered as his dramas, obviously, but I really enjoyed the word play utilized by Shakespeare, and the manner in which he drove the farce forward.  Nothing invigorates me more than reading one of his plays, and this one – upon my first reading – did not disappoint.

Also read Grendel: Devil’s Reign by Matt Wagner and Tim Sale.  I continue to be impressed with the way Matt Wagner would continually change up the storytelling approach for every new storyline.  With this, continuing the story of Orion Assante five-hundred years in the future, Wagner returns to a familiar approach – thick blocks of text, taken from a “history text” of the time – and infuses it with traditional comic panels (rather than the highly-illustrative and design heavy images from his initial foray, Devil by the Deed) to create a hybridized approach.  But this text-heavy narrative is only have of a chapter, with each one filled out by a more traditional comic book approach that showcases a different, but parallel, storyline that eventually intertwines with the main narrative upon the completion of this story.  It’s impressive and admirable, how Wagner and his cohorts come to every storyline in this varied fashion. 

Something else that struck me, upon finishing this volume, is the fact that, despite being part of the Grendel narrative, this volume, like almost every other one, has very little Grendel in it.  Devil’s Reign is about the transformation of Orion Assante into the first Grendel-Khan, a name he does not officially take upon himself until the final chapter.  Similarly, in the previous God and the Devil storyline, Grendel, in the guise of Eppy Thatcher, was always hanging above the story, but his time “on-screen” was minimal at best, even if his scenes were dramatic and important to the overall narrative.  [damn, I love the word narrative]  It’s an impressive feat, and something worthy of further examination, but that will have to wait for another time. 

WATCHING:

Started season two of Downton Abbey.  The writing – even if it does slip into the overly melodramatic, and can be too on the nose, at times – is still impressive.  With the first couple episodes, they have managed to imbue the two most reprehensible characters with some humanity, which is disconcerting because I enjoyed hating them.  It’s rather impressive the ease with which this was done – and I do understand that, though it may look easy on-screen, it was certainly not easy in the writing room.  Definitely want to try and take some lessons away from this aspect of the show. 

Also finished up my Tarantino (re)-watch this week, with Django Unchained.  That was some kind of a great movie.  Disturbing, cathartic, and bloody – three words that I think sum up much of Tarantino’s filmography.  Not sure what more I can say about this.  Tarantino just seems to be getting better.  I’m anxious to see Hateful Eight, and am curious if he will be using chapter headings again.    

 

MISCELLANY:

This week I finished up my reminiscence/examination of my affection for the Flash, from DC comics.  The Scarlet Speedster has always been my favorite hero.  I don’t know if I managed to explicate why that it and where it orginated – my aim with the five pieces – but I had fun doing it, and I hope you find something to enjoy.  They can be found at:

Part 1: Introduction 

Part 2: Barry Allen 

Part 3: Carmine Infantino 

Part 3.5: the Rogues 

Part 4: Wally West 

SIGN OFF:

As always, check out my friends – Brad& Matt and Don McMillan, as well as Dan’s foray into podcastdom, the Potato League Podcast, for their own weekly recaps on things comic-y and geeky, and we'll see what's what in seven.  

-chris