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

2014 – A Reckoning … of Books Read

This year I decided to track my reading, to look for patterns and to work toward broadening my horizons – specifically, to that final point, I wanted to read more non-fiction and to read more books written by women, and I think I achieved that.

Overall, I read 38 books this year – 12 novels, 13 works of non-fiction, and (if you’re doing the math at home) 13 books that fell under the “Other” category, which includes plays, books of poetry, short story collections, novellas, and anything else that did not fall neatly under the Novel and Non-fiction ones.  To be honest, I am surprised at how well it spread out.  I did not go into this trying to be so even, in the spread across these categories.  Must be my weird, subconscious “math-wired” brain at work. 

Anyway.  The novels were split evenly between male and female authors, with two of the best I read this year from women – Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, which defines lustrous prose for me, and Save Yourself by Kelly Braffet, which was a riveting, genuine, powerful coming of age story, something I am not attracted to, as a sub-genre.  Really powerful stuff.  Other notables would be my first Elmore Leonard novel, Road Dogs, Toni Morrison’s latest, Home, Country Hardball, by Steve Weddle, which is an amazing crime novel-as-collection-of-short-stories, and This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz, who is one of my favorite contemporary authors whose turns of phrase are beautiful and poetic and moving, all at once.  Great stuff.

Some of the notable non-fiction I read this year included Difficult Men, which looks at the shift in television brought about by HBO, FX, and similar cable stations, led by a vanguard of distinct and strong-willed showrunners like David Chase, David Milch, David Simon, and David (actually, Vince) Gilligan.  I also read Julius Caesar: the Life & Times of the People’s Dictator, which was interesting and allowed for a better understanding of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, when I read that directly after, and The New Middle East by Paul Danahar, which sheds light on what has actually been going on in the middle east from the BBC’s primary correspondent there the past few years, and Rez Life by David Treuer, which gives voice to the pain and injustices Native Americans have been forced to deal with ever since Europeans arrived here, centuries past.  It is a harrowing, disturbing, heartbreaking book, but one that everyone American should read (though I doubt half of those would take away any life lessons from it; yes, the half who thinks Fox News is actually news). 

I only got four of Shakespeare’s plays read this year – Julius Caesar, Antony & Cleopatra, Hamlet, and Macbeth – but they were a joy to read.  Looking forward to more Shakespeare in 2015, which is always inspirational, to me.  I also read four books from Harlan Ellison, my favorite author, including a collection of short stories, a collection of his teleplays (Brain Movies III), a re-read of Mefisto in Onyx, the novella that was my introduction to Ellison, and his first collection of essays on television from the 70s, The Glass Teat.  I’ve read a healthy number of his books, but I look forward to whittling away at the stack even more, in the coming year.  And I also read two Cormac McCarthy books, neither one of them novels – The Stonemason, a brilliant play that included some of the most insightful and brilliant prose I read this year, and his screenplay for The Counselor, which was interesting if a bit of a let-down.  This one felt more like an exercise in extremes rather than a desire to craft something of significance.  That said, the disappointment in the plot did not take away from the brilliance of the man’s prose and.  McCarthy is a singular talent.  Can’t wait to read more of his work.

And that’s that.  Hoping next year to expand the number of books I read, but that may be tough.  Because I need time for my family and time to write. 

-chris