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

What It Is – week ending 11 January [2015]

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

WRITING:

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

2015 has started off well.  I haven’t missed a day of writing – though I have missed my 1K word goal a couple of times – and I’m just about to jump back into the novel, with part two set ten years after the opening section.  I’m really excited about this.  It’s an expansion of a short story, “Call of the Sea,” that’s been bubbling in my head for six or seven years now.  Hoping to complete draft one by the end of March.  Then, I’ll let it rest and begin revising in the final quarter of the year. 

I also completed the first draft of a new science fiction short story and mapped out the next one – though this new idea will need some serious “pre-work” (lots of thinking and reworking scenes and ideas) before I dive into the writing.   The idea is solid, but it needs a really deft hand to bring it to fruition.  Once I’ve got it outlined, and if I can do it justice, I think it could be a special story. 

Also shared a couple of writing posts, here on W27, this past week.  One on the magic of the idea in your head and how that rarely translates to the page.  And another on how I got a short storypublished in Needle: a magazine of noir (available now!) – hint: it involved writing and rewriting and rewriting and…a little more rewriting.  The lesson that should, hopefully, be taken from these two pieces is one I have harped upon myriad times at this site – if you want to be a writer, you need to write.

READING:

Started read THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir, on Dan’s recommendation, and it’s so damn good.  The near future (it feels like it anyway) and a manned mission to Mars that has gone terribly wrong – one of the crew is impaled while the rest escape a terrifying windstorm threatening to strand them on the red planet.  The one problem:  the crew member believed to be impaled and dead on the Martian surface is alive and now stranded on the dusty planet for the next four years, with only enough food to last him roughly 400 days (or just over one year) and no way to contact Earth, since the windstorm destroyed the communication array set up for their home base.  From there, the astronaut, Mark Watney, must use his brains, and the limited resources at his disposal, to figure out a way to survive those other 300 days, or else die a slow death over 34 million miles away from home.  Riveting stuff.

Finished up Gotham Central by Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, Michael Lark, et al.  What a great series.  The relationships between the characters, the inventiveness of the crimes and how they related to the Batman’s rogues, and the fantastic cartooning, among all the other great aspects of this series, add up to something special.  If you’re a comic fan, a Batman fan, a crime fiction fan, or just someone who enjoys well written characters, you should check this series out.  For my money, the character arc of Renee Montoya is both beautiful (especially her relationships with Daria, her lover, and Cris, her partner) and heartbreaking – simply wonderful stuff. 

WATCHING:

Finishing up season one of The Americans.  I was excited about this series when I started, but I’ve quickly found that excitement waning.  There are two issues here, for me.  One is that the writers don’t seem willing – in the first season, at least – to commit, one way or the other, on the marriage of the main characters, Russian spies masking as Americans, for those unaware of the series premise.  They flip and flop back and forth from wanting to make their arranged marriage work to being angered with one another and treating it as the disguise it was always meant to be to coming back together in some idyllic approach to the relationship before falling back into a frigid, workmanlike relationship.  Second, as it has been set up, there seems to be no way for the Russian spies to lose – even when unexpected things happen and they find themselves “off-script,” the two main protagonists always end up on top, and that has diluted any dramatic tension I felt in those opening episodes.  It’s the same issue I have with House of Cards. 

MISCELLANY:

The ITMODcast had a special guest on last week (it is rare that I am timely with my podcast listening) when they interviewed David Frigerio, one of the writers of the science fiction film, The Signal.  It was a great episode and has me even more stoked to check this film out. 

SIGN OFF:

And that’s it.  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