Purpose

This is kind of a weird entry.

A couple of things have happened, or I guess more I've been thinking about a few things, which have lined up with a few other things I've read lately, and I thought I might lay some of it out here.

A couple days ago, internet friend/comic writer who's stuff I rather dig on Eric M. Esquivel posted this article on Bleeding Cool. It's a really good article, as are his others for the website, and I imagine the future ones will be too, and if you're not reading it, you should be. This particular article, I don't entirely agree with everything Eric says, mostly because I think memoir is really important to literature [I studied memoir in college, after all], and I don't think any writer ever really gets away from their own hobby-horses in their work. But he brings up a lot of great, interesting points, and I've been rolling them over in my head since it was posted on Tuesday.

Today, real world friend [not any more important than an internet friend, just making the distinction so people don't think EME and I are out in Tucson, destroying mailboxes together in an El Camino with a baseball bat on weekends -- AKA, totally not dick-riding here] Glen "Mario's Closet" Brogan posted this on his blog, showing off his invitation to Gallery 1988, a real accomplishment for him, and as he points out in his post THE destination for artists who do work in the 8-bit, throwback, cartoony, pulp culture-type genre of artwork. It's a big success, sort of the proof that what he's doing is lucrative, and worthwhile, a real "your dreams can come true" moment for him. And I can't congratulate him enough for it, really. It's huge.

But again, it's made me think.

As a writer, or as someone who wants to be a writer, or as someone who writes too much about wanting to be a writer and not actually writing [I'm sure you have your own opinion on which of these I am], I think a lot about purpose, and about success. Purpose, in my mind, is why you work, why you create, why it is you do whatever it is you feel you have a calling to do. Success is doing something that cements that purpose as worthwhile to you. Purpose is why you work, success is what comes when that work has achieved something.

I mean, roughly. Keeping it strictly to the "sky is blue, grass is green" sort of stuff. And remember, I'm just talking about myself here. I don't know the blue you see is the same blue I see. You may not think it's as simple as purpose and success.

I think the definition of success is probably what people struggle with most often. What's an achievement? Being able to make money at what you do? Being able to do what you love for a living? Having your work reach the most people? Getting noticed by one particular critic? Reaching a benchmark that others in your field have reached? Working with a particular person in your field? Maybe just finishing a project.

Maybe just getting a chance to work on a project.

It's hazy. It's pretty different for just about everyone, and that's not even factoring in what other people see as your achievements, what society and your peers see as an achievement. And then there are numerous things you just can't see -- maybe you'll set a goal that's unreachable. Maybe you'll be very pragmatic with your goal, and you will reach it, but you won't really feel like you've succeeded. Then there's that fear. That you'll get to the top of your Everest, look around and say "this is it?" I would imagine there are more than a few people who have that happen who stick the gun their mouth at that point, but there are likely far more who turn around, head right back down that mountain, and find another one to climb.

I think about all this sometimes, but only in a theoretical sense. Because honestly, I'm farther away from success than I've ever been in my life. The comic I'm working on with Justin, though I'm psyched for it, is more of a practice exercise for him [re: Calamity Cash and the Town with No Name]. I don't have a regular artist to work with on hand. I've not been able to get a single film project off the ground [nor can I seemingly keep anyone interested in said projects for more than about... six months at a time]. I blog, but there are a lot more talented bloggers out there, with a lot more readers, and I know this because I link them daily [Hannah Miet, John Wiswell, Hipstercrite], and even have connections to them through social network sites like Facebook, and Twitter. The biggest creative thing I have going right now is a screenwriting contest that I won't even hear about until the end of the year.

And don't get wrong. None of this is a pity party. Some days it is, but right now, I'm just looking at the facts realistically. For a creative person, I have very little going on creatively. For a writer, I'm not writing a lot of stuff that will actively go anywhere -- I'm trying to get these freelance jobs going, and I'm working on getting back to blogging regularly. These are important, of course, but different kinds of important.

I think -- I say "I think" because I'm really not sure yet -- but I think this is in part do to a lack of purpose I've felt lately. I've wanted to write for a long time, but there was definitely a time, before high school I'd say, that I didn't really think I could do it. And I didn't really know what I wanted to write. And then, things happened, and I was exposed to a lot of new, and interesting stuff, stuff like the movie "Clerks" and the movie "Slacker" which, no offense meant to either, but made me feel like these things were things I could do. That I was capable of. And I was drawn to comics, because there's this part of me that's just been reading them so long, enjoying them for so long, that I sort of think like that -- and even when I'm writing prose, even when I'm writing a movie, I see things in my head, sort of lined up as panels. It's a part of me, it's how I think.

It sounds insane, but it just is. Even my favorite novel, the Great Gatsby, when I think of scenes from that book, I think of them as though they were illustrated by John Romita Jr.

So that's what got me going. But I feel like I lost the purpose along the way. I remember, from the moment I sat down, and said "writing is what I wanted to do" I started crafting all these characters in my head. This non-mythic mythology, with all these people based off of people I knew, or people I'd like to know, or myself, and all of them interacting with each other. In some ways, they were just vessels, to get my weird stories and my fucked-up opinions out, and in mouths other than my own. It shaped into a world that went by a lot of names, Sulk, Ever Higher, the Living Dead, White Trash Nation, Sweet Home, etc, etc, etc. And in my head, it was all very realized, and there was this strong compulsion to tell this story, and I knew the characters not just by name, but by age, and if you asked me about one of them and what they'd do on a particular holiday, I could tell you like they were someone who I went to school with, and saw every day.

I put those away at some point. I don't know if it was because so much of the early work with them was done with Sam as the illustrator, and when her and I stopped working together, it felt wrong to pursue them further, or if it was because I picked up new stories like Un-filmable, and Trendsetter, and all the little shorts I wrote. Maybe it was because so much of that early stuff I ended up refining and recycling into other ideas, which also haven't seen the light of day, really. Maybe just so much has happened in my life in the past few years that made up stories just don't have the room in my head that they once did.

I'm not sure. What I do know is, whenever I had one of those stories to tell, I felt the pull of purpose. Like "this is what I'm supposed to be doing, this is what I want to be doing." And then everything that happened, happened, and you know, suddenly I didn't have the house anymore, and my family was a mess, and I wasn't going to be the producer on any movie, and this other thing was delayed, and my dad was dead, and everything was just -- over. Fuck purpose, just not shutting down was the order of the day. Success... success was something that happened other people, people who knew, at least partly, what success meant, who had a reason to work towards those achievements. It was all very far away, if possible at all.

And yet.

I kept writing. I don't know why. It was like writing was autopilot for me. Oh, your life's shit? You've got time, write about these Mercedes Marxists in New York City. What, it'll never get made? Who cares, you're not sleeping anyway, here's a thing about Angels falling from the sky. You don't feel remotely interested in submitting anything to be published? Fuck you, write about fictional communal tent towns anyway.

Maybe it wasn't that hostile. But you get the general idea.

But I think that's sort of where I am, that's how I feel. There's nothing I have this overwhelming urge to get done. No one story I feel I absolutely have to tell. Maybe for a while, while trying to get "Nova" to 25 pages, I got that back for a bit, for just a little while I felt like "You have to do this, because you've worked hard on this story, and you know it's worth your time, and it deserves to be made." And I took the steps I could do that, but regrettably, that put it out of my hands for the time being. So I'm back without any strong story to tell. No purpose.

It really hit me a few weekends back, when I learned a much more successful writer than I was about a year younger than me, and I finally said to myself, "You know, Randall, if you're going to talk about writing comic books, you should really suck it up, find a way to find yourself an artist, and get to it." So I dug up a lot of resources with a lot of helpful hints on how to use the internet to do that, and I will admit some of them were really not appealing [Millarworld, anyone?], but I was going to do it. I was going to make some inroads, and find someone not just to work with me, but someone who I worked well with. And as I was trying to get some stuff together, some pitches and scripts, and the like, I realized, I really didn't know what I'd want to work on if I did have an artist. Could I go back to the old stuff, was that stuff I still wanted to work on, was it even something I still considered good [not taking into account that a lot of that is not as clear in my mind as it once was, most of my notes are in numerous places thanks to my forcible move]? Could I come up with new stuff I had strong feelings on, stories I could really get behind? Because the last thing I wanted to do was start some new working relationship with an artist and only have a lukewarm project to pursue.

The honest answer was no. Even "Real Quality Comics" which was supposed to be a setup for a new story, I never cranked out a script to an issue 2. I think I could. I have outlines for four different issue #2s. But I don't have any one story I really want to tell.

I'm not sure how one goes about finding that. I think, like I said, I got close to it with "Nova," and if I just keep working, keep writing, I could find something that I got really passionate about making again. For right now, I'm settling for a different kind of purpose -- I think just trying to improve my writing, trying to improve the uses of it as a skill, that's something. Getting better, by doing more stuff, blogging more, working with editors who are going to be harder on me, even doing the copy work, which isn't creative, but helps with technical proficiency.

And that's good. It's not a driving force. It's not a purpose. I don't see it leading to a satisfying sort of success, except maybe in small, more practical ways. But I don't know that anyone says "I want to be a writer. I want to write" and looks to find success in that in a merely practical manner. Maybe I'm being short-sighted. It's possible. But not knowing what you want, or why you want it, can really set you behind.


* It's really important I stress that none of these musings come from any sort of spite, or professional jealousy, nor am I so narcissistic as to only be able to view the success that my friends find through some twisted lens that reminds me of what I haven't done. I'm proud of my friends and their art, and I'm really happy that this blog and Twitter have let me get to know some of these cool people whose work I've come to admire. Management encourages everyone to go see what they're doing instead of spending so much time listening to this author try and figure out what it is he wants to do.

Good Riddance 2009

Well, thank god that's over.

I don't have a list of resolutions for 2010. It's not really my style, I'm not really a "resolution guy," and more importantly, any sort of list I'd put together here would probably be more a list of things I want, rather than things I feel like I'd actively pursue. And honestly, I have no desire with the kind of year that's behind me to suddenly start making a lot of goals and objectives that I will be able to use next year to evaluate whether or not I succeeded or failed in 2010.

I like to think this space holds me accountable, and this is just one of those cases where I want to let myself slide.

To a better year.

I had an interesting conversation with my cousin Travis, who some may remember I've mentioned before. Travis has a plush job, a lucrative and creative hobby that might well become his new plush job, and the kind of pragmatism behind it all that I'm sure a lot of people in the family wish I had too. He's also incredibly talented as a producer [re: music], which I encourage everyone to go check out at his website, TCustomz.com.

Anyway, we were talking, as creative people tend to do, about being creative, and more specifically producing new work, and he asked me innocently but pointedly if I felt my work was still improving. I haven't been doing much work lately, but upon thinking about his question [and not even for very long], I felt pretty confidant in saying that yes, I had improved, and that I felt like when I was producing work, it was getting better.

Which is sort of odd for me, to pat myself on the back like that. All told, I think I've always had a relatively low opinion of my strengths -- not that I was necessarily bad at what I did, but that what I did well wasn't something to be particularly proud of. I've always thought of the strongest aspects of my writing as something of a parlor trick, especially since throughout college I had a great number of people say things like "the marvelous thing about Randall's writing is that he seems to do everything wrong -- but it works!" I'm glad for it, but it's also hard to not have statements like that hang a little like an albatross.

And even though lately I've been fond [well, not fond] of saying it feels like I'm just out of college again, I look back at that person I was on graduation day and feel like I've progressed from that, and that extends from my written work. How's a little more complicated.

I think I've learned that I can't force it, and expect my writing to still come out naturally. I'm not saying I've come to accept this as an absolute fact, but I do realize that it's a mountain I have to climb when starting things I'm not feeling my most passionate about, and that's been helpful to me. I will still torture myself over it, for not being able to just turn the imagination on like faucet like a lot of other writers and even some of my peers do. I'll work on it. But it wasn't a limitation I knew I had, and knowing it feels like an asset, and an improvement.

My comics have improved. I haven't done as many, of course, but looking at "Calamity Cash" and then looking at "Real Quality Comics," I think I've learned how to rope myself in a little bit, and understand that the artist is not just a tool to get what I want on the page. Justin has done great things with "Town with No Name," but it is a ridiculous and unwieldy beast of a script which I would have shortened and simplified greatly if I had a second chance. I wouldn't know how, of course, had I not undertaken it, and I think despite what I consider pretty messy scripting on my part, Justin is going to turn the final work into something amazing. So my scripting improves, but more importantly, I've realized that a project where I am a part of step 1 does not live and die with me. Despite the misfortunes of the past year, comics are something I want to keep doing, and I want to find another artist to do them with [not surprising that "Calamity Cash and the Town with No Name" has made Justin want to move on to other projects], and just looking between the Cash script and the RQC script, I feel I've progressed. I'm hoping that I can improve my output, of course, as I was never able crank out regular scripts of issues like I'd proposed I'd do, despite my copious notes.

I think if anything has helped me improve it's this blog. The most telling signs are the little things -- typos and brainos have gotten far less, and I've noticed when I sit down to do small projects, I'm finding less and less common mistakes. I feel more aware of the words I use, their meanings, and I've eased up on using antiquated terms as much, and when I do I try my best to make sure using them is a purposeful action, either reviving the word because of its actual usefulness, or because I really want to commit to "bringing it back," ridiculous though that may sound.

I've gotten better at self-policing, I guess is what I'm trying to say. I have habits, like non sequiturs and sentimentality, real Sterne-esque problems [I'm complimenting myself too much in this post], and I think I've gotten better about seeing these things. Sometimes they're okay, and sometimes they're things that I will use, but I fear too often I lean on them, or in the sake of digressions trust my judgment a bit too much, while getting lost on some side quest that I find more interesting than what I'm actually writing about. I also look at other kinds of repetition, my use of parentheticals, or my fondness for pregnant pauses, ellipses, and my ever-present "--," things I love using, and that just naturally happen while writing, that now I feel better about going back, taking out, or saying "I'm using this when I should be using this." And it's nice, to know I have these toys, or trademarks, but I don't have to use them.

I also feel really confidant about my dialogue. Dialogue fascinates me, and conversations will always be my favorite part of writing, but thanks to some kind words and some really talented people asking me for help this year, I feel good about where this skill is, and in a way feeling better about the skill is almost the same to me as feeling it has improved. And I also think, to some degree, it has improved, as in different mediums -- comics, prose, screenplays -- I've been treating it differently, using the medium to get the better result out of the conversation. This is an idea I was playing with before my dry spell, and I'm looking forward to exploring it further.

And I feel better about my prose. It hasn't progressed in any great strides, but the fact that I've felt like I can come back to it, that it feels like a medium I might be able to work in a again is a good thing, and I don't think I could have become comfortable in it if not for all the time spent writing here. I'm still tentative if I'll keep at it, but I think getting to a place where I'm thinking about it is an improvement. Always nice to open up new possibilities.

Lot of things I still suck at though, that aren't any different from that kid out of college. My endings are still awful -- as bad as my beginnings are good, I'll say, and I haven't the foggiest idea how to improve them. The closest I think I've gotten was with "Nova," which had a proper denouement, and it's ending actually came across like an ending. But I still loathe the falling action parts of movies and comics and novels, and had "Nova's" not come so naturally, I doubt it would have had any either. And that's a problem.

I remain pretty terrible at controlling the lengths of things. "Trendsetter" was supposed to be a short. "Meet Cute" was a short idea that I think can only work as a feature, which is probably why I haven't done anything with it yet. "The Familiar" remains a ten or twenty minutes short from a proper feature, and rewrite of it threatens to push it into epic, three hour territory. I've already talked about how "Town with No Name" got out of hand, and my inability to cut it short. And as much as I'll hold up things like "Real Quality Comics" as what I can do when I'm at my best, and most focused, I haven't duplicated that yet, so I may have just gotten very lucky. Oh? And "Trendsetter?" As a feature, it still remains stalled out just shy of a proper length. Following through [Re: Bourgeois Punks]. That's something too.

And I really need to get back to reading and watching more things, and different things. I've always believed you learn the best from other works, their mistakes and successes, and I've been slacking off brilliantly this past year. A lot of that has to do with mood, but on some level I feel like there's no excuse.

Lot to think about. Trying to get back to that place where all of this talk makes a difference, too.

Huh. Suddenly my arm hurts, my neck is sore, and my lips are chapped. Can't imagine why.

Hope everyone had a nice holiday.

Uncle Phranc? Mom won't let her come to Thanksgiving because of her haircut.

I've been tooling with "Bourgeois Punk" this week and not really getting anywhere with it. I couldn't really keep it going after the first twenty or so pages of screenplay, so I thought I might try it in some other mediums. Found some success doing it as a comic -- jumping from scene to scene, and leaving out a lot of annoying exposition is satisfying, and I never really felt like I was writing anything just because I had to. Something's not quite clicking though, and I might take another run at it as straightforward prose.

The only thing I'm really worried about there is losing some of the more cinematic elements that cropped up in just the few pages I've written, a common trade-off for the added character perspective that a more novelistic approach provides. I don't want to let any of that go, but [in theory], there's something very appealing about using that medium to better convey the almost casual contempt my protagonist has for the world he's in. Which isn't exactly difficult to add, as a great deal of my revision time is spent taking out the judgmental prickishness that sometimes shines through when I'm writing about my characters or the world they inhabit.

In the context of film, this is a big no-no. If someone has a vague sense of douchebaggery about them, you don't just write that in the script -- you show them acting like a dick, treating people badly, doing the things that make me, as the author, look down on them, in such a way that the audience also get that. The simple term is "showing, not telling," letting the audience figure out for themselves that this character is a bad guy/girl, and not have them think that just because that's what the author thinks.

Perfectly valid. And while I'd never say that "showing, not telling" wasn't a great rule to have when writing a short story or a comic book, what's sort of appealing about those types of writing is that, in their own way, you get to show and tell, and if I want to have some of that contemptuousness shine through, I can. Certainly not always, and certainly not if the subject matter doesn't call for it [it probably says a lot about me that I can't think of an example of something that doesn't deserve a little contempt], but in the case of "Bourgeois Punk," which deals with a bunch of Mercedes Marxists and country club socialists, I think my natural inclination to go a bit negative could add a little flare to a relatively quiet protagonist.

The funny thing about this negative bit -- while I knew I was never Mary-Fucking-Sunshine, I never thought that it came through as bad as it did, until early on in a Steven Bach screenwriting class, when he went through my short page after page and asked me why I was being so hard on my characters. Hilariously, I never noticed I was being so judgmental about the characters I was writing, and even more hilariously [and one of the reasons I feel fortunate to have had Steven Bach as a teacher], Steven didn't discourage this habit, but instead, suggested I point it, and again, let the audience come to the same conclusion I had about the characters in the story. And though he didn't suggest this, I sort of decided right then and there that if I couldn't convey my contempt in a manner that was at least clever and useful, that I was going to do my best to take it out of the narrative.

I guess I'm hoping this is the door to key I keep trying.

I'm also mulling over doing some more shorts pieces. The few I did after Dad died were worthwhile, and I'm pretty sure I only stopped after things got so intense with getting "Nova" just perfect. I'd like to do some in the vein of what I used to write so often, just two or three characters on the screen, having conversations in front of a straight-shot stationary camera, "Clerks"-style. Kyle mentioned that if I did more of these, we might be able to take a weekend here or there to film them, and I think that would be beneficial, if not a lot of fun.

Of course, I just decided I'd like to get back to these, and even though it's only been a week or two since I got the idea in my head, my lack of progress is already annoying me. It's really hard to get any sort of rhythm going in my head, and worse yet, a lot of the deep talk disguised as guy talk or small talk just isn't coming to me like it used to. I'm going to sit down with a few indie films in the next couple of days, and maybe dig through some of my older notes, to see if something doesn't shake loose in the process.

Anything in that vein I finish [using the word loosely] I'll probably post here.

Haven't been sleeping terribly well again [shocker]. Upside is I've actually been getting some rest, though it's mostly been in the evening hours. I've seen more mornings than I have in a while, and frankly, I don't see what all the fuss is about.

I bought a vintage winter coat today on eBay. I think the biggest shocker to most people will be that it's not black. Sort of a rockabilly look to it, and apparently came from someone's estate sale. I've gotten one from a dumpster, and one from the military -- I guess it's way past time that I add a dead man's coat to that list.

Thanksgiving's almost here. Last year I got pretty maudlin about spending it on my own [and hey, I still could], but thinking realistically about how tenuous family has been, right now I'm pretty okay with the idea of an underwhelming dinner at some restaurant with my grandmother and her friends. It's not glamorous, but as tenuous as my family situations is, and uncertain as where I'm going to end up, it seems... pragmatic to get used to the idea of being alone on these family-type holidays.

I don't know. I have so much to say on this subject, and several related ones, but this probably isn't the place to air these grievances. Not that it's ever stopped me before, but it is this time.

Fun side-effect to having this place -- I'm starting to feel accountable.

Found wanting.

Last night I did the first twenty pages of "Bourgeois Punks," before stumbling about where to take the story after I'd already had a coke party and a funeral [the first I put in with great trepidation, especially having read John's recollection of workshop writing at Bennington]. I don't really know if I'm going to follow up with it, as while I already have a strong Act 3 in mind, I really have no clue what the end of Act 1 and the beginning of Act 2 is supposed to look like. I only mention it at all because it's rare that my throw-away writing takes shape like this did -- usually what I end up with is a scene, a conversation, or an outline, but here, there's a beginning, and several scenes, and all the characters slowly hit their mark of who they're supposed to be.

Besides, at 20 pages of a screenplay, it's hard to not start thinking about the math. If it only tops out at 90, then it's entirely plausible that a first draft could be done in around five days. Of course, in this case, that would rely on some flashes of brilliance and inspiration to get me through the next thirty or so until the things start happening that I know I want to have happen, but still. People have been telling me more and more lately not to toss so much out, and though I've always felt my process has worked very well with me, it's hard not to argue with folks who've managed to put together a slightly more robust body of work than I have.

The story for BP is nothing special. Pretty much a straight romance with hipsters, something I keep toying with but putting away as soon as it starts to resemble anything. Ending takes a different turn than what I think most people would expect with the genre, so there's that as a saving grace, along with a denouement I think I could actually sit through if I were watching it. There are a lot of characters [in this first twenty I just barely squeeze in nine], and the pacing is sort of wonky, and would probably have to be reworked heavily if I ever wanted to do anything with this. Not strange for me is knowing where I want to go, but not being very sure as to how to get there, and I think I might have just kept writing tonight if not for the fact that I had no idea what the next scene should be.

This morning, I've been thinking about "Un-filmable" -- specifically, if I'm any closer to getting it made than I was when I finished it over a year ago. The funny thing is, it doesn't seem like such an impossibility now, as it has in the past. Pragmatically speaking, and working from the numbers Kyle and I were using on "Nova," I think it could probably be finished in two-and-a-half weeks for somewhere in the area of 25,000-35,000 dollars. Not that I'm anywhere near being able to get that kind of money, but still, with the few connections I have, if funds were to materialize, I think I could do it easily.

So much is about money, of course. And I'd probably have to take the rain scene out. At least the exterior one.

It's good to get writing done, as I actually hadn't done much of anything since making my Halloween post. Three days isn't really a dry spell, especially for me, but for some reason it felt like one. Not getting any feedback on it was kind of a bummer, but let's face it -- not that many people read this blog, and sometimes replying to comments slips my mind, which I doubt encourages people to do make any.

I'm going to try and do a "PsyOps" outline in the next couple of days. I was looking at how many notes I put together in that one period of time when things were just really flying onto the page, and realized if I ordered these things a bit, I might actually have the story I've been looking for. Not sure yet, though.

In an interesting aside, Julia and Zoe both have blogs up about some of their influences. Both good, interesting reads, especially for my interests. Speaking of my interests, the Lucid Despair blog also has an entry up on "Heart Throb Comics," that though tongue-in-cheek was just fascinating to me, especially considering the "Real Quality Comics" script I did recently.

All for now. It's been nice to write a little, but the past 12 hours or so have been rough.