On Writing: The Space Between

Bit of a repose for me.

Part of it was wanting to give "New Hooverville" some time at the top of the page [if you haven't read it yet, I'd really appreciate it if you'd go check it out]. It took roughly a year to get to this point, and the urge was pretty strong to let it ride as the first thing people see when they come to the blog, and I even contemplated just leaving it up all week, uninterrupted from any off-topic dithering from yours truly. But I've been getting a surge in visitors as of late, mostly thanks to Kimberly Kaye being kind enough to link me in the sidebar of her blog [for the rest of you who do this, know I appreciate it from you too -- Kaye's link, though, for some reason, has been keeping me in steady referrals for the past two weeks, many of them looking like return visits -- which is rare for me], and when being looked at there is naturally a pretty strong urge to perform and produce. Which is actually what I wanted to talk a bit about.

I'm in a strange place with my writing now. "New Hooverville" is resting as 25,000 word monster which I currently have no place for, and nothing to do with. I think, ideally, I'd just like it to get out there, into the world, and have as many people see it as possible, with or without my name attached to it. As much as I don't want to get into a topic of "what the artist really meant" since, whatever you do or don't take from the piece is perfectly valid, no matter what I wanted, "Hooverville" speaks to this phenomenon I see every day with my peers, a frustration between what they want to do artistically, and the pressure they feel to join up, and act as regular person - to be a part of the "real world." And to be a bit snotty about it, I just don't think regular people necessarily feel that pressure, or at least, not in the same way -- I think so many of them look at that real world, at the nine-to-five, the long-term drudgery of things like managing taxes and health insurance, like working out weddings and starting families, and see anything other than big, welcoming arms of responsibility and adulthood.

I think the rest of us see it, more likely, as a gaping maw. Even those who have learned to work it to their favor. And "New Hooverville" is just me wondering, I guess, why there isn't a louder objection to that. Why those who look at that system, look at that one definition of what responsibility and being an adult is, and say "bullshit!" -- but even more, why in the hell, when I know so many of us feel this way, we don't band together, we don't turn that "bullshit!" into a chorus, we don't just... check out. Try it another way. Do it together. There'd be strength in that.

I don't know the answer to any of that. "New Hooverville" was me trying to get at it, and I think I did, a little bit, I think after all that time I got closer to getting a handle on those feelings -- maybe just "that" feeling -- and I think, maybe, the next thing I work on will have that in it too. "A Change is Gonna Come" certainly did. Without stretching, I think maybe even "Nova," I think even the peep show script is all approaching that same topic, that same feeling, from various angles. So yes, the next thing will almost definitely be about that, but...

I just don't know what that next thing is.

The space between projects is one of the most annoying I've ever encountered. I know writers and creative-types, artists, dancers, actors, etc. who never experience that, who never slow down, who never have less than four things going at once, who think stopping is a privilege, and privilege is bad, so they just never stop. Inspiration flows from them like a fountain, and they are the luckiest of us. They're the reason most of us feel like we aren't writers, aren't artists, aren't creatives, because certainly, if we were, we'd never stop either. No, they must be the real deal, and we must just be playing at it. Because they never come to a full stop. And we do.

My experience is limited to no success and a very short time on this earth. Thanks to the internet, a thousand and one writing tutorials are a click away, ranging from people who've accomplished even less than I have [which would mean, I guess... they're not putting on pants anymore] to those we'd consider the most accomplished, and in some cases, our heroes. The Fitzgeralds, the Didions, the Roths, the Austins, the Johnsons, the Moores. All of them have some tip, some "absolute" - about how the writing on the hardest days is usually as good as those on the easiest days, or about how nothing you produce everyday to could possibly, consistently, be good so therefore expect to write everyday and delete most of it, or about... oy vey. The list is literally endless, and I for one a becoming less and less enthralled by these hard and fast rules about why what I'm not producing is my fault, or why what I am producing isn't any good. I'm not sure [and I'm saying this in a space meant to look at and catalog the process of producing work] that how you get there really matters any longer, and that even the suggestion that there is some way to become the best, to churn out good writing, or whatever you do, is at best merely subjective.

Finishing things, too, also bothers me. There's a great discomfort once you've achieved your goal, only to realize now you're in the margin, between the panels of whatever your next move is.

All of this, ultimately, contributes to my anxiety of not working, of not having a project. And right now, I feel very much like I do not have a project, like I am between work, and that because of that, I am less of [or not] a writer, and that because I am not forcing work out of myself like juice squeezed from an orange, that I'm just playing at being a writer. That I've no business being on the field. And none of this even works the other doubts -- about writers I admire who had already found so much more success long before they reached my age, about peers who have been working just as hard, and have already seen it pay dividends.

But this is not a race. And that stuff is no kind of game to play with yourself.

This kind of talk has been going on in my head for a week or two. I can't put an exact finger on it, but I became most aware of it around six days ago, when I stopped sleeping and letting the other anxieties of life really begin to work on me. I consider myself the king of no-structure, but without the structure of one, over-arching piece to work on, I apparently go to pieces with worry that not only am I failing at this... passion, profession, compulsion I've chosen, but that because of it I don't deserve to be on the field with my peers.

And "over-arching" is the important part to that. Because honestly, I have things I'm working on, things I'm doing. There's a bit of dialogue I scribbled down last week that I have plans to polish, and post here on Friday, time and motivation willing. There are also several unfinished things, some as old as this blog [re:Trendsetter], some older [re: The Familiar], and some almost complete [re: untitled peep show script] that I have re-read recently, think I could probably still do something with.

Nothing that feels like "the project" though. Not yet.

But there are other things. Though I'm not as involved at this stage, Ander and I am working on a new comic, "VHS Generation," and just because the artist is at it with pencil doesn't mean I can necessarily put mine down on the desk [the same is true for "Calamity Cash," which Justin tells me that, even with his intense work schedule, is still coming along]. Even if I could, talking with Ander over e-mail has left me with a great deal of other possible things to work with and look through [the dude sends me illustrated updates of how the work is going -- it's heavenly], including little prompts that have unintentionally but welcomely reminded me of old characters and old ideas, along with smaller projects that were almost forgotten about have begun working their way into a mini-mythology that I'd almost forgotten about [re: "White Trash Nation"]. It's all very exciting, and it, with the day-to-day upkeep around here and the fairly steady stream of books to review, well...

I'm not at a loss for things to do. And even if I were, I tend to like my free time. Luxury though that is.

I have friends... [Not trying to convince myself, this is more about idealism. Probably.]

It is sort of strange for me to go this long without blogging. It is stranger that yesterday I didn't get my links up on Twitter.

I don't know if I ever properly described why I do that. In the sidebar there you'll notice two widgets, one that is supposed to have nothing to do with me [the blog roll], and one that is supposed to have... well, at least 1/3, maybe half of nothing to do with me -- Twitter. The blog roll does its thing without me, but because of space restrictions, and because of how many avid bloggers I like to call attention to, there's a chance you might not see what I consider the really good stuff that I've read that day, unless you use the drop down menu, and I don't think many people do. So Twitter is sort of the back-up to that, if someone publishes something on their blog at nine one morning, and by six that evening there's been twenty or thirty other blog posts, then at least you can see there, on the right side, that thing which was posted at nine, and which was particularly awesome or interesting to me.

Some people do stuff worth posting every day -- John and Sarah both come to mind. Other people post more sporadically, like Ian, Hannah, Lauren, Eric, Dave, Zoe, CheriAnn, etc, etc, etc [I am only leaving people out because if I don't stop myself I'd list you all]. The list goes on and on. Hell, Glen's following is huge, he doesn't even need my publicity, and I pimp for him on Twitter. I don't do this for thanks, or for recognition [though I have at times been paid back with linkage in kind, which I appreciate], I do it because I like these things I post, I like these people, and I want to support them. I don't have much of a soapbox here... as a matter of fact, I hardly have one at all. But if I can lift one person up, if I can post one thing with the right hash tag to get it noticed by some person who is also going to like it and pass it on, well, that means something to me. Because I think that's how it should work -- mind you, I don't think that's how it does work -- but I think that is how it should work, that those of us who are really good, should raise up the rest of us that are really good too.

And, if I'm mistaken in including myself among those talented people I raise up, that I show off, then that is okay too. Because I honestly have enough ego left in me to believe that even if what I do is not worthwhile, at least what I like is, and that what I like is in some way transcendent, worthy of getting as much attention heaped upon it as possible, even if, in my limited capacity, all I can do is tell one person.

There is also a little more to it, which I hope doesn't offend anyone. Let me start with an anecdote. In college, I tackled my first real screenplay class, my first real shot at a 120 page monster of a script, to be done in one semester. By most industry standards [at least according to our professor, Steven Bach] the idea of finishing a screenplay in 4-5 months is a little ridiculous. Doing it is, in some circles, considered super-human [others scoff]. But with ten pages a week, it was doable. It would not be perfect. But it was achievable.

I was, happily, taking this course with a dear friend, and my roommate at the time. To say me and my roommate had different ways of working would be an understatement. I would consider him, to this day, to be my studious better, someone capable of working out a schedule and following through with it, all the while keeping realistic and achievable goals along the way. Someone with, I would hazard to say, a responsible eye for his deadline. He is to be admired for this, in my mind, because it is a way to work that is, at least partially, beyond me.

Look no further than who I named this blog for to see the truth in my statement. Though I have told friends, I don't believe I ever explicitly pointed out here that calling this site "The Mojo Wire" was not just because of a wealth of hero worship for the late Doctor of Journalism, Hunter S. Thompson. I named it this because of a parallel he and I shared in the manner in which we work; it is, I guess, gonzo legend now, that "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved," Thompson's breakout piece, was only ever published because of his half-mad dash at his deadline, feeding handwritten pages through the automated telecopier machine [the "mojo wire" he dubbed it], for his editor to cobble together the masterpiece hidden within the fatalist insanity of a writer's 11th hour last gasp to produce, to achieve, to meet his deadline.

That's me. I am a procrastinator. I even take pride, at times, that my best work is done when I am far behind, or staring down the barrel of a 9 am deadline at midnight the day before. And that's how I work, how I really work, on the things that matter, on the things that mean something to me. It is not, luckily, how I handle my freelance work -- but those are paychecks, and while those are important, those are important to the client, and are handled with care for someone else. Those things that mean the most to me are dashed through in a panic. And I love them for that.

So that was the situation for me and my roommate, both with the same deadline, both with the same number of pages to produce, and both in the same room. I did my expected dicking off, at first, watching my roommate plug away at his own script and make progress I saved for babbling all nighters, where after four pages were done I'd dash out into the hall way, to the bathroom, to pace, or piss, or brush my teeth. A strange reward for very little.

But time went by, and in my mind, things got strained. I became paranoid that may was not going to work, that my roommate was ahead of me, that he would finish first, and thus, have more to tweak, to fix, to get closer to that perfection that I only know we both were chasing because I know him so very well. And in my mind, he became the enemy -- not actually, not really; there were never thoughts to burn his manuscript, to wipe his hard drive, to lead him out into the woods and ditch him, and let exposure, or some species of Vermont Grizzly get to him. Still, I began looking at my roommate, my friend, as an adversary. I pushed myself. I attempted to fit myself into his box, his schedule, his routine. I failed at it, rather miserably, and flopped back and forth between his habits and mine. And for all my fear and anxiety, for all my strange hours and failures to work like the well-oiled machine I saw him as, it all came to naught.

Two weeks before our deadline, maybe more, maybe less, I was finished. Upon announcing this, my roommate looked at me with shock. I had beat him. He still had 10, 15 pages to go.

Ladies and gentleman, your winner...

I gloated a little, like the prick I was then. Like the prick I worry I might still be. But in all honesty, I didn't feel accomplished. I didn't feel good about my "victory." I more hated myself for looking at someone I considered a friend, whose work I respected even then, as a competitor.

And as for my piece? Well, it sucked. In fairness, most people's work in that class sucked, as we were mostly first timers, with flashes of brilliance wrapped up in a rushed sense of fear as we tried to make narrative arcs function in ways that real screenwriters sometimes took years to work out. But that wasn't the only reason I was dissatisfied with what I'd done -- I'd rushed myself even more, I'd tortured myself because I'd turned myself against my peers. Placed myself in an adversarial position where even the thought of another person's triumph cut into me, not just that they were producing, and I wasn't, but that they might be producing, that they might be succeeding, and I knew for sure that I was not.

I suppose some people would look at that as some sort of brilliance. As some sort of motivation.

But I have friends. I have one friend, a writer I respect more than... well, anyone, who produces constantly. Who strives to be published. Who does impeccable, unapproachable work. He will be called prolific one day. I have another friend who manages to do what I have not been the best at, balancing responsibility, and writing, and depression together, to make time to get it all done, or as much as he can, and have as much if not more to show for it than I do, as I stumble along trying to hold everything together. I have another with a television show, who has went the farthest, and got the most recognition of all of us.

I have more friends, some artists, who work constantly, bent over a drawing desk, seeing success for their efforts, being rewarded for not just who they know, but what they do. I have others who have seen success in fields that I would not begin to know how to penetrate, and who have left those successes behind, to find something to make them happier. I know hot-shot kids, younger than me, with my same goals, who have gone farther than I in much less time. I know brilliant bloggers, who have self-financed books, and brilliant journalists, who are going to school and know exactly what their future holds, and are happy in that knowledge [this is rarer than you might think]. And others who are just not setting themselves on paths, with dream jobs they never really dreamed about, or science classes they're not sure they're ready for but they're going to beat down anyway, with paintings or screenplays that they are just sure need finished because dammit, they're artists, and artists finish things.

My friends. My peers. Or, if I flatter myself the least, people whose work I admire. And I know it would be easy for me to be bitter. For me to gnash my teeth, and turn it all inward and say "What about me? Why not me?" It's in there. It's a part of myself I'm not proud of. It sours me, sometimes. And it doesn't even have to be about friends, or people you know. Sometimes, I wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night [when I sleep], with this voice in my head just screaming at me that "JOHN DARNIELLE HAS 17 STUDIO ALBUMS!! WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR EXCUSE?" It's enough to get you up and staring at the blinking cursor for hours.

But let me pause, and share another anecdote for a minute. About a girl I once knew, whose way of looking at the world I valued greatly. I still do. She had this thing about deformities. They freaked her out, naturally. But she could deal with it, if she could just have a minute, to look at this thing that had gone wrong, that wasn't right. And then, she could deal with it. She could acknowledge it for what it was, and say "there is nothing wrong with what is wrong with this."

I'm not saying that's what this is. I do not show off the achievements of those I love, respect, or admire just so I can have a moment where I can look at the ugly, deformed part of me that gets green-eyed and jealous and come to terms. I'm just saying it crossed my mind. For now, and for some time, or at least most of the time, I feel more like a child, who has found some treasure, and who is content to tug on skirts and hold that treasure up and say "See? This is cool," or perhaps, more maturely "I have friends. Aren't they brilliant?" And I think of this, and I think of the only bad thing I'll ever really say about my college, how were we ever going to raise each other up, when all our insecurities just made us want to cut the other guy off at the knees. It wasn't until late in my education that got up the courage to tell another writer, someone I was in a class with, how much I sincerely enjoyed the work they were doing. They looked at me with surprise. And then they smiled.

I have friends that are amazing at what they do, and that is no reason for me to look at them as adversaries, for me to try and force myself into some box that works for them, but I should really have no reason to think will work for me. It drove me crazy, trying to get just what I wanted -- and you know what? Now, when I'm honest with myself, "just what I wanted" isn't only my success, it's all of theirs too.

I'm not going to lie... I've been having trouble lately when it comes to focusing inward, which is how I come up with new ideas, or figure out how to finish old ones, or even decide what it is I want to commit to, write, or in the longer term, do. So while I will admit that this started as me trying to explain why it's so important to me to link the things on Twitter the way I do, I guess this is also thank you. To all of you.

For giving me something good on the outside. Until I get back to that place where I'm looking in.

-------

Now I'm going to get really vague for a minute. And what follows has absolutely nothing to do with what I was talking about above. I just need to get it off my chest, and this half-speak is the only way I can think to do it.

I have friends who look at the big picture, and when they see one thing wrong, they fixate on that. That is the part of this that did not work out. Why? How? There is no enjoyment for them, in the things that did work, because of that which did not. I sympathize.

I have also have friends who, lately, have reflected on what being an adult means to them. Life lessons they have now picked up in their 20s, which they believe are somehow indicative of the way life works. I, personally, think anytime something looks that much like a life lesson, it probably isn't. But in this case, I will make an exception.

Sometimes, you have to work awfully hard to get nothing done. Sometimes, just the fact that you worked hard, you did what you were supposed to -- that is the accomplishment. Sometimes there is no reward, sometimes there are just the principles of the thing, and sometimes you only break even. Sometimes, all you do is get back to regular. This is not a failure. In many things, it is achievement, it is the nature of having responsibilities.

And sometimes you have to be okay with that. But you should never be satisfied with it.

Anyway, I have a fairly full weekend coming up, and a review to do. After that, it's my plan to write no less than three letters, put my thinking cap on hard for something awesome to do for Eric's zine, and if the rumblings in my head have anything to say about it, take another crack at an old favorite of mine called "White Trash Nation."

Finishing up one project, looking at old stuff.

My nights and days have inverted again.

Sort of a strange few days. Got a deal on a new phone, slightly larger than my old one, but it's way faster, the screen is clearer, the ringer is louder, and everything loads so much quicker. Still, there were a lot of problems getting my old number transferred over, and I'm starting to see why people with steadier incomes just lock themselves into a phone plan. At least then, I guess, you have a contract you can shake at your provider and say "See? This was promised. I don't care that it's four in the fucking morning, make my phone work."

There was even one strange day where I got to sit with a phone that could not take calls. It could act as a two gigabyte mp3 player, it could take pictures, it could play PacMan... it just couldn't do any of the things you sort of expect a phone to do, like, you know, take calls. If you dwell on it long enough, the crotchety old man instinct can take over, until you're just shaking your head and thinking "Feh. Technology."

Anyway. I sent off what I think will be the final draft of copy for my current website job, which apparently I nailed pretty much on the first go. It was just a matter of making sure it was typo-free and adding a small blurb that hadn't been made available to me in the first go round, and then I shot the new content off to the client late last night, my near vampiric hours once again better serving clients by the promptness in which they find copy in their inbox the next morning.

I always thought we got this whole work hours thing wrong. Yes, I toil away after the sun goes down like some nocturnal madman, racing to get done before the sun comes up. But then for everyone who works during the daylight hours, well, they're always sure to have exactly what they need upon getting up the next morning. Trust me, I know these things, as my dad used to deliver newspapers -- the thing you need in the day, so it must be taken care of the night before -- a profession that proves that divvying up day jobs and night jobs better would solve all sorts of problems for people who work on both sides of dawn.

That, and maybe society could cater to us night owls because of it. I would kill to get pizza or Chinese takeout at four in the morning.

Other than the phone and the work, most of my week has been spent thinking about older, unfinished projects [re: Trendsetter, and The Familiar], including a comic book idea I had back in college that I'm not entirely sure why I never bothered to finish it. Two issues already written, and I just up and forgot about it, save for a bunch of notes I cannibalized back when I was trying to put together that treatment for a pilot [re: Sweet Home]. Paying work has made me not really keen on sitting down and typing at the computer, so all of this work has mostly been scribbled in the moleskin, but it feels nice to be creative again, and even in the case of the narrative problems I'm having trouble solving [Familiar in particular -- every time I think I fixed something, I find new plot holes to obsess over] I'm thinking about characters and stories that haven't been on my mind in a long time. Better writers than I probably won't think much of this, but having those names, those places, those situations on the tip of my tongue or in the back of my mind [because apparently writing is like fellatio, kids!] means that sometimes I step out of the shower or into the soup aisle and suddenly realize how to tie something together better. And its always those eureka moments that seem to get me motivated to get the most done.

Pleasant reminders I can still, occasionally, be clever.

Also got some big news concerning some friends of mine. Sort of waiting to see them in person before putting anything here about it, though. Seems more personal that way.

It's my friend Nick's birthday today, too. He's big into tumblr, and for his birthday, you should go check out his blog "Blue-Eyed Devil."

Finally, and not to bury the lead in the least, Savannah's TV show "Huge" was not renewed for a second season. There's currently a petition up to save the show, and whether you were able to watch it or not, whether you were a fan or not, I really would consider it a personal favor if you'd go, and sign. Another one of my friends [Hannah], put it best [and in an especially apt way for this blog, which has always been about writing and creativity]: just think, if you were given an opportunity to tell a story, to make something important to you, and then had your funding yanked out from under you and were unable to continue, let alone finish, the story you were trying to tell. I don't know a creative person that wouldn't be heartbreaking to, so please, sign the petition, spread the news, and just generally get the word out. Realistically, maybe this is a long shot, but with the internet we have seen cult shows saved by fan outcry before, and a show this smart, this funny, this different deserves a second chance.

Or at least some kind of gesture by us, the fans, to show those involved how much their work was appreciated.

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.

Doing it wrong.

Recently gotten sidetracked with something, when I should probably be working on the new draft of "The Familiar."

Not long ago when I... uh, mysteriously found a copy of a certain screenplay program on my new computer's hard drive, I noticed it had a few default formats for comic book scripts. "Format" has always been kind of a crazy thing when it comes to comics -- there's really no golden rule, and I've seen comic book writers do everything from long, prose-y pieces that resemble film treatments, to screenplay-like breakdowns with panels and pages delineated in the margins. When I decided I wanted to write a comic book in high school, I had even less than that to work with, and ended up using the "Dark Horse Submission Guidelines" script in tandem with a few sample pages included in the back of one of Brian Michael Bendis's collections [it's hard realizing that Bendis was just coming to prominence when I was in high school - it seems somehow too current, for how much time has passed]. It wasn't much, but it led me to the CAPS Lock heavy scripts that most of my early work's in.

In the interest of full disclosure, none of this early work/scripting was ever actually used by an artist. The closest any of it came, actually, was when a few pages were pulled for Sam in some of the early conceptual sketches on the SULK characters, most of whom were never really used in a finished book.

A lot happened in college that made me refine my format. Actually working with an artist was probably the biggest thing, as scripts suddenly became something that others had to work from as well, not just me, and making them as legible and understandable as possible became something I actively thought about while writing. I remember reading an interview with James Robinson and Tony Harris ["Starman," folks], where Robinson also talked about not being so... anal about scripting, and attempting to stick to a four-to-five panel a page scripting template, so that Harris himself had the freedom to either open things up or merge them, as he saw fit. It makes sense -- aesthetically, the writer's the #2 guy, and unless you just have an artist who needs a lot of direction, or a very specific idea for a layout idea, leaving panels and layouts to the artist isn't such a terrible thing.

I also got lucky enough to present some of my scripts in class -- and remember spending a lot of time trying to turn my first two scripts for "White Trash Nation" into something that even someone who didn't know the format, or who wasn't adept at visualization while reading, could still follow the story I was trying to tell. After, it just made sense to me that if this version was easier to read for the average person, then I should probably just write them like that all the time.

I got my hands on a lot of better examples too. Brian Wood often posts scripts of his comics online after they've been out for a bit [I still go back to his "DMZ" #1 script], and as the past few years seems to be the "Auteur" period of comics, there were a lot more collections like those Bendis books with scripts in the back. Even single issues started providing excerpts, which actually gave me examples to pick and choose from "no, not this, oh, that's brilliant, and this -- this saves me so much work now." There are certainly a lot of arguments against this "name"-driven period comics are currently in, but I have to be at least a little thankful for it, for all the resources it provided me.

Even found a lot more comics like the ones I wanted to write, too -- which was nice, to look and see what a non-action based comics look like, and be able to make comparisons to other more dialogue-driven narratives worked on a page. A lot of time was spent pouring over Jim Mahfood's second "Grrl Scouts" collection, as well as Terry Moore's "Strangers in Paradise," and it all shaped what I felt like I could and couldn't do in the medium.

And now, I toss all that out the door, because I've found a computer program that does most of the legwork for me. Well, actually I've not thrown anything out the door - but I will say that the screenwriting software made putting a script together so much easier, I'm willing to give it a test drive as far as comics are concerned.

Besides, I've had an idea.

Past couple of days I've been working on the generically named "Real Quality Comics" #1, a short, mostly introductory issue to a small Bennington/Burlington-type Vermont town, and the art school graduates/washouts who have all come to live there post-graduation. When I got started, I was just hoping for something simple, which I could plug into the program and try and get feel for whether or not it would become my preferred way of scripting from here on out.

I haven't decided that yet, but I will say -- having a computer program force me into such a rigid template has made me disregard a lot of other rules I tend to put on my writing. In a lot of ways what I'm ending up with right now is a very back-to-basics style, with me falling back more on the conversational style, and the telling-over-showing gimmick I used in some of those first comics I wrote. And not just in a mild way, I mean really taking that to the extreme, and trying to see if I can make having the least amount of action still seem interesting, by benefit of the reader just caring about the characters, and their interactions.

In some ways, I am worried it's a step back, even if, for right now, it is just one project -- and not even a project really, more back in the vein of "practice." But even as a step back, it's fun to drag some of the old toys out -- the foreboding, not entirely-explained faux pas, the awkward half-conversations, the long, rambling explanations of otherwise unfavorable or uninteresting opinions.

Sounds thrilling, doesn't it?

Anyway, that's what I've been doing the past two or three nights. I'm about half way done [I woke up this morning a little closer than that, but ditched six pages that just weren't clicking like I want them to]. My goal is to finish and post the script here by this weekend, or at least this time next week, and if I can, try and do a couple of 24 page comic scripts every few months. I'm very curious about what kind of quality I can churn out when working on an industry schedule [even if the stuff I'd like to write is not what you'd usually see produced at that rate], and if not having to self-format makes it easier, and allows me to work faster in the medium.

Plus, I figure if I write a little more about working on comics, an interested artist might pop by the blog via Google search, and maybe be interested in a collaboration. That of course is a long shot of long shots, but I figure until I come up with a better way to meet people interested in illustrating comics, this is a good first step.

We'll see.

So, just a brief intermission. I expect to get back to work on "Familiar" in about a week.