Agent of Change

So Long, ECW

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:32:00 +0000

They announced today that WWE's "ECW" is shutting down.

Thank Ghods. It was ECW in the same way that eating snow a dog had urinated on is the same as having ice cream.

So...what is this secret project I've been hinting at for a while?

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:12:00 +0000

Kray Z Comics And Stories

More about World Wide News

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:05:00 +0000

So, where was I?

Oh yeah, writing the comic strip. To be honest, it's a three part process, so if anyone is interested in that, here are the details:

1) Ideas. I keep hearing from people when I tell them I write “Oh, I have this really great idea for...” Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna be a jerk here and say that ideas are dime a dozen. I have NOTEBOOKS full of ideas. Ideas are not a problem. I have a notebook without 30 upcoming story arcs for the strip, and most of them are ones I either came up with while writing the pitch document, or after Dan agreed to draw the strip. Some are ones that showed up as consequences of stories I had fleshed out, for example, an upcoming story arc is about the station being moved from one corporate division to another...there were a couple of throw-away characters that will becoming part of the strip, and a story dealing with them came to me as I wrote their initial story. Usually, they are just “springboards” like:

-Bill O'Bradley finds out there's a blog that points out all of his errors.
-The the old movie projector starts up during a news broadcast and no one knows how to turn it off.

And so on.

2) After I let the idea sit for a while, I then come up with the story for the idea. This is usually a list of gags and story beats that have to do with the idea, anywhere from 4 -15 different strips that will spin out of it. If I come up with the punchline while doing this, I make sure to note it, otherwise it's just a breakdown of the idea and notes on what I can do with it. This is actually the hardest part for me, since I have to both think up jokes AND figure out how to the move the story forward. Since I write mostly prose, I am used to having a lot of time to set up mood, tone, and characterization, while in a strip, you have amazingly little time to do EVERYTHING. Yes, the art helps a lot, but as I look over the strips I've written so far, I keep seeing things I need to do better in terms of those things. So, I hope the strip is getting better the more I work on it.

3) This is the most time consuming part of the strip, the actual scripting. I take the ideas for each strip for part 2 and block them out on paper. I take paper, divide it into about four rows and then four columns, and write in the dialogue for each strip. This is where I see if the jokes work, and if they don't, they get pitched. After doing to the blocking, I write the strip in a Open Office document in such a way that Dan can draw it. Usually there are limited changes between the blocking and the actual scripting, but there are times I tweak the joke a bit, look for better phrasing, try to pare down the verbiage and so on, but really, once it's blocked, it's pretty much a final draft.

Bored yet?

One of the other things I take into consideration is which characters haven't I used in a while. As I write the strip, I find that may favorite character is Bill O'Bradley, and if I'm not careful, the strip could very easily become all about him in the same way that Happy Days slowly became all about Fonzie. He's a funny character, lots of fun to write, and it's incredibly easy to come up with situations and jokes for him. I also like Jack (one of the writers) a lot, because he's easy to use the snarky commentary I would throw in.

Finally (and we all cheer) I re-read the pitch recently, and in it, I said that I would be playing with the fourth wall a lot. In “Asylum” we didn't just break the fourth wall from time to time, the entire strip was ABOUT breaking the fourth wall...I mean, the artist and writer of the strip were characters IN the strip itself, and there were tons of jokes revolving around that, and we played with the characters being “actors” in the strip and the like. It was very meta, and very fun, but it wouldn't work for World Wide News. As I worked on the strip, I realized that it had to have it's own integral reality, and breaking the fourth wall would be a cheat to get an easy laugh.

Not that I'm above that, of course.

So, no fourth wall breaking, no “It's all just a comic strip” stuff, and while there will be some weird things happen, we won't acknowledge that they are “unreal”. Just cartoony. Kind of like “30 Rock” in that way.

There/ Two blog posts in three days. Not bad.

Behind the scenes at World Wide News

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:35:00 +0000

They say that if you want a big following on your blog, you need to write in it every day. As you can see from the fact that this blog has been going for a few years, and yet it has no following, I don't do that. It's not that I don't have a lot to write about, it's that it's not all on one topic. So, I get an idea for what to do with this thing, then see that I have other ideas, and eventually, I don't do anything.

So, instead of just wasting away, blogging when I get mad about something, or when I'm working on NaNoWriMo, I'm going to just blog away, sometimes it'll be comics, sometimes politics, sometimes TV shows, sometimes just thoughts, and sometimes I'll write about writing. How Meta of me.

Today, and to start the year(Yes, I know January is almost over...shush with you), I'm going to write about the comic strip I'm doing with Dan Mohr, World Wide News.

I came up with the start of the idea YEARS ago when I was working on the late, lamented “Asylum on 5th Street” strip. One of the characters worked in radio, and I had a LOT of ideas about someone working at a talk radio station that got terrible ratings, and the personalities who worked there. The artist, on the other hand, wanted more stories about herself, and since she drew the thing, it was a good idea to listen to her. So, I put the idea away, and it went onto the stack of notebooks I have by my computer.

About a year ago, when I got laid off, I figured that now was the time to start working on some of the idea floating around in those notebooks, and I worked up a pitch. It had the basic premise, and I took a couple of days to come up with the characters that I would need for the strip to work. In the past, I've usually come up with the situation, and then the characters, so it wasn't that hard for me to figure out what would be a good mix. Oddly enough, a few people have said that I must have been influenced by “Newsradio”, and I don't have the heart to tell them I haven't watched the show. Same with “Sports Night”, “Lateline” or other similar TV shows.

No, my biggest influence was “Doonesbury”.

Maybe now that I mention it, you can see it. Or not. I see the starting of Doonesbury as taking a few characters who are the core of the strip, and then as time goes on, it builds outward. World Wide News (I call it WWN) started with the 2 writers, the station manager and Bill O'Bradley (who is fast becoming my favorite character to write). Then, I figured I'd add a few more characters who could be good foils for the whole thing, and expect to add more as time goes on.

After I got the characters in my head, I figured I would structure the strip so that if the main artist wanted a break, or if I couldn't get a main artist and instead had a few people work on the strip, it would work structurally. I wrote the strip with story arcs of 5 – 10 strips about a certain situation, and then would have more topic strips inbetween. It's the same way that the current Spider-Man comic works...they have different creative teams for each story so that the book comes out three times a month but no creator has to do three comics in a single month.

Luckily, Dan, who I met through NaNoWriMo, was very excited about doing the strip, and didn't need to take breaks. At least not yet. I still have a few people who have said they want to draw their own story arcs (I'm working on one now for a new artist), but for the most part, Dan has taken the ball and run with it and I'm damn happy with the results.

Now that he's working on the last story arc from the initial pitch, I'm writing up the stuff in the notebooks that I came up with about a year ago, and since I've gotten to know the characters better, I think the upcoming stuff is MUCH better than my earliest scripts.

Once again, Sarah can't make up her mind

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:14:00 +0000

From Andrew Sullivan:

"The attack on Pearl Harbor launched America into the Second World War, and our Greatest Generation did not hesitate when asked to sacrifice for their country. American men enlisted in droves, American women went to work in the factories that became our “Arsenal of Democracy,” and many Americans gave what little money they had to buy the war bonds that funded it all" - Sarah Palin, today.

"Really? A tax on national defense? I hear liberal Congressional proposals and I, like most Americans, wonder if they’re serious. We’re going to put a price tag on security? With Congress and President Obama spending money on everything at breakneck speed, it’s interesting that they are only now getting nervous about spending – but only when it comes to providing the necessary funds to complete our mission in Afghanistan. They don’t need a new “war tax” to fund a strategy for victory in the war zone. They simply need to prioritize our money appropriately. I find it telling that the Pelosi-Reid Congress is only cost-conscious when it comes to our national defense. Scary. Nonsensical. Unacceptable." - Sarah Palin, two weeks ago.

Palin Debates Herself

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:29:00 +0000

"While I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place."
-- Sarah Palin, March 1, 2007

"Talk of an exit date risks sending the wrong message. A timetable lets our enemies believe they can wait us out."
-- Sarah Palin, March 1, 2007

So...which is it?

Nanowrimo final update

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:52:00 +0000

I got past 50,000 on Saturday night, which is a good thing, since my Sunday was completely busy (which I already knew it would be) and my Monday was as well (which I didn't know before hand).

The last 4000 or so words I wrote were pretty easy...they always are, since the end of a novel is pretty much set in stone by the time I get to it, anyway. I KNOW I'm going to have to rip this up up a bit and redo parts of it, but the actual action sequence itself had all of the groundwork laid out already, so it was just a matter of filling in the pieces. I have a bit more to write, but I'm taking a week break to get things back on track (paying bills, buying food, going to the gym, conducting the job search).

I never did get into the groove of 1667 words a day, mostly because things tend to get too crazy for me to make sure I even have computer time, let alone writing time. There were days that between my son and my roommate, I couldn't get any computer time as well as days where between the part-time job and other things, I just didn't have the mental energy to do any writing.

My writing plans for the rest of the year are to get a lot of the scripts for the webstrip done, fire up the Weekly News Update again (I know, I know, I say that a lot...) and then go back and finish up this novel. Then, next year, I'll be editing the zombie novels, the poker novel and sending them out to be rejected.

As for now, I've spent enough time staring at the screen....the two December Hard Case Crime books just showed up in the mail, and I am in the mood for some good old school crime fiction.

NaNoWriMo day...what day is it?

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 06:29:00 +0000

I am at 46276 and am calling it quits for the night. I haven't blogged a whole hell of a lot, mostly because my time has been limited for the past bunch of days. And I've used it to keep adding to the novel. By this point, the story has pretty much taken over, so any discussion of structure, using the three act system and the rest is all out the window.

I can even point to the exact PLACE the novel took a life of its own, which tends to happen when I do any noveling on a first draft. I go into it with plans, sometimes very elaborate, sometimes I just know a lot of the major set pieces and the ending...and then things happen. The characters have been rolling around in my head so much that I get to places and just write what they would do. Then, I write how they would react to the situation they are in and see where that leads me. I remember the second zombie novel I did for NaNo COMPLETELY shifted when the characters did something stupid, one got injured and another died who I wasn't planning on dying.

Normally, that would be an “oh, fine, I can work with this” moment, but it was in the beginning of the second act...so not only did it completely change the plot I had, but I had to top it for the END of the second act when “everything lays in ruins”.

So, now that I can't use it AT ALL, the mystery novel's second act was going to end with Our Hero waking up and finding out he'd pissed off the wrong guy by waking up to the news that his detective agency was raided during the night. Why? They were given information that it was an elaborate cover for laundering drug money. The next thing would be him seeing all the police coming to his front door with guns drawn. The third act would be him trying to stay a step ahead of the police while figuring out who could have done such a horrible thing and what it has to do with the drug overdose death of his old friend.

Instead...well, at the beginning of chapter six, he'd woken up tied to a bed in the house of the antagonist and is about to have some Very Bad Things done to him.

All because instead of following the thread I thought would lead me to Act Three, the character decided to go interrogate someone and stir up a hornet's next that backfired on him. And I DIDN'T PLOT THAT!! I just was writing and said, “Well, knowing what he knows, he would go talk to this person.”

And chaos ensued.

I also have to get done with the 50K tomorrow...I work on Sunday and have been invited to a bonfire that I want to attend, and then I work Monday and will probably need that day for job hunting and the like. So, tomorrow (which I have off) will be spent racing toward the 50K mark before I have to take off for the evening. The novel won't be DONE by then, and unlike other NaNo novels that I didn't get done (despite the 50K words), I'll keep writing as if it IS NaNoWriMo until it's done. So probably another week or furious writing.

In my non-noveling life, I have been working at the theater...it's basically brain dead monkey work, but today between people wanting popcorn (and then telling me they saw on the news how bad it is for them) and restocking, I wrote the next six or so strips for World Wide News (my webstrip. You ARE checking it out every Tuesday and Thursday, right? The addy is here: http://www.worldwidenews.solitairerose.com/ but you already know it, have bookmarked it and subscribed to the RSS feed. RIGHT??!!??) The structure of that is that I will write a story arc, and then there will be about 4 – 7 “current event” gag strips before the next arc starts...and Dan (the talented artist who has decided to bring the strip to life) said I need to get him those strips here soon, since the first arc is finishing up.

They came pretty easily, and I'm HOPING to get the Weekly News Update as well as my website up and running again by the end of the year, since I had a lot of fun writing news based gags.

That's enough for tonight, right?

Off to bed with me!

State of the Nanowrimo Day 16

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:35:00 +0000

26699

OK, so I am caught up. Last week wasn't a good one for writing (or blogging, to be honest). I didn't get the job I interviewed for, which put me into a funk since I thought I nailed it in the interview. The part-time job gave me hours where I couldn't really get going in the morning before I went in, and was too wiped by the time I got home. So, I didn't get much writing done, and didn't spend a lot of time thinking about the novel either.

Over the weekend, I got back on track, as I had enough time to myself to get my gears going and the words flowing. By Sunday, I was back at writing and tonight I just sat down when I got home, and after I did some internet reading to get ready, I just started in. I also spent a LOT of today thinking about the novel, and in my mind, I'm jumping ahead to the ending.

It's odd how I keep doing that, when I try to just think about the next scene I need to write, knowing that things change along the way. I have notes on what the antagonist is doing while I write about what the protagonist sees...which is the challenge of first person narration. It's good for the kind of detective fiction I like to read (and write apparently), but it limits the story to ONLY what the protagonist observes and knows.

I got to use one of the GREAT “wrasslin” stories I had heard in the novel today...back in the 80's, there was a tag team called “The Rock and Roll Express” who were LOVED by the fans. They were probably the hottest thing not connected to Hulk Hogan, and they had a LOT of imitators, including “The Midnight Rockers” or “The Rockers”, Shawn Micheals and Marty Janetty. Anyway, one of the things they would do to get the crowd to go nuts for them was when one of them was in the ring and the bad guy had them in a hold, they would pick out one person in the crowd, usually a woman, and mouth the words “help me” to them...

Which would make the crowd go crazy wanting them to get out of the hold and exact revenge.

I LOVE that story because it shows how the people who work in the business and are successful know exactly how to manipulate the audience to get the reaction they want.

And it's going to play a part in the story later when we aren't sure WHO is telling the turth, and who's being manipulative of both the main character...and the reader.

Yeah, I'm offering up some massive misdirection

So, the novel is back on track, I have tomorrow off and only work from 9 pm to Midnight on Thursday, so I can see myself being ahead in a major way by the weekend.

Still, I keep jumping to the end of the novel, and right now I feel it can go one of three ways. In all three of them, Our Hero gets to see his world collapse around him...the options are if I give him a ray of hope or not.

And how is YOUR November going?

Nanowrimo day 6 - 8

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:19:00 +0000

17020

I'm still ahead, but I didn't write Friday, and only wrote a little more than the 1667 daily goal for Saturday and Sunday. Friday was just too busy a day, what with working most of the morning and afternoon, and then getting home in time to go to the gym, eat a sandwich and no next to nothing before going to bed early for an early work day Saturday.

Saturday, I got off of work early, and it was BEAUTIFUL outside...so I did what I could to enjoy it. That's right, I stayed inside, worked on getting things off of the Tivo, went to the gym and then came home and wrote. Sunday I spent a bit more time actually WATCHING things I had on the Tivo, then took my son and roommate to see “The Men Who Stare At Goats” before getting my words in. The movie was fun for me, mostly because it WASN'T written in the three act structure that everything seems to be constructed in.

Oh, it probably was, and if I sat down with it for a while, I could probably break it down into that structure, but it wasn't SCREAMING that structure like, say, “Whip It” which is almost a primer on how to put together a three act structure.

And for those of you who don't know the three act structure, here's a quick layout of it:

Act One:

-Introduce characters and setting
-Inciting incident

This is usually shown in movies as a dad rushing around for breakfast, kissing the kids and having the wife remind him of something as he rushes out the door. Once he gets outside, SOMETHING happens. Aliens invade, the car blows up, his wife starts shooting at ninjas...and there you go, Act One is done.

Act Two:

-Complications ensue
-Adversaries are in motion
-Ends with the destruction of the plans of the protagonist

This is usually shown in movies with the hero putting together his team, finding out what they are doing, seeing how big their plan is, and then they try to take him out, nearly succeeding...this is also when the wife/buddy/cop with three days until retirement is killed to add drama.

Act Three:

-Protagonist finds the solution to his problem in the rubble of his destroyed plans.
-Protagonist makes a profound change, learns a lesson or the gun in the beginning of act one is used to kill the antagonist.

Am I following it? Yes, but that's because I'm writing genre fiction set in a setting unfamiliar to the reader. I'm also using the Noir/Crime novel storytelling style which has some tropes of their own, and while I'm not subverting them, I am hoping that I am constructing things in such a way that when they show up, they feel fresh.

Also, with the crime/detective novel, the reader is putting together a puzzle that you've constructed, so if you are doing it well, you can keep a step ahead of them in the construction of the story. It's also why character and setting are so important. You aren't writing something so brand new that you have the freshness of the concept...in fact you use the format and tropes because the rules help the reader along.

In the crime novels I've liked, a lot of the reason to read them is character, setting and what the writer can do within the genre. I LOVE the Travis McGee novels because of the characters, setting and writing. The plots are pretty much standard boilerplate, but I don't care, it's a clothesline to hang the writing and ideas on.

Personal stuff? Well, I had a job interview on Thursday that I think went well. I am back to the job hunt tomorrow morning when I wake up (was just too tired and burned out on it to do it over the weekend). I am regaining my sense of calm now that I now WHY I have been losing it over the last couple of months, and actually feel a bit better about being myself than I have in a while.

So, novel status? Still ahead of schedule, and I'm actually wondering if I can beat my previous record of reaching 50000 words in 25 days...

NaNoWriMo Day 5

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:22:00 +0000

13546

Yep, still ahead, and to be honest, I could have written a lot longer today, but decided to stop so that I could get a few things done before going to work.

I had a job interview today. I think it went well, but then don't I always? They said nice things, and asked a lot of questions, I tried to seem eager, intelligent and dutiful, so we'll see where it goes.

When I got home, I wanted to just go back to bed and get some more sleep, but instead I puttered on the internet and then firing up the word processor. I thought I'd written a lot more when I did my word count, because I'd finished up the second chapter and wrote a sequence I was quite proud of:

We stood there for a moment, not uncomfortably. We didn't need to fill the silence with a lot of words. We had known each other since she'd started coming around with Eddie, and like I said, Eddie was lucky to have found her. He was also a bastard for keeping her in the dark so long about what he did. What is it with us where we feel we need to keep things from the people in our lives? Are we scared they will see through all of our pretty bullshit and when they do, they'll quietly tell us that they were mistaken and take their leave of us? Will it confirm all of our dead of night thoughts that we're a secret fraud and we have them fooled by the dazzle, the lights, the promos and the big loud noises we make?

“I won't be gone that long again,” I said, and meant it.

I started the third chapter with a sequence that at first glance seems like it doesn't belong, but I decided to add it for two reasons:

1)I want to show my protagonist's character. WHY does he do this job? Why is he a PI? What is his motivation?
2)Why is his girlfriend part of the story? Reading the Travis McGee novels makes me really want to make the female characters in my writing seem as complex as the lead character just so they don't become the “adoring girl friend who echoes the hero” that the women in the McGee books seem to be. Now, I can tell that MacDonald is trying to make them more than that...and I've only read a few of the early books, but they really stand out to me. I also want to show more of their relationship so that it has a deeper resonance when it is peril.

Good writing day overall.

I also spent time today thinking about motivation and character. I read a column by Dennis O'Neil, former comic book editor and writer who has some really great stories under his belt as well as a few clunkers. I also have to admit that I didn't like his editorial take on Batman, and while there were good stories under his editorial tenure, it always felt like they were despite his vision of the character than because of it.

He wrote that when you create a character, you need to write out their motivations:

*What does my character always want?
*Who or what does he love?
*What is he afraid of?
*Why does he involve himself in extreme situations?

Do I sit down and write these things out when I start a novel?

No.

Let me repeat that, I do not do this sort of thing.

Partly because when I sit down to write, a lot of the characters are wholly created PEOPLE in my head, and I turn myself over to their voice. Lightning (yeah, most of the time he's referred to like that because in pro wrasslin, people call each other by their ring names, even away from the ring. His name is Dan, but the only people who call him that aren't in the wrasslin' world) has a different voice than his girlfriend Katy, who has a different voice than Mikey who brought in the case and so on. I KNOW them, same I as I know my friend Joe and how different he is from my friends Scott or Dan.

Partly because when I write a first draft, I'm letting the story take over. I've written a few times here about when I do NaNo how the story takes over and there are times I don't know what will happen next. Well, to be honest, I've been doing NaNo so long that all of my writing is like that now. I have sketched out the webstrip for the first two years, and while I are aiming for gags....there are things that I've written that have surprised me. And to me, that's the fun of writing.

For this novel, I know the plot, and I know what happened to set everything up, but how the plot is revealed and how the characters interact and interplay is all new to me.

So, now that I've written Lightning for a while I can answer those questions, even though I couldn't do it before I started:

*What does my character always want?

He wants to take care of his friends. He's gotten away from it and lost that part of him, but when you learn Professional Wrestling, you learn that your main job to make sure the other guy doesn't get hurt. You take care of your partner. This is what drives him, taking care of his partner, be it Katy, a client who is down on their luck or one of the people who used to be in the business with. THAT is why he took the case and it's why he'll keep digging until the bitter end.

*Who or what does he love?

Katy, his brothers in the business and his self image of being a good guy, which has taken a terrible beating as he works divorce cases, disability scams and the like.

*What is he afraid of?

That's he's becoming a guy who lives to win, even when winning means it ruins someone's life. He's scared of being the guy who gets the picture of the wife in a hotel with a man and forgets that now the kids will be dealing with divorced parents.

*Why does he involve himself in extreme situations?

He doesn't, but he will in this case because he was asked to by a friend. Once he's in, he can't walk away. He has to see it through to the end or he's let them down...and he's already let them down by losing touch and walking away from the business.

I'll be honest, though, I didn't know all that stuff before I started writing. I know what the characters NEED to do to move the plot forward, but I don't know WHY until I spend some time with them, listen to them talk and walk around with them in my mind.

I doubt other people write that way, but it's the only way I know how.

NaNoWriMo Day 3

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:37:00 +0000

10851

Thats right, I'm way ahead, which is good because I KNOW I won't have time to write tomorrow (work in the morning, gaming at night) and Thursday MAY be a non-writing day, as I'm playing phone tag with someone who called today to set up a job interview. So, all the positive thoughts you are willing to give, I will gladly accept.

The writing today was background on the wrestling business, a nice little scene with a character based on an internet friend (Hi Sorcha!) and adding some stuff to the earlier parts of the story that I felt needed a bit of fleshing out. I spent a lot of my “deep in thought about the novel” time dealing with motivations. I know why the main character is involved in THIS case, but I had to flesh out in my mind why he turned to being a PI after his wrestling career ended. I could just do a data dump...but being a devotee of “show don't tell”, I'm going to have him talk about it a bit, but also add a scene showing why he's passionate about the job. I've already had him talk a lot about the parts of the job he doesn't like, divorce cases, cheating spouses and the like, but I'm going to SHOW why he still does it and hope it's a strong enough scene to let the reader know.

Why?

It's a lot like when I worked at the group home. I'd come home and bitch about it, but the little successes were the reason I stayed at it. The kid who got up and went to school without us having to deal with their drama vortex because he'd finally decided to try something positive. The kid whose parents told me how they had seen a big change since being placed. That sort of thing. Much like my protagonist, I didn't talk about it much because it seems like bragging and my time in Minnesota has made it near impossible to brag about things.

I also want to work a lot of “mirror images” duality into the story. Professional Wrestling seems to me to be very closely associated with stage magic. Both are skills learned in secret, have their own wall behind which ONLY the performers go and are based upon lying to the audience. No, he doesn't REALLY saw a woman in half and no, they really don't want to beat each other up, but they make it look like they do...but I have a lot of characters who can function as “what if” scenarios for other characters, and I want to build that up as I go.

Still, 2324 words today, and I could have written longer, but decided I'd go to bed at a decent time.

NaNo status? Ahead of schedule and still excited about the novel. So there.

NaNoWriMo Day 2

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:00:00 +0000

8527.

That's right, today I wrote about 1771 words. I fiddled a bit with what I'd written so far, added a few descriptors and such, and then wrote a scene that I like a lot, even though it's a data dump. As I thought about it tonight at work, I'm going to be taking the lead character back through his wrestling career, starting with trainers, moving on to the tiny independent federations, maybe one of the bigger independents and then finally to the big show that is set up in basketball areas. I didn't know that going in, but it's pretty clear that that's the structure I need to work on for the first half of the second act.

Oh, and I'm in the second act. I feel a bit bad about it, but I've succumbed to the modern storytelling trope of starting the book at the end of the first act (right on the inciting incident) and then waiting until later in the story to fill people in more on how things all get set up. I also decided tonight that one of the characters is going to be a bit of a “mirror image” of the protagonist, almost exactly the same if only things had happened differently.

I'm also reading one of the early Travis McGee novels by John D MacDonald, and there are so many sections that just SING to me. GREAT writing that evokes such a sense of mood and place, and while it doesn't move the story forward at all, it builds the character and the world so much that I don't mind. Since it's from 1966 there are also some really embarrassing sections (the way women are written can be incredibly patronizing, and whenever there's a black character, it's usually a servant and is referred to as a Negro) that I hope fade as we get further into the 60's and 70's. They really stickout like a sore thumb because they just don't fit the rest of the writing....but then, I can read books from the 30's and 40's and accept the way minorities and women were treated because that's just how it was handled in pop fiction those days.

Too deep a subject to get into here, but suffice it to say that while I find “Ebony” embarrassing every time I read a Will Eisner “Spirit” story, it's not something that makes me dismiss the work as trash. YMMV.

Back to my adventure in writing this month.

I didn't write like a steamroller today because I had job hunting stuff to do, take care of my weekly unemployment logging, check the 10 sites I'm using for the job hunt, following up on some e-mails and feeling bad I didn't get to all of them and some housekeeping stuff. So, my writing today was interrupted more than a few times, and a couple of times I checked my word count and said, “I thought I wrote MORE than that.”

I was done with it all by noon, though, and was pretty much intellectually done for the day. I watched a documentary on LINK (yeah, I'm still ultra-liberal) played a quest in Fable and read “Pale Gray For Guilt” before going in to work where I used my spare time to think about what I'm writing and how to make it better.

Came home to an e-mail from my bestest (and by far most gorgeous) friend. She doesn't write often, so it's always a treat when she sits down and pounds out an e-mail. I'd asked if she wanted to read through the novel as I do it, and give me notes. Some of the people on Facebook have been asking about the Zombie novels, so I'm gonna be sending them out later this week for the same reason:

I want people to tell me what I'm doing wrong so that I can write as well as I would like to.

Writing is very much performed all alone, and when you don't get feedback, you think you are either brilliant (as you are writing) or worthless (two months later when you read it and all you see are the screw ups). So, I wrote back, asking for honest feedback and hoping I'll get it.

I'm liking blogging about the writing end of things. Partly because it's uppermost in my mind, and partly because blogging about my life just seems so static: I woke up, I looked for work, I went to my part time job, I came home and no one responded to my resume. This way I actually feel like I am doing something.

Finally, one job I am applying for says they only accept faxes and not email. WTF? Faxes? Do I really want to work in the early 90's?

NaNoWriMo 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:17:00 +0000

I'm doing NaNo again after a year off, and I think my novel this year is just going to be pulpy fun. I'm writing a Private Eye story where the PI used to be a professional wrestler. The inciting incident is that one of the people he used to work with comes into his office and wants him to look into the overdose death of one of the performers.

I'm already having trouble with the fact that I know so much of the terminology of the business, but need to explain it to the reader...so I have a decent gimmick that I think works, but I'll probably toss it out with the first edit. It's actually a pretty commercial plot and story so I'll be working on the edit and and “novel pitch” through December so that I can start sending it out early next year. I'm also going to spend more of my “working at the minimum wage theater job” time editing the first zombie novel, as a lot of people who have read it REALLY like it.

I tend to stumble when it comes to putting together packages to try and get my work published. I mean, I had a few short stories published in small magazines here and there through the years, but when it some to novels....well, I suck at getting them to a publisher. I'll write more about that as the month goes on, because it's r4eally weighing heavily on my mind...and while I probably have a couple of connections I could get help from, I tend to just...not.

Oh, and just so you know, self-publishing a novel is NOT one of my options. I refuse to have my prose be part of a vanity press. Weirdly, I have no problem with this being done with comics (like when the webstrip has enough strips to be formatted into a book). Maybe it's because Dave Sim made self-publishing comics seem more legitimate than going through a publisher, and maybe it's because most self-published novels are self-indulgent bullshit.

One of the people who works at the movie theater found out that I do stuff like this and said that at one of the other local theaters in the chain has a worker who had a novel published...one that gets relentlessly negative reviews on Amazon. I don't know who it is, but oddly enough, that just spurs me on to try to get published.

Oh, the novel itself? Going quite well. Already at around 6700 words, and the first chapter is done. It's a PI novel, so I can write it in first person, throw in a lot of observational stuff (like the Travis McGee novels I am plowing through at a frightening rate) and keep things hidden from the reader until they NEED to be revealed. It also makes the construction of the novel a bit harder, as I can ONLY reference what the narrator knows or observes.

I've also been writing notes for how to do some more thematic things when I go through and do the rewrite. Just the little things that I notice in the better crime novels I read...I want it to be more than just “story story story”, and get back to that mindset I was in for the first two zombie novels that ended up having a lot of cool little emotional moments that were heightened by little tricks that were almost subliminal. It's hard to describe without giving things away, but it's all in how characters relate to each other, and using some subtle things that will point to when characters are lying that won't be apparent until the three big reveals.

I'm also going to be blogging more. Partly because I want to start pushing my writing again (yeah, getting the webstrip started was a pretty big deal to me) and partly because I feel that I am keeping WAY too much of myself closed off from people.

And besides, doesn't the world need another blogger clogging up the internets?

Being blunt for a moment

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:55:00 +0000

There are a lot of mean, partisan things I could say about how the right wing (and their toadies in the media) got all bunched up about Obama telling kids to stay in school, work hard and set goals, but it's pointless.

It has nothing to do with the speech itself. Obama could have recited the pledge of allegiance and they would have run about to anyone with a microphone or camera and said i was the worst thing to befall this great country. It doesn't matter WHAT Obama does or doesn't do because it's not about actual actions.

It's about two things:

1) Undermining his authority. The same people who said speaking out against Bush was treason are leading this. They want to weaken Obama, make his supporters think that he's given up, he's caved in and all of their work is for nothing. That way, their energized base will show up at the polls and sweep them into power, just like they did in 1994. All that matters to them is personalizing the anger and making Obama the target. De-Legitimatize him and when things start to turn around (as they already have in the area of foreign affairs) he gets none of the credit, just the blame for whatever wildfires they can create on cable and radio.

2) They hate that a Negro is in the White House. Oh, no one is coming out and saying it in the media, they're smarter than that, but they weasel it in. "We don't know who he is" gets to the fear of the Black Man. If a White man had been as public as he has been over the last 8 - 10 years, NO ONE would say "We don't know who he is," but they can spread the fear of the "other." That's where the Birthers come from, going back to the old fears of a black man being from "somewhere else". It lives on in the tearful White Southerners who cry and shout "I want my country back!" when NOTHING has changed other than the color of the man in charge.

Elvis Costello once said "I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused", and while he's not exactly a paragon of racial tolerance, I agree with him on this one. I NEED to get past being disgusted and move toward being amused. History shows that this sort of bullshit withers and dies over time. Clinton beat the bastards again and again, and Obama is much smarter than Clinton was (which is no easy feat), but I see the foaming racism and those who foster and nurture it and it disgusts me.

I see it in people who don't even know they are being fed ancient fear of the dark skin and the other and the evil black man, but know that they Just Don't Like That Guy. Some are writing that this will drive moderates toward the Democratic Party and that Obama is playing chess, slowly putting everything in place for another massive win.

I don't see it.

In the long term, tolerance and progression wins, but in the short term Nixon won two terms, Reagan (who called black people "Negroes" in speeches up until he could no longer give them) won two terms by demonizing "welfare queens", and Bush won two terms by scaring the living shit out of people.

As Han Solo said: I have a bad feeling about this.

Fine. I get the message

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 05:52:00 +0000

I agree with all of the protesters. It's time for the end of socialized medicine. The old people who are scared of Government Run Health Care have convinced me.

So, we'll be ending Medicare on 8/31/2009. Oh, and VA coverage as well. Sorry soldiers, but we must protect YOU from the evils of socialized medicine.

What? You didn't realize that was socialized medicine?

Sorry, it's too late. We've all taken what you said to heart and agree with you.

Oh, you NEED medical coverage? There are plenty of private firms you can buy insurance with. How much? Last time I checked it was around $2500 a month, but it's not run by the Government, so that's what you asked for.

What do you MEAN you can't afford it? Well, sorry, but there IS catastrophic care, that might only be $500 - $700 a month for someone over 65, but hey, you can take all the money you got with the Bush tax cuts to pay for it!

You mean your taxes went UP under Bush? Oh, that's because you're not rich. But you dutifully fought for those Bush Tax Cuts and HATE Obama for raising your taxes (which he cut), so....why did you support them again?

Never mind, not important, you have month and then you are free, FREE of all of that evil Socialized Medicine. You won! Hurry for you!

Oh, I suppose you could get a JOB and hope that your employer offers health care, but to be honest, the economy's in the shitter, and people who are older, well, they just aren't as likely to get hired. They make premiums for everyone else go up, but I'm sure you'll find something.

So relax, kick back and take pleasure in the fact that YOU WON!

Hurray for YOU!

Guessing Game!

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:22:00 +0000

OK, Palin resigned so quickly that her staff thought she was just announcing she wouldn't run for re-election right up until her statement. She even sent out a Twitter about how she was going to not stand for re-elections a few minutes before she gave her statement...

Sorry kids, when a politician drops their office THIS quickly (and weirdly) there is usually a scandal they are attempting to evade, so let's all put on our thinking caps and try to figure out:

What is the scandal that caused Bible Spice to resign?

Today's political thought

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:44:00 +0000

I am disturbed about the execution of Dr. Tiller yesterday. I'll admit that I don't follow the abortion debate any more, simply because no one's mind is going to be changed by anything anyone says. It's like debating emotions...people have deep feelings about it that can't be swayed by reasoned argument.

Myself, I think it should be legal. I find it to be personally wrong and would not use the option, but I have known far too many people for whom the option was needed. We have millions of unwanted children already, and if you are really and for true against abortion, you need to adopt a kid. No, not a cute little baby, but a special needs kid who isn't cute any more but desperately needs a home.

However, the terrorist execution of a doctor who performs legal abortions yesterday disturbs me more than I can put into words. Through the 80's and 90's, there were countless acts of domestic right wing terrorism that we in America seem to be unable to call terrorism. Doctors were killed by Christanist "pro-life" jihadists, government buildings blown up by right wingers upset they lost an election, public bombings by (you guessed it) Christianist jihadists, all here in the US. They faded after 9/11...partly because the right wing felt like they controlled everything and partly because the tactics were FINALLY thought of as barbaric and beyond the pale.

But now they are back, and egged on by the right wing media. Dr. Tiller was a particular target of the #1 show in cable "news", and those host said:

- He "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000."

- He's guilty of "Nazi stuff,"

- a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida

- "This is the kind of stuff that happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union"

- "operating a death mill"

- "has blood on his hands"

- "executing babies about to be born

And we're shocked a terrorist decided that a man described like this needed to be the target of his wrath? Well, gee, he lost the election and thinks the current President is a Muslim, so somebody has to pay, so he turns on Fox News to find out who it should be...

This is just the first of a coming wave of right-wing terrorists. The media has been whipping them into a frenzy, claiming the US government is now socialist (which they imply means Nazi).

Still...someone answer me this: Why is it that ever since the end of the Vietnam War when the left wing loses, they fall back, organize and try again; while when the right wing loses, they indulge in domestic terrorism?

Dark days indeed.

Solitaire Rose Guide to the 2008-2009 season

noreply@blogger.com (Cory!!) — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:02:00 +0000

I like TV. I like it enough that I have a Tivo, satellite dish, etc... So, as this season winds down, I'm going to put down what I thought of the shows I watched this season and if I'll keep watching them. Oh, I know, some shows are done (like Boston Legal, Battlestar and a few others), but the networks have delayed announcing their fall schedules, so I'm going to decide what I'll keep watching.

Monday:

How I Met Your Mother – A solid sitcom with likable characters. This is never going to be a show where I run out and tell people about the great acting, writing or innovative plots, but a sit-com is a kind of comfort food. This one has enough laughs per episode that you'll laugh a few times, the characters are ones you don't mind spending a half hour with and it's worth the time for me. I hate that they feel they have to do cliffhangers, but it stays on the Tivo.

24 – Two years ago, I was ready to give up after a REALLY bad season. But a break due to the writer's strike seemed to help. The two hour movie last fall sucked me back in, and this season is one of the better ones. They have been slowly moving toward smaller threats. This season started with someone taking over the entire governmental computer network and now seems to be ending with Jack Bauer's daughter in danger (Cougar Alert!!!), which is the reverse of other seasons where the danger keeps escalating. I also laugh when conservatives use this show to justify their extra-legal actions when I see the show as a modern version of a movie serial...yeah, it's just as “realistic” as Flash Gordon or The Fighting Devil Dogs. Still, lots of fun and staying on the Tivo.

Monday Night Raw – The WWE's flagship show, but more often than not, the one I like the least. Too much of the show's time is spent on bad high school skit level comedy, and not enough time is spent on matches, feuds and the like. I watch some episodes by fast forwarding through so much of it, it takes a half hour to watch. Then again, they can also pull off some entertaining shows, so...oh hell, I'm a wrasslin fan. It stays.

Heroes – After season 2, I said I'd give it a try for the 3rd season. Oddly enough, I watched the first 3 episodes, fell behind and now I have 21 episodes on the Tivo. Must not be all that compelled to watch...but when everything else is all done, I'll buzz through it and see what I think. It's on the bubble on my Tivo.

CSI Miami – Oh hush. I know it's pure cheese, but I like the CSI franchise and the science based whodunits. The plots have been solid but I hate all of the personal life crap they keep putting in the show. The show itself is amazingly beautifully shot, and looks better than most big budget movies. Even though it's ion its fifth year, it hasn't shown any signs of decay. It stays on the Tivo.

Tuesday:

Reaper – Probably canceled, and a shorter season this year. It's still a fun little show, but it's VERY clear that they know they don't have any more than this year, so they are tearing through long-term plots at a frantic pace. The main idea (lead character works for the devil, returning souls to hell) is one that could become really dull, really quickly, but they have moved that to the background and deal with the lead characters. Funny, sharp writing and an inventive way to keep the series fresh. I'm keeping it, but the CW will probably drop it for another remake of a 90's FOX series.

ECW – On the SciFi channel...this used to be the worst wrasslin show in the history of wrasslin shows when it was “reborn”, but it's now settled into a show that only runs an hour, focuses on new talent and people who wouldn't be good in the “comedy” on Raw but can put together good matches, and in the end it's a wrasslin' show that focuses on wrasslin. Usually my favorite of the WWE shows for the week.

Fringe – My favorite show of the new year. It took a while to find its feet, and the lead character is still pretty much an empty vessel, but the week to week stories have been fine, and any Bigger Mystery is far enough in the background that you can actually ignore it if you want. It deals with X-Files type stuff, without the aliens, and if it gets better next year like it did this year, I may end up liking it more. That's right. I went there.

Better Off Ted – I THINK it's on Tuesday nights...with the Tivo, I can never really tell. This is an amazingly well-done sit-com which satirizes working in corporate American about a million times better than “The Office”, and still has characters you like. The writing is smart, fast and cutting, and the entire series seems fresh and funny. The Office may have episodes that knock it out of the park, but Better Off Ted is much more consistent. The best sit-com on TV and I'm keeping it on the Tivo. If you aren't watching it, go ahead and watch a few on-line to see if it is to your taste!

Tomorrow? Wednesday and Thursday!