Back From Erstwhile

This Is What I'm Doing: February 2012 Edition

2012-02-15T17:03:00.001-05:00

So, as it turns out, this February isn’t going to see a big push on a side project. There are a couple of reasons for that, one negative, and one positive. I’m a give-me-the-bad-news-first person, so we’re going to start with that.

Reason #1: January Kind of Kicked my Butt

Things were busier than ever at home, work went crazy at the same time, which for some reason made it harder for me to sleep, and I had a low-grade cold for a while. I managed to keep writing, but not to the degree I was hoping for. So I’m a bit behind where I wanted to be. I had planned to finish the short story I’ve been working on, then see what the status was with the alpha readers critiquing my novel, and determine if I had the time to do that side project. As it turns out, I’m still working on the short story. I really want to finish it before I turn my attention to the next, bigger thing. Because if I set this aside for something even more involved, FSM only knows when I’m going to get back to it. Heinlein’s Second Rule of Writing is “You Must Finish What You Start”, and I’m in complete agreement. So, work on the short story continues, albeit slowly.

But after that…? Well, that takes us to the good reason.

Reason #2: The Alphas Have Spoken

I’ve now heard from and, when it was possible, met with my alpha readers. The feedback I received was in every case really detailed and thoughtful, and it’s already been incredibly valuable to me. What that means, though, is that I’m now burning to get back to the novel. I have plot holes to fix, characters to buff, and a world to embroider in more detail. I know where the problems are, and – importantly – I know they’re fixable.

So, when I finish this short story, and that should be soon, I plan to turn my attention back to the novel and do the second draft. Ironically, with the insight my readers have provided, it will probably go a lot more quickly than what was supposed to be the polish did. Be that as it may, the upshot is that I don’t have a hole in the middle of February to fit in a new project. I am rich in projects. I’m projected-up. Burgeoning with projects, that’s me.

Indeed, since Patrick, the artist on Cold Iron Badge, has suggested that it’s time to start getting a script down for Book 2 of our comic, I might be a little too rich in projects. But that’s just a time-management problem. And a getting-my-butt-in-the-chair-and-actually-writing problem.

It may not be My Own Private NaNoWriMo, what with it not being something new or taking place over a month, but it’ll involve lots of Wri, that’s for certain. There’ll be more updates as I move forward with this crazy process and its inevitable frustrations, I’m sure. Talk to you then, probably while pulling my hair out.

Ebooks: How the #*%& do they work?!

2012-01-24T14:53:00.001-05:00

I was going through some files the other day, and I came across a flyer that got dropped off at our table at last fall’s Word On The Street, where Greg Beettam and I were (in our inimitable fashion), working to get copies of the Xeno’s Arrow and Cold Iron Badge books into the hands of passers-by. In exchange for, you know, money.

This happens from time to time, especially at free shows like Word On The Street, which by design is a big public event that anyone and everyone can attend; people come by the table where we’re trying to sell things, and try to sell US something. It’s sometimes distracting, and sometimes annoying – we, after all, paid for our table, unlike random passer-by-guy with a flyer – but sometimes it leads to interesting and potentially valuable connections and leads.

I’m still not sure what category this guy with this flyer fall into, and so I’m taking my question to you.

This flyer was for a company that offers services in creating ebooks for clients. The actual work, that is, of creating files and setting up accounts with the various providers of ebooks to sell them. I’m not entirely clear whether this outfit was also offering to manage said accounts – I don’t have the flyer in front of me. They were, I remember, also offering to set up and manage social media accounts for clients, which set off some of my alarm bells, because while a large company might need to contract with someone else to manage their social media profile due to their size and the volume of work involved, the sort of small entrepreneurial business this guy and this flyer were obviously targeting didn’t really need someone else to set up their Facebook page, or to be them on Twitter.

But here’s the thing: When it comes to ebooks, Greg and I don’t know what we don’t know. We’ve tried many different ways to get our work out and into the hands of readers over the years, with what to spare my own ego I’m going to call mixed degrees of success. We haven’t tried ebooks yet; for some time, there didn’t seem to be much of a need. But over the past year or so, everything has changed. Self-publishing via ebooks is now more than a sideline for many creators. Ebooks of one sort or another are very clearly now a huge and growing part of the market, and for independent creators like us, they represent a potentially huge pool of readers who’ve never been exposed to our work before. And we don’t need to put a whole lot of labour into making the work ready for that audience – that part is done, we did it years ago. So we have years-old sweat equity (and financial equity) invested. Nothing is going to bring back that sweat or money, but we have the work. Now, it can either do nothing, or make us back some money.

As I implied at the top of this post, neither Greg nor I has any objections to money, and this seems like it might be a great way to get some, and finally reach the audience we always wanted too.

The problem – well, the major problem – is that neither of us knows much about ebooks, and we especially don’t know about creating them or getting them onto the various online sellers (Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, etc.)

So we don’t know how much work is involved, or how much technical acumen is required to do the job right. We don’t know about the added complications that might result from the fact that our work is comics, which involves graphics that take up more memory and require higher resolutions. We don’t know if the company this flyer advertised is providing a service we as neophytes will absolutely need, or if they’re just taking advantage of people who don’t know how easily they could make ebooks themselves.

That’s my question for you: Do we need to contract a service provider to take our work, and turn it into ebooks? Or can we do it ourselves? How much knowledge, time and expense are involved? And is it different for graphic novels and prose?

Enlighten me, please!

In which I Emerge from an Overused Metaphor into the Light of Some Other Cliche

2012-01-19T13:24:00.001-05:00

Sweet FSM, have I really not updated this since last April? Over eight months of silent running? Seriously?

Yeah, that’s about the size of it. I kind of had a rough second half of 2011 from a creative standpoint. When I last wrote here, my plan was to let the novel rest for a month or so, then do a quick polish and get the resulting draft out to my alpha readers. I figured that I’d get their feedback over the summer, have the rewrite finished by the end of October, send it out to my beta readers, get their feedback, and have a finished draft ready to release into the wild by the end of the year. I figured I’d provide updates on all the steps here, as they happened.

But they didn’t happen. They really, really didn’t happen.

What was supposed to be a quick polish, fixing formatting and typos and patching plot holes and obvious mistakes, turned into a slog and a half. I ran into technical problems in trying to fix those formatting errors than made the whole job seem futile – namely, trying to carry on the project moving between our desktop at home and my netbook, which have different operating systems and word processing software, which meant that the same formatting errors kept re-appearing when I went from system to system. Mostly, it was the indentation of paragraphs disappearing and needing to be re-done, which sounds trivial, but have you ever tried indenting every single paragraph in a 95,000-word document? Yeah, okay, First World Problem for sure, but unquestionably time-consuming.

But it was the creative side that was the real bugbear. All I could see were problems, and the problems seemed insurmountably large. When all you can see are the holes, you can lose sight of the road ahead, and that’s what happened to me.

But finally – finally, in late December – I’d had enough. I buckled down, filled in the holes that were blocking my progress, and decided to worry about the formatting later. More importantly, I realized that I couldn’t fix everything at once. What I needed was the draft to be in good enough shape for other people to look at, so they can help me prioritize what to fix. Maybe some of the things I think are problems aren’t. Maybe I’m not seeing other problems that are much more important. Maybe fixing one will obviate the need to fix another, for whatever reason.

It was the perfect being the enemy of the good again. I recognized that I was not going to be perfect, and I forgave myself for it, and I moved the heck on.

I’m going to move the heck on from not having posted here in so long too. I was embarrassed at not having any progress to report. That was probably silly, but it’s part of the larger issue I was grappling with, of not being able to be okay with imperfection.

So, here’s where things are at: The draft of the novel, which is now called Cold Iron Summer, by the way, went out to my alpha readers just before Christmas. It’s with most of them now. I’m going to take advantage of the break and try to cleanse my creative palate – I’m working on a short story that I want to finish by the end of January, something with a very different feel and flavour.

After that, I’ll check in with my beloved and, by that point, long-suffering alpha readers, and see when they expect to be ready to provide feedback.

Then I’ll do a lot of listening.

Then comes the rewrite.

Oh, depending on the turnaround time for feedback from the alphas, I may try to fit in another project in February, but that’s very up in the air.

As for what’s next for this blog? Hmm. I feel unstuck at last, and I think it will do me good (and you no harm) for me to keep writing here about my process as I keep working on this project. I’m going to try not to fall into the same trap again, try not to get stuck. And I’m going to try not to let the internet equivalent of a geological age pass before my next update.

It’ll be hard; the post-holiday doldrums really hit me over January and while I’m feeling unstuck creatively, I’m feeling sick, tired and up to my knees in the mire in a few other key respects. But those times are going to happen, in life. I have to remind myself that nothing is ever going to be perfect, and that waiting for things to be perfect is just a recipe for inaction.

I take a deep breath. I forgive myself and resolve to do better. I survey the road ahead. I can see a path, despite obstacles, roadblocks, pothole and plotholes. I take a step, and then another.

And I move ahead. Onward.

Holy Guacamole. I Wrote A Novel.

2011-04-28T15:05:00.001-04:00

I finished the first draft of the novel last Sunday night. It weighs in at 95,007 words (via MS Office’s word count, which is a little lower than Open Office’s word count; I dunno why). I’m still sort of floating on the great release of having actually gotten it done. There were times that I wasn’t sure I’d ever finish the damn thing. I wondered if I was really cut out to write a novel.

It turns out that I am.

I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever mentioned the working title here; it’s ‘All That Glitters’, but I suspect that won’t be what it ends up being called. It’s not… I don’t know… punchy enough, maybe? Memorable enough? Even the members of my writers group don’t actually refer to it by that title. But that’s a second draft problem.

Second Draft

For now, as recommended by everyone who’s actually written and published a novel, I’m going to let the manuscript rest for at least a few weeks. Then, after I can look at it with fresher eyes, I’ll go back and do a rewrite. Some of that will be simple clean-up – removing excess verbiage. Some of it will be making sure the characters have consistent voices. Some of it will be filling the plot holes I danced around in my mad rush to the finish. And, because I was really pantsing my way through the first draft, and was figuring out what the story was while I was writing it, I need to go back and take out everything that isn’t the story.

What happens then?

Then the second draft will go out to my Alpha Readers. Alpha Readers are the people a writer trusts to give valuable, high-level feedback on a draft. The people whose eyes are keen enough, whose craft is strong enough, to be able to untease any big picture problems and – this part is important – suggest solutions. They bring a writer’s or editor’s mind to the proceedings.

Third Draft

After the Alphas have their say will come (I’m sure) another rewrite, after which the book will go out to, you guessed it, Beta Readers. Beta Readers can fill a few niches. They can be resources for specific subjects the writer doesn’t know much about (guns, or the law, or knitting, or whatever), or copy-editors. Some of the most valuable Betas bring the perspective of engaged, passionate readers who will be taking in the story as a reader would, and will spot any problems or plot holes that would trouble a passionate reader.

And after that?

After that, one final polish to fix any problems the Betas spot. And then it should be ready to go out to agents. Which will be a whole ‘nother thing. I’d like to document that process here, with an appropriate level of discretion (for instance, I won’t be naming the agencies I send my manuscript out to, or the ones that reject it, but I’ll probably describe the process, without names).

And that’s not all!

Of course, the novel isn’t all that I’ve been doing or thinking about, not by a long shot. There’s my family, and my job. And while All That Glitters is resting between drafts, I have a couple of other writing projects to get off the back-burner and get busy with. I’m working with Patrick on the outline for Book 2 of our webcomic Cold Iron Badge. And Nicole and I are going to be collaborating on a project that’s both new and old, and that promises to be lots of fun to write. But as a wise hamster-narrating-disembodied-voice used to say, that’s another story. But it’s one you’ll hear about sooner or later. And, since I also hope to blog more frequently going forward, may I humbly suggest that you cast an occasional eye to this space for that news and those updates?

My Own Private NaNoWriMo

2011-02-07T16:10:00.001-05:00

One of my resolutions going in to 2011 was to write more, and more regularly. I've been tired and frustrated with spinning my wheels, and not making as much progress as I want to on my projects. Because I don't just want to be a writer; I want to professionalize my career, and that means writing, re-writing, and polishing something that I can take to the market.

My current Big Project is a novel, my first. As though of you who follow my irregular updates here, it's an urban fantasy with the working title 'All That Glitters' that shares a setting with my webcomic Cold Iron Badge. It's shaping up to be pretty darned good, if I do say so myself. But I have to finish the damn thing.

Industry-standard length for a fantasy novel is in the range of 90,000 to 120,000 words. Urban fantasy generally occupies the lower end of that range, probably because there's less need for world-building and scene-setting.

But even 90,000 words is far longer than anything I've even written before.

As 2010 wound down, the manuscript for All That Glitters was sitting at a word count of around 44,000; nowhere near done. The problem wasn't the direction of the story, or the ideas. The problem was getting the damned words on the page.

Something needed to be done.

I am a big proponent of goal-setting as a motivator. I like giving myself a BHAG (a "big hairy audacious goal") and then telling people about it to ensure some external accountability. It doesn't always work, and it can be frustrating and embarrassing when I fail, but I've found that it works much better for me than NOT setting a goal does*.

So, partly inspired by Mur Lafferty's podcast I Should Be Writing**, I came up with an idea for a Goal that was Big, Hairy and Audacious.

I decided to make January, 2011 My Own Private NaNoWriMo.

This probably requires some explanation. NaNoWriMo is 'National Novel Writing Month', the annual event held each November to encourage new and aspiring writers to set and meet the goal of writing 50,000 words of prose in a month. People from all over the world participate; there's a whole community that's formed around the event. It's a lot of fun, but it's fun that I generally pass on, because I often don’t have the time, and I'm not big on the community aspect; I get about as much socializing with other writers as I need from shop talk with my writers group and a few other peers.

But that meant, I realized, there was no reason not to have my own NaNoWriMo any time I wanted.

I chose January 4 to February 3, 2011, and I started writing, with a goal of trying for 50,000 words. That would have put me within striking distance of finishing the novel, at least in terms of word count.

(Word count, as my friend and fellow writer Nicole points out, is in many ways a completely irrelevant and even counterproductive measure, since it has nothing to do with the narrative; it's akin to measuring the value of an ambulance by looking at the mileage. The story should unfold for exactly as long as is needed to tell it, no shorter, no longer. And that's true; but word count does give me a clear measure of whether I've been producing. Since productivity, not the shape of the narrative, has been my sticking point, it's a good metric in that sense.)

So, how did it go?

I'd call it a qualified success. I didn't write every day, but I came closer to writing every day over an extended period of time than I ever have. I didn't write 50,000 words, but what I did write -- over 23,000 -- was more over a single month than I ever have.

Not bad, in other words.

Now, a few days after My Own Private NaNoWriMo, the manuscript is at just about 70,000 words. That means that, if I can maintain this level of output through, say, the end of February, I'll really be nearing the end (and not just in terms of word count; I can see the story threads starting to come together, and can feel the narrative crescendo building. Hoo boy, can I. The next 30,000 or so words are going to be FUN).

Ideally, of course, I'd like to do better than I did in January; I had too many non-writing hiccup days and days with very little writing. If I can make a good January day into an average February day, my productivity will increase substantially. I just proved what I can do, when I try. Now the only thing I need to do is keep at it. I hope to be able to have real grounds for bragging soon; watch this space for updates (you can also follow me on Twitter. I’m @Stephen_GM and I often post about my word count there).

I set out to climb a mountain, and conquered the lower slopes. That’s something to be proud of; the view from here is pretty nice.

But I bet it’s even better at the top. And I intend to find out. Onward!

*Like Churchill said about democracy: It's the worst system, except for all the others.

**Which I recommend to everyone, to the degree that I think I’ll do another blog post where I talk about ISBW, and why you should be following it, at length.

In September I Will Do Better

2010-09-01T16:10:00.001-04:00

It’s September all of a sudden, but I’m much too busy for my usual where-did-the-summer-go/where-did-the-year-go/where-did-the-decade-go shtick.

My life, as per usual, is much busier than it is productive, and I’m a little sad to see another summer gone without having made as much progress with my projects as I’d like. I suspect I’m being a little too hard on myself – I am, after all, a grown-up-ish person with a job and a family, and the summer is not one big Calvin & Hobbes-esque lazy Sunday for me anymore.

Still and all, I have twinges of disappointment. Other the other hand, I have kids going to school in a few days, and I remember going to school myself, and so for me, like for a lot of other people, September is the Other New Year, a beginning, an opportunity to reflect, take stock and set goals.

Progress on The Novel is… slow. But slow is better than non-existent, and I hope to bear down for another real push this month. It’ll help that my writers group will be starting up again in the fall; I think a deadline or two will help motivate me.

There’s actually a lot happening on the comics front, although most of it still isn’t quite ready for a big public announcement. I finished the script for the final chapter of the first book of Cold Iron Badge, and Patrick is already working away on it with his mad skillz.

I haven’t been getting to the gym as much as I wanted, and I definitely haven’t been eating as virtuously as I should. The food thing just requires willpower, and although pie is my Kryptonite, I’m feeling stronger and more optimistic as the Other New Year begins. The gym… well, like I said, the kids are starting school, and without going all blah-blah true confessions on you, I can say that this will lead to some complications with attendant scheduling hiccups that will need to be overcome. The gym may get caught in the crossfire. If it does... hmm, I dunno, I might just have to climb the stairs in our building a couple of times every night for a while. One thing I’m certain of is that I really need to get serious, now, about making a change for the better.

Because it’s time. It’s the Other New Year. We’re heading into my favourite season. It’s a time for optimism that leads to action, for getting things done and doing them well. For being healthier, more productive and happier.

It’s September, and I’m going to do better.

Continuity Conundrum

2010-07-13T16:39:00.001-04:00

I’m used by now to things not going exactly as planned, but the past couple of months have been both frustrating and disappointing, regardless. I really lost the thread of both exercising and writing. Time management has been an even bigger challenge than usual, and the fact that it’s turned into a nasty-humid, vicious-hot summer so far hasn’t helped.

It hasn’t been entirely unproductive. I’ve been working with my good friend N.W. on a Secret Project. This time I’m not just being goofily coy; this is something I need to keep under my hat for the time being*. Partly because right now, there is no news, and it’s possible nothing may come of it – whether or not it goes ahead is up to a third party. But if we get that “yea”, it will be very exciting, and represent a major step forward for both me and N.W. I’ll give real details when I can.

That being said, I have yet to make real headway on the novel. The first draft is on the go, but still not much more than 25% done. I’m hoping to break my logjam and move forward over the rest of the summer; I finally got back to it today and managed to add about 500 words. That represents less than an hour of work, so if I can swing devoting more time than just my lunch hour to the project, I might actually start getting somewhere.

However, time management isn’t the only issue that’s been keeping me from working on the Novel. The other big point goes to the heretofore cryptic title of this post.

I haven’t really made a secret of this, but I also haven’t come right out and said it: The Novel started off as the prose feature that I developed to add more content to the site for Cold Iron Badge, the webcomic I do with co-creator/artist extraordinaire Patrick Heinicke. (You can read it at www.coldironbadge.com) As such, it was set it the same world as the webcomic, but was a side-story with different characters. So far, so not-a-problem, right?

Originally, I thought that what is now the Novel would be a series of short stories. I thought they’d take place in the same city as Cold Iron Badge the webcomic (which I was being deliberately vague about anyway), and that the casts of the two stories would occasionally cross over, much as they do in the Law & Order spinoffs that were such an inspiration to me in creating Cold Iron Badge. That means that, among other things, they could share a villain.

In the course of writing, all of that changed. The hypothetical series of short stories became the Novel when I realized that I was telling a bigger story than I originally thought. The Novel now explicitly takes place in Toronto, while the webcomic is clearly set in Vancouver. So the characters in each will doubtless be aware of one another – they belong to the same organization – but they won’t cross paths as often as I thought at first. And the villain…

The webcomic has a Big Bad, a scary elf crime boss/sorcerer/swordsman named Nobody. I planned to use him as a menacing background figure in the short stories. But although I imagined that he’d frequently be the cause of problems that the characters in the prose stories had to deal with, I didn’t expect that he’d appear directly – or that there’d be an overarching Big Bad for the only loosely-related stories at all.

Then I realized that the Novel wasn’t the short stories, but the Novel. And I knew it would need a Big Bad. At first, I figured Nobody would still do the trick. He’s involved in a lot of villainous stuff and there’s no reason his plots couldn’t encompass both Vancouver and Toronto. And he’s a great character. But then, I started thinking about resolutions.

Specifically, and I apologize if this is way too obvious: If stories contain heroes and villains, as both the Novel and the Cold Iron Badge webcomic do, then there needs to be some sort of resolution around the conflict between them**. Equally importantly, the heroes and the villains need to be active, credible participants in the resolution***. We can’t have somebody else in a parallel story taking place offstage bust the villain when the heroes’ backs are turned. That’s called a deus ex machina, and it’s Very Bad Writing. So I can’t use the same villain in otherwise separate stories with separate characters and separate resolutions.

Not really an issue though, right? Nothing that can’t be solved with a little judicious rewriting. I already know who the new Big Bad for the novel is, and she, he or it**** is a doozy. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that I’m still serializing the story that has become the Novel on the Cold Iron Badge website.

It is, as noted above, about 25% done and people have, I presume and hope, been reading it. And that material includes Nobody mentioned as the Big Bad, explicitly. I can easily make a course correction, but I’ll be pulling aside the curtain and doing it overtly and explicitly for the readers. And I don’t want to go back and rewrite the material that’s already been posted; that’s the path of endless noodling madness where I get obsessed with fixing a story that isn’t even written yet and therefore, never finish it. So do I just abruptly change the story I’m writing with an awkward retroactive change to the continuity (what we geeks call a ret-con), and act as though the new Big Bad was the Big Bad all along? I can’t incorporate the changeover into the story as a plot point; eventually, the original villain is going to be rewritten out of ever having been there. I’d have to just abruptly switch villain-gears.

Figuring out what to do about this has been taking up a lot of the brainspace that should have been devoted to the actual writing, and it has to stop. I’ve finally decided on “awkward ret-con”, which will be… well, awkward. And embarrassing, because I hate showing my work. But them’s the breaks, I guess. I suppose I should have known going in that issues like this were potentially a part and parcel of writing a serialized longform story. But it’s frustrating! I don’t know how guys like Dickens managed it without losing their minds. Did he never think to himself part-way through, “Screw Oliver Twist. This is now a story about a cat who can shoot laser beams out of his eyes and fights crime!”*****

So, ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts; we’ve got a painfully obvious ret-con ahead and there’s going to be some bumpy reading. We apologize for any inconvenience.

* Hmm. What kind of story could have a character named ‘The Time Being’? Because now I really want to do that…

** Unless the lack of resolution is an important part of the story, of course.

*** Yeah yeah yeah, unless that’s an important part of the story.

**** That’s me being cagey. As cagey as I get, anyway.

***** ‘Laser Cat Versus The Time Being’. I’m not sure I want to write that story, but I do want to live in a world where that story exists.

A Bee What Now?

2010-04-27T12:34:00.001-04:00

BHAG is one of those terms you pick up if you attend enough organizational or corporate strategic planning / missioning / visioning / consultants-using-buzzwords-to-justify-their-exorbitant-fees-ing kind of events – can you tell I’ve been to a few? It’s pronounced “Bee Hag” and it stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

It’s what it sounds like, basically: A clear, exciting and ambitious goal that motivates and inspires action.

As you can tell, I have my qualms about strategic planning / missioning / visioning / buzzwording – I’ve been part of good ones that inspired me and made me feel like part of a cohesive team, and I’ve part of bad, contentious ones that literally gave me nightmares – but I like the idea of the BHAG. Also, I’m a sucker for acronyms.

This is a roundabout way of saying that I am setting myself a BHAG.

It’s Big, it’s Audacious, it’s certainly a Goal, and I expect things could get a bit Hairy.

As some of you know, I have this novel I’ve been working on – I’ve been serializing it more-or-less weekly at Cold Iron Badge as the ongoing prose story “All That Glitters”. It’s set in the same world as the comic, but is about different characters, and takes place in (explicitly) Toronto instead of (implicitly) Vancouver. Having a weekly deadline to meet has been great for my productivity, no doubt about it. But it also means that I’ve been writing on the fly a lot, following my characters around and watching them snark at one another. Which is, to be clear, something I enjoy greatly. But I’m at the stage where the central ideas of the story are becoming more clear, and where I need to take a step back and actually decide what I’m doing.

So, I’ve put the weekly installments on hiatus (replaced with another prose feature that may be even thrilling-er, but is easier and faster to write). And I’ve given myself a BHAG: To actually write this damn novel. In the month of May.

It’s a big goal because it involves a high volume of writing – all the material I’ve written to date for ‘All That Glitters’ amounts to about 15,000 words, and a novel needs to be 75- to 90,000. It’s audacious because, really, that’s a lot of writing to try to cram into a month on my schedule. It’s hairy because this is not the best time for me to be setting myself a big audacious goal; I haven’t been well over the past couple of weeks, and it’s not like I had a surplus of free time even before that.

There are a lot of reasons this might not work, and I’m not necessarily anticipating success in my BHAGery. That is, I don’t know that I’ll be typing “The End” at 11:55 pm on May 31st. But the point of a Big Hairy Audacious Goal isn’t necessarily to achieve it, at least not in the short term. It’s to inspire and spur action. I’ve made good progress – really good, for me – taking the slow and steady approach with this project. But it’s time to try something different. It’s time to try fast and steady. The worst possible outcome is that I’ll be ahead of where I am now, so I have nothing to lose and rather a lot to gain.

Also, I have decided that there has to be a character in Cold Iron Badge called the Bee Hag. Has to be.

My Mind Is Like A Herd Of Cats

2010-04-09T12:09:00.001-04:00

Choosing and prioritizing what I write has always posed a challenge for me, because I have (you’ve heard this one many times before, so say it with me) limited time to write, and often have multiple projects on the go.

But I’d recently seen some progress on that front. I’ve back-burned one of the novels I’ve been working on, and decided to make the other my priority. There’ll be some writing coming up for Cold Iron Badge, but it’s still a ways off. And I have some worldbuilding and background information that I want to develop and add to the Cold Iron Badge website, but that’ll be short and to the point. It’s not like it’s another novel to juggle.

I was actually down to one major, current project.

Then, of course, I had to keep thinking.

Stooping To Conquer

I had an idea for a short story that was nag-nag-nagging at my brain, demanding attention. I’ve read that this is the case with a lot of writers; many of us are epic procrastinators, and if we can’t find an excuse to not write, we can at least manage to obsess about writing something other than our current projects.

Finally, I realized that the best way to exorcise the thing was to stop fighting, give in and actually write it, since it is, by definition, short. It’s underway and I expect to be finished… well, shortly. And then I won’t have to think about it anymore, especially since I’m going to hand it off to the writers group and wait on revisions ‘til after I hear back from them.

Problem solved?

No, Problem Not Solved

Some little while ago, what with one thing and another, I was inspired to post this on Twitter:

Fools! Tremble before the might of Doctor Biohazard's Gyroscopic Transuranic Fully Automatic Piranha Cannon!

And now I want to write a %*#&ing steampunk novel…

Did I Really Used To Update This Thing Weekly?

2010-03-17T15:14:00.001-04:00

Where the hell did I find the time?

Zzz + Owie = Zowie!

I'm tired and sore today.

Sore because I worked out on Monday night -- but not at the gym. Due to various adventures in scheduling, I had to pick my son up from daycare. So, I worked out after the kids were in bed; I climbed the stairs in the building, from the ground floor to the top. Twice. My legs are still sore, which, oddly, never happens to this extent when I use the stair climber at the gym. I can't quite figure out if that means I did something wrong, or something right. Oh, and I'm helping my sister-in-law move a 100-pound cat toy tonight, so wish me luck.

I'm tired because I spent Tuesday night at a creative meeting for a new project that a friend is getting off the ground. The details, I should probably keep under my hat for now, but it's a cool project involving lots of interesting, talented people and it promises to be a lot of fun. And, you know, given the opportunity to stay out later than I should talking shop with other writers...

So yes. Tired and sore, but both for good reason.

Could I Have The Gain Without Pain? Please?

The Cold Iron Badge website was hacked last week -- just as we launched an advertising campaign, no less, although I don't know if that was coincidence or connection.

Our comic was replaced by a creepy, ghostly image of a guy who needs a shave, and text in English and what I think was Arabic crowing about how pathetic the security on our site was.

Um, yeah, dude, we're a rinky-dink little webcomic that runs on a blogging platform. Hacking into our site isn't exactly on par with convincing the launch system at the Pentagon that it's playing a game of chess with Professor Falken. But, you know, if it makes you feel good about yourself...

Actually, since the simplest solution was to have our web host wipe the site clean and start over, Patrick took the opportunity to do a redesign, and I must say, it really is new-and-improved and better-than-ever. There's another recent example of pain leading to gain (the pain in this case being Patrick's, as he did all the work). So thanks, creepy smug hacker guy!*

The disruption only lasted a couple of days, and doesn't seem to have cost us any readers, but we'd still appreciate your kind attention -- so if you haven't read Cold Iron Badge yet, or you need to get caught up, this would be a perfect time. Check us out at http://coldironbadge.com.

Ideas: Threat Or Menace?

I'm still having a hard time narrowing my focus down to one non-comics project, but I think that's coming. I've got a couple of short pieces that have been rattling around in my head, and it looks like the only way to make them stop will be to actually write the damn things. And I'd like to get ahead with 'All That Glitters' again, so that I have a few installments in the can and I'm not spending all my writing time chasing a self-imposed deadline. Not that it isn't good motivation, but I'd like to start playing a somewhat longer game, and actually get one of my Big Projects finished. Is that too ambitious? Yeah, probably, but time, and I, will tell.

Oh, and I’m experimenting with posting to the blog via email, and the last time I tried that, the formatting got really wonky. My apologies if it looks like I’ve inexplicably made the decision to add several dozen unnecessary line breaks to this update. Try to think of it as part of the adventure.

*But please don't come back. We still hate you.

The Stories, So Far

2010-02-17T15:13:00.001-05:00

It's been weeks since I've seen a "the year we make contact" joke. At the gym, the resolutionaries seem to be drifting away. The only New Year anyone is talking about is the Chinese one. 2010 is well and truly underway.

So it's not a bad time to take stock and evaluate the year to date.

Well, it’s been a busy year so far, but also one that’s off to better start than most of the past few years.

Things are going well at work, where the second anniversary of my hiring just went by. My family’s doing well; my children are learning and growing and thriving and doing more wonderful things than ever. I’ve been getting back to the gym, working on getting into shape again, and so far I’ve been able to stick with it.

And on the writing front, although I haven’t been as productive as I’d like, I’ve been much more productive than I’ve been in previous years. I’m active in and enjoying my writers group, Cold Iron Badge is ongoing and I have several other projects on the go.

But they aren’t the projects that I would have expected to be working on, this time last year – or even a few months ago. I’ve recently changed the focus of my writing – or, perhaps, changed my goals to reflect the reality of my writing. This was the result of a good deal of soul-searching.

An existential crisis

Hmm. That sounds more Dostoevyskian than the situation actually warrants.

Regardless, I spent a lot of time -- over late last year, through resolution season -- thinking about how I want to move forward with my writing. About what I want to achieve, and how I want to achieve it.

I love comics, I love Cold Iron Badge and Xeno's Arrow, and they’re going to continue to be central to my writing.

But I don't see myself -- right now, with my interests, at this point in my life -- springboarding from those projects to other work in comics. (This is, of course, with all the usual caveats; if an interesting opportunity arises, I am certainly open to it).

Really, it's not like Marvel and DC were in a bidding war for my talents. This realization doesn't actually involve any changes to my approach.

No, the real shift has been on the other side of my writing: Screenplays.

I never had much traction as a screenwriter. I haven't had an agent in some time (which is a sordid and funny story that I probably shouldn't relate online) and never really had much success in professionalizing myself in the field.

My writing also doesn't really fit the needs of the Canadian market. The spec market for screenplays barely exists in Canada, and I like to write in classic, core genres that involve explosions and happy endings. I don't fit in with the art-housey, outsider-stancey attitude of Canadian feature film.

Grants? You can't get in the grant game here without credits, and you can't get credits writing the sort of movies I like to write.

And I've seen friends scramble and scrape, trying to make independent films here in the genres I do care about. But it takes years, and nobody gets paid, and the odds of getting your movie made, let alone finding distribution or achieving any kind of recognition, make roulette look like a sound investment strategy.

I'm pushing forty, and I have a family that needs me. I can't pick up stakes and move to LA on the chance of hitting in big. Hell, I don't even drive -- that alone means that I couldn’t cope with life in Los Angeles.

I could try writing for TV, because there is, at least for now, an English-language Canadian TV industry, and it's actually really good. Canadian TV is better than it's ever been, mirroring the new golden age of TV in the U.S..

But... I have no passion to write television, even in a golden age. To be honest, the thought of re-focusing on breaking in as a TV writer -- making contacts, writing a sample script for a hot show, trying to get a gig -- gives me the creeping horrors. I don't have the time or patience for it any more.

Screenwriting allowed me to learn a tremendous amount of craft and build my skills, and to meet some great people. But I've followed that path as far as I can. It's time to admit that it's not leading where I want to go.

So where does that leave me?

Insert your own pun based on the two meanings of "novel"

Yes. I'm writing a novel. I appear, a bit unexpectedly, to be writing several novels.

How did this happen?

Over the past year or so, I've been overcoming my fear of writing prose, which wasn't the only reason I was focused on scripts, but certainly played a part.

At the suggestion of my dear friend and former writing partner Nicole, I'm working on adapting a screenplay into a novel. It's an interesting process, and a reversal of the usual one; novels are often adapted for the screen, but it’s tricky to do well because they tend to be so dense; you have to leave a great deal of the complexity out, and sometimes that complexity is what makes the story work.

What I’m doing now is a different challenge; I'm embroidering, trying to turn a 100-page (with lots of white space on the pages) story into a much denser, more involved narrative. Essentially, I'm treating my screenplay as a fairly detailed outline for the novel, and adding to it. I've only just begun. If the process is interesting, I may discuss it further.

Plus, as some of you already know, I've been writing and posting a weekly prose story at the Cold Iron Badge website. It's not about the narrative or the characters featured in the comic. I thought that a side-story about two other members of the Borderland Guard would be interesting, fun and could also include some world-building details that I couldn't fit into the main feature. My first attempt was a short story; my second, which I'm still working on, is called All That Glitters, and it seems to be turning into something rather longer. It might indeed be a novel when it's done. I guess I'll have to see where the journey takes me. In the mean time, I'm having a lot of fun with the narrator and her adventures.

And I have another project on my mind. It's been on the back-burner, but the chunk of it that I've actually had written and sitting around for a while was sufficiently well-received that I'm really tempted to move it up the To-Do list.

The problem with being so rich in projects is that I have a limited amount of time to write and I really don’t like constantly switching gears, trying to get from the narrative, tone and character voices of one story to another. So I’m trying to prioritize, to set goals and stick to them.

And then there’s the question of professionalizing myself as a novelist, as I was never quite able to do with screenwriting. Finding an agent. Getting manuscripts out to publishers. Eventually, of course, the goal, the hope and dream: Selling a novel.

All of that is another part of the process, and it’s something I intend to chronicle here. After my year-long time away from blogging, I hope to begin posting here more regularly. We’ll see how that plan goes (see “limited amount of time to write”, above). We’ll see how all my plans go.

For now, though, and on balance, I’m off to a decent start.

So far, it’s a good year.

A Taste of Xeno's Arrow

2009-02-02T23:05:00.005-05:00

It occurs to me that I've talked up Cold Iron Badge here, but not so much my first comics-baby, Xeno's Arrow. That should be remedied, and since I an image online with an easy-to-use link anyway, I thought this would be an opportune moment to provide a little taste...

Xeno's Arrow is the story of Xeno, a young alien boy of mysterious origins who has spent his whole life in an Intergalactic Zoo run by Lizards who makes the pivotal decision to escape and seek freedom and adventure... but finds that nothing in the universe is quite what he expected...

Once upon a time, in the Known Galaxy...

You'll Have To Excuse Me, I'm Not At My Best...

2009-01-31T16:54:00.000-05:00

And I really do feel like I've been gone for a month, albeit metaphorically. Missed out on the drunk part, though. What I do have is a cold.

But even before the cold bit me -- and I knew it was coming, since the rest of the family were already feeling it -- it had been a frustrating week, wrapping up a frustrating month.

I've been tired and unfocused, and the cold weather has me feeling down. It's been hard to write. It's been hard to eat well or get to the gym, either (I don't think I've made it to the gym since the new year) and I feel like I've lost a lot of ground on that front. Which is ironic, because I managed to get through the holidays without putting any weight back on, only to trip up during Resolution Season.

Sigh.

But tomorrow is another day. There's a new week and a new month coming up. They'll be better than this one.

The plus side is that I'm way too busy, and have way too many projects to juggle, to waste time on self-recrimination. Onward!

Bachelor of Erstwhile

2009-01-24T15:07:00.002-05:00

I've been at my current job for a little under a year; I started on February 11th, 2008. As many of you already know, I work for the University of Toronto. For a variety of reasons, I love my job. I work in a small, congenial office with great people. My work involves all sorts of interesting projects and initiatives, and unlike some admin jobs that I or friends have suffered through, mine is for an organization that actually benefits humanity.

Another reason that I love my job is that universities, by their nature, are supportive of education and life-long learning.

When I studied Theatre at York University, there were a lot of courses outside of (and even inside) the Faculty of Fine Arts and the Theatre Department that I couldn't take, despite being interested in them, because of scheduling conflicts and the like. And many of the courses I did take had a more practical than traditionally academic flavour (although I was the only Theatre major I knew who took a Political Science course for fun.)

So I always felt like I'd missed out on some opportunities to expand my horizons, think more deeply, really get into the university experience, and read the books you should read to be culturally literate but only actually do read when they're going to be on the final exam (I'm looking at you, James Joyce!)

Which was a pity, but so it goes. I figured that academia was behind me. It wasn't as though I had the time, or especially the money, to go back to school

And this brings me to the other opportunity to get back from erstwhile that I've been mentioning. One particularly amazing perk of being an employee of the University is that I can essentially get a degree for free. More than one -- I can pursue a course of study up to the Master's level.

There are some reasonable limits, of course. The benefit covers the equivalent of a general arts degree; if a program had additional fees, I'd be on the hook for them. It only covers a part-time course load, which is about the most I'd try to schedule around work, writing and my family anyway. And, big as U. of T. is, it doesn't cover every possible field of study, certainly not at the downtown campus where I work and where it makes sense for me to take courses.

But those are trivial issues. This is, as I said, a really freaking amazing opportunity. It would be ridiculous not to take advantage of it.

The problem is, I can't decide how to proceed. There are so many amazing possibilities, I'm not sure what field of study to pursue.

So, in addition to my own thinking on the subject, I thought I'd take this to you, my illustrious peanut gallery. You know me. Or you know me well enough to have a sense of some of my skills, strengths and interests. Or you don't know me at all, which will at the very least liven up the discussion, so don't let that hold you back.

I ask you: What sort of degree should I go for?

I'm going to share some of my thoughts, then open up the floor to you for comments and suggestions.

English
Books. Lots and lots of books. This strikes me as a great excuse to get caught up on some of the canon that I missed out on due to the specialized nature of my earlier studies. This would be a degree, then, pursued purely for personal enrichment, not to advance any particular goals re: my career. U. of T., like many universities, now has courses in genre fiction and graphic novels in the English department. That would be interesting, and I'd be curious to see how my practical experience in the field meshed with an academic take on the subject. I've also thought about using this, along with some Art courses, to sort of invent a degree in comics for myself.

Cinema Studies
A degree that requires watching a lot of movies is about as awesome as one that requires reading a lot of books. Cinema Studies at U. of T. is an academic program, so it's not really "film school". Which is good, because I have an aversion to guys who wear their baseball caps backwards because that's how Spielberg does it. The program would focus on analysis, which does interest me, and which I'm good at. I figure at the very least, I'd emerge being able to use the phrase "mise-en-scene" correctly in a sentence, which would be a net gain.

History
I love history. A lot of my pleasure reading is non-fiction, focusing on history. An undergraduate History degree could lead to the Medieval Studies program, which strikes me as extremely cool. Because I am a huge geek. Regardless, an opportunity to learn Middle English is not to be casually tossed aside.

Something Else?
So what do you think. Is there a possibility that I haven't considered? Something that's a natural fit for me that I haven't mentioned? Let me know, in a comment below or by email!

Whew. That's what's on my mind right now. But next time out, I think I'll actually talk about writing again...

On Privacy and "Business Casual" Blogging

2009-01-17T17:04:00.003-05:00

"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

I first read that in Douglas Coupland's 1995 novel Microserfs -- one of my favourite novels, by the way. I don't think Coupland made it up; one of his characters uses the phrase as though it was already a generally-understood truism. And was in 1995, when people still talked about the capital-I Internet and used the phrase "information superhighway" only a little bit self-consciously.

In other words, being online and secret identities go back a long way.

There are many good reasons to post online anonymously, or using a pseudonym. One of those advantages is that it makes it possible to share things with the entire world, without the entire world knowing that you are actually you. You can blow the whistle on something dangerous or illegal, vent about something without getting into trouble, ask for help about something that's embarrassing or really sensitive, something you might be judged or attacked for.

Online anonymity, in other words, does not exist solely to facilitate spamming, or so that dolts can safely insult one another's opinions about Spider-man, or to allow teenagers to get away with posting videos about setting their sister's hamster on fire. It has real and valuable benefits.

However, anonymity cuts both ways. Another advantage of the the Internet is supposed to be how easy it is to reach large numbers of people all over the world -- but that can be hard to do under a pseudonym, unless what you're promoting is your pseudonym.

Which is all very well if you want to increase the profile of an online persona called Number1HarryPotterFan4EVAR, but problematic if you want to tie what you do online to something you do in analog.

What I'm getting at here, is simply this: Most of what I do online, I do under my real name. Including this blog, which is public and which is one of the top 20 or 30 returns when you do a Google search on me.

This is complicated further by the fact that I have the blessing and curse of not being named John Smith. There are one or two people who come close with variant spellings, but as far as I can tell, I'm the only Stephen Geigen-Miller in the world.

Which makes it very, very easy to be certain which Stephen Geigen-Miller you're reading about.

I know for a fact that my current employers Googled me before I got hired; my wife Googled me before our first date.

So: Everything I do online impacts on my offline life. And it also impacts on everything else I say and do online -- including endeavours that I share with other people, like Greg for Xeno's Arrow and Patrick for Cold Iron Badge. Besides being careful about the impression I make of myself, I also have to think about how what I say and do will reflect on my work and my creative partners.

This means that, in a very real way, whenever I'm posting online, I'm at work. It's a pretty friendly, casual work environment, to be sure -- but it's still the office. It's public, not private. and there are some things that it is not appropriate to discuss in public, or at the office.

(This may just be my WASPy, suburban upbringing talking, but it's how I feel.)

These things include, as far as I'm concerned, finances, my sex life, things that would violate someone else's privacy, and beyond a certain point, personal health issues.

I am comfortable with disclosing, in this casual office we share, if I've been sick, particularly if that affects any of my de-erstwhiling processes. I'm comfortable with talking about how I'm trying to eat better, get to the gym more and lose weight. It's a tough slog, and a sometimes depressing, frustrating and even scary process, and I need to talk about it and ask for support in order to get back to the way I want my life to be.

But that's about as far as I'm willing to go. I have limits regarding how detailed and specific I'm going to get, and that's where my personal definition of crossing the line between "business casual" and "icky personal health issues" lies.

And just to be clear: This is a choice I make that is for and about me, nobody else. Other people can and should go into as much detail about their lives as they want to. I follow some blogs -- some of which are under the authors's real names! -- that share very personal information, about health, relationships, and/or sexuality.

And just to be absolutely painfully crystal-clear, I'm also not upset or offended that anyone cares enough to want to know more about what's going on in my life. That's wonderful, and you are very sweet. But let's have that conversation when I'm not at work, okay?

Now that that's been dealt with, there's still the matter I alluded to in my previous post, the other not-writing, not-the-gym back-from-erstwhiling I wanted to discuss. More on that next time.

The Shape of Blogs to Come

2009-01-08T23:01:00.004-05:00

Well, I haven't been doing much flying so far. It's been a hard week to get on top of -- I just can't seem to get my head in gear.

I've been tired, and out of sorts, and not writing much and not getting the gym and eating too much crappy food.

But you know: Meh. The week is almost over, and then it's on to a new one.

I've had one minor triumph: I field-tested my new notebook computer, which I have named Trogdor, after the internet's most burninating dragon.

I've been taking Trogdor to work with me, and yesterday I sat down in the cafeteria -- the busiest I've seen it for months, full of university students -- and tried it out.

And yeah, overall, things went well. I'm still adjusting to the idiosyncrasies of the keyboard, which is obviously more compressed than that of a regular desktop or even a laptop computer. But that's going to be relatively straightforward. The battery seems to hold up, and by the end of the hour I was making fewer typos than when I started.

With all the noise, I figured my best bet was to try writing something that didn't involve too much intricate plotting or having to hear idiosyncratic character voices in my head -- so, no finishing Chapter 3 of Cold Iron Badge or starting a new draft of the screenplay.

That will come, but I think I'm going to have to start taking my lunch later. Chuck Palahniuk is apparently a great advocate of writing in hospital emergency rooms, but I need to have a little more peace and quiet.

So I tried writing an Erstwhile post. Not this one; because I don't have wireless internet access, and didn't actually remember to buy a USB flash drive when I bought Trogdor, I currently have no way to get my writing from Trogdor to the desktop at home, which I can use to, you know, actually post here.

I'll remedy that goof-up before the weekend's out. Until then, I'm sort of writing a new post now and sort of trying to reconstruct what I wrote before while sort of also updating it because it's not something I'm doing live anymore, but something I did yesterday.

Regardless, what I was getting at yesterday, and what I'm getting to now, is this: In my bold announcement last week, of my bold return to bold blogging... I neglected to boldly, or even cravenly, address the question I raised in my post previous to that, about five months back.

Namely, what this blog is for now, if I'm kind of back from erstwhile.

And yesterday I came up with a couple of answers to that.

First of all, and let's be honest here, I really am only "kind of" back from erstwhile. Cold Iron Badge is going extremely well, and Patrick is getting better all the time. I'm active in the writers group and I'm excited about the feedback I've been getting there on my screenplays; I think the next drafts will really take them to a new level.

But there's a lot to be done, too. Getting more readers and recognition for Cold Iron Badge and Xeno's Arrow, and monetizing them as well. Getting an agent, so that my screenplays can go to market.

Essentially, I want to not just be a writer, nor even a professional writer, but a paid professional writer. I know that's mercenary, but you know, I'm comfortable with being mercenary. I'd like to be paid for my work.

And I think that will be an interesting, blog-worthy process, and one that I'd like to put out there (as long as I'm careful not to use the real names of people and organizations when things are "in development".)

But also, writing isn't the only part of my life where I need to de-erstwhile.

Over the past few months, I've started trying to get to the gym regularly again, and eat better. Or at least, eat with more restraint. I was doing pretty well up until the holidays and my weird post-holiday snacking binge this week -- well enough that I was starting to see the beginnings of results.

Frankly, this is a process where I could really use some support. Again, I'll be circumspect about details at the ickier end of the spectrum, but it'll help me a lot to know someone's in my corner.

And there's another area of my life where I can get back from being an erstwhile -- an opportunity to re-open a closed chapter. But I'll save that for next time -- it's worth a blog post of its own.

New Year's Revolutions

2009-01-01T17:33:00.002-05:00

Hello and happy New Year!

I've been away from here, but I have been blogging -- at the Cold Iron Blog, where my Cold Iron Badge co-creator Patrick and I talk about the origins, process and future of CIB.

You can also follow me on Twitter, or friend me on Facebook, both of which I've been updating rather more frequently than this space.

Other than the Cold Iron Blog, though, I haven't been writing much over the past few months; my head has been in other spaces, and there's always the issue of time. Not of finding it, so much as managing it. But with the recent holidays, I've upgraded my tools in a way that I think will help a great deal -- my Christmas present from me and the family to myself was a netbook, one of the new generation of really small, light, efficient laptops. It weighs about a kilogram, and the battery works like a dream, so I can really take it anywhere. Now I can write with ease on my lunch hour at work, for instance.

The ghosts of Shakespeare and Robertson Davies are laughing at me. "You don't actually need a computer to write, you know," they're saying. "Or have you not heard of the bleeding-edge technologies that we call a pen and paper?"

Supercilious dead bastards.

The fact is, there are things that it is easier for me to write on a computer. Longhand is all very well for jotting down stray thoughts, or for outlines, ideas and character sketches -- things that involve me crystallizing my thoughts on paper. But for the actual writing, the things that other people are actually going to read, I just find it easier, faster, more efficient and more fluid to use a computer.

I'm going to push myself to write for at least an hour every day, more if I can make the time after the kids are in bed. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it's much more than I'm managing now, and I think it'll make a huge difference.

Because, after a long period of erstwhiling, and then a long process of de-erstwhiling by fits and starts, I feel like now is the time to really push forward.

There's so much I want to do. A couple of my screenplays have gone through the critiquing process in the Writers Group, and it's time for new drafts that'll polish them up. There's lots of exciting stuff coming up in Cold Iron Badge. Greg and I have been talking about launching a new Xeno's Arrow website, building our readership, and eventually merchandising and creating new material.

It's an exciting time, an exciting place to be in.

There was a lot of pain for me last year, but a lot of good, too -- my new job at the University and the launch of Cold Iron Badge were two big ones. I've been describing 2008 as the year I stopped falling.

That means that 2009 is the year to fly.

Back? From Erstwhile?

2008-08-03T15:09:00.003-04:00

Whew. It's been a busy time. In addition to all the usual drains on my time and energy that I inevitably go on about in this space (blah blah day job blah blah family blah), most of you probably know the latest thing that's been tugging at the sleeve of my life.

My new webcomic, Cold Iron Badge, launched last week on Modern Tales. You can read it here!

I think the launch went well, and the response has been really positive so far. Thanks to everyone who has already shared your thoughts!

Cold Iron Badge is around three-quarters written, and with our planned weekly update schedule -- with a new short scene appearing every Monday, there's plenty of time for me to finish it without too much deadline pressure.

By the way, that means that the next installment will be up tomorrow, so please do check it out!

But there was also a lot of other prep work. Talking with Patrick about all sorts of details related to the launch, logos and promotional images and all kinds of other stuff. Doing an interview with Patrick and Modern Tales editor Shaenon Garrity.

So, I've got a new webcomic up and running. It's not hypothetical any more. People I don't know can read it whenever they want. And Greg and I have been talking about reviving the Xeno's Arrow website and doing more to promote that project -- with the long-term goal of creating new material. And a couple of months back, as I mentioned, I was published in Weird Tales.

So, I've been busy. But also...

I think I might be back.

From erstwhile.

Which not only means that I'm noticeably busier, but also leaves me with the question of what this blog is for, now.

That's something I need to think about. Any thoughts you have would be appreciated.

Testing, Testing, One Two Three...

2008-07-17T12:55:00.001-04:00

This isn't really an update; I'm just checking to see whether it works when I update via Ping.fm. Man, do I ever love Ping. I can update my blog, Twitter, Identi.ca and my Facebook account from one site.I'm off to see if this actually works. If so... that's pretty sweet.

Here Comes The Sundry

2008-06-22T16:39:00.005-04:00

It's been a fairly hectic couple of weeks. Lots going on at work, and at home, and on the creative front as well.

All of it vital, productive, interesting background and developmental stuff that makes for lousy anecdotes.

Patrick and I are gearing up for the launch of Cold Iron Badge on Modern Tales. Greg and I are talking about some new things to do with Xeno's Arrow. I have a writers group meeting coming up this week.

Good stuff. It's keeping me busy. I'm thinking all the time. But it's just not a particularly interesting part of the process to anyone who isn't actually in it.

Sorry. There'll be plenty happening over the next couple of weeks. Around mid-July and August, things are really going to start popping -- and there'll be announcements before that. But right now, it's all in such early stages that there's nothing to tell.

Nothing Sundry About It!

2008-06-08T18:55:00.003-04:00

Cold Iron Badge! Modern Tales! July 2008!

I was due for a little good news, I think -- and, boy, did I get some! Cold Iron Badge will launch on Modern Tales this July, and I couldn't be happier.

What a trifecta: A prestigious venue for my project. The chance to bring new material to a new audience. The opportunity to work with Patrick... It's an amazing way for everything to come together for Cold Iron Badge.

Thanks to Modern Tales's editor, the illustrious Shaenon Garrity, for her support. To Patrick for his hard work and mad skillz. And to everyone whose kind words about the preview pages encouraged me to keep moving forward.

Patrick and I are still working on the details of the exact launch date. I'll definitely keep you all posted.

Feeding the Body, Feeding the Mind

I had dinner Saturday night with some of the old comics gang -- Greg, Tara Tallan and Rob "Tragic Lad" Clark. Getting the band back together is always a good time, but this occasion was particularly inspiring. I've been wanting a chance to pick Rob and Tara's brains about webcomics, promotion, and how best to use all the new web-based tools that have been developed over the past few years to facilitate both.

My brain is buzzing. So many ideas to explore, so many things to learn. So many opportunities! It's a little daunting and really exciting.

Plus, we had ice cream! Win!

I've Always Been A Twit, So This Was The Next Logical Step

I've joined Twitter, the social networking site that Rob Clark describes as a "micro-blogging platform". If you tweet on Twitter, or you want to, you can follow me here!

How Can I Think With A Brain This Full?!

Forgive me if I seem a little breathless. Over the space of a week I went from having a lot going on, but nothing much happening, to having a huge pile of happening on top of everything that's going on.

I'm literally tingling with excitement. Actually, that might just be the caffeine.

Regardless, there's going to be lots more for me to tell and to share over the next few weeks. Keep watching this space!

How Can I Be So Boring When So Much Is Happening?

2008-06-02T18:54:00.004-04:00

Just a quick update -- it doesn't really merit the venerable and honourable title of "Sundry", you see.

I have been very busy. Writer's Group was good! Progress on Cold Iron Badge continues! I baked a loaf of bread!

Yeah, the excitement never stops with yours truly, I tell ya.

Sundry, Bloody Sundry

2008-05-25T09:06:00.005-04:00

It's been a hectic three weeks. Lots going on at work, always stuff to do at home.

I've been working away on Cold Iron Badge -- Act 3 is still a bit of a bear, but that's more because it's turning out to be a longer script than I thought, not because of any insoluble issues in the narrative.

I mean, I knew that plot points that could be expressed in a single sentence of the outline ("Our heroes fight a giant clockwork banana. In space!") were going to take up rather more pages of script. But the ratio -- the number of script pages it takes to express a plot point -- has been higher for Cold Iron Badge than in my other comics work.

It progresses. Slowly. But it progresses. A related project, which is not so much on the creative side -- and which I'm not going to go into details about yet -- has been moving more quickly.

I Know Where My Towel Is

Today is Towel Day, when we honour the memory of Douglas Adams. It's a good day to know where your towel is, try a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster and, if you're especially ambitious, to try to throw yourself at the ground, and miss.

Rory Root and Robert Asprin

And as of this week, two more names that can only be honoured in memory from now on.

On Monday came the untimely death of Rory Root. Rory was not well-known outside of comics publishing and retailing, but within those realms he cast a very long shadow. His store, Comic Relief, was literally one of the best in the world, a model and inspiration for the industry. He was a tireless voice advocating for comics and graphics novels, and a supporter of Xeno's Arrow. I only had the pleasure of meeting him in person a couple of times, but I liked him very much and respected him tremendously.

He was a boundlessly energetic and positive person who did an unbelievable amount of good for the medium and business of comics. He will be greatly missed.

Then, on Thursday, Robert Asprin died. A writer of science-fiction and fantasy, his work was among my favourites when I was a teenager -- especially the Myth Adventures series of comedic fantasy novels. And although his writing and my own tastes eventually went in different directions, I still remember and cherish the delight I felt at enjoying his work for the first time. His style -- at least in the books of his I most enjoyed -- was breezy and sunny, full of wit and comedic asides. I suspect that it influenced my early development as a writer rather strongly.
He, too, will be missed.

I Didn't Really Want to End on a Down Note...

Let's see... my Writers Group meets this week. That'll be fun.

Oh, and Greg and I were finally shamed into reviving the long-moribund Xeno's Arrow Forum. Drop by to read all about it and chastise us for our lack of internet-savvy!

I may have some actual news over the next week or so -- it depends on the Cold Iron Badge-related matter I mentioned. I'll keep you all posted!

Sunday Sundries Raids Again!

2008-05-04T23:27:00.004-04:00

Gigantis: The Sunday Sundries!
The Volcano Sundries!
Sunday Sundries's Counter Attack!
Stephen: The Fire Monster!

(This barely relates to the actual subject matter of my post, by the way; I just like old-school Toho Godzilla movies. And most of them have many, many titles.)

Yesterday was Free Comic Book Day -- the comic book industry's big annual public outreach event. And a day devoted to getting long-time and first-time readers alike into comic book stores to discover the amazing depth and breadth of the medium of comics seemed like a fine occasion to get the old gang back together.

FCBD itself was fine, although I actually got to the Beguiling more or less at the end of the day. I did get some free comics -- titles I had never read before -- but I was more into our dinner plans for afterwards.

Getting my old comics posse back together -- in whatever permutation our busy lives allow -- is always fun. And it's always inspiring. Someone always has new art to show around, there are always new stories, new ideas, and new plans.

Saturday was no exception -- it fuelled the fire in my belly.

And the truth is, with work and family and all the day-to-day concerns that wear us all down, I need every little spark of passion I can get. It's hard to stay focused and excited about creative work when I can only eke out a few minutes at a time to actually do it, on the bus or on my lunch or late at night.

I'm feeling that excitement now. For Cold Iron Badge. For Xeno's Arrow.

Cool plans are being discussed. Awesome comics are being made. People who have been away from the game are getting back to it. And I want to be part of it all.

Thanks to Greg, Jeff, Chris, Tara, David and Adrian (even though we only saw you for about five minutes, Adrian). You inspire me. Let's do it again soon.

Or, uh, the BI-weekly Update...?

2008-04-27T17:23:00.004-04:00

This Year, April Really Is The Cruelest Month

Yeah, I'm a little out of my groove this month. I've been really tired for some reason, and having a hard time focusing on anything that isn't work/kids/sleep.

That, more than anything, is the reason for my not posting a Sundries last weekend. It's like the old Bloom County strip about the media trying to cope with a day when literally nothing happens. ("Nothing: Is it the new something?") It's possible. But it's embarrassing.

Slow Iron Badge

Chapter 3 of Cold Iron Badge progresses, but v...e...r...y... s...l...o...w...l...y. That's with a capital "...", if you're curious.

I've been writing on my lunch hour, even on the subway (I normally find public transit way too crowded and stressful to write, but you gotta use the time you've got, right?) So it is happening, albeit at a pace that frustrates me.

Part of the problem with this incremental approach is that the characters are still pretty new to me, so it can sometimes take a while for me to find their voices. And then I have to stop and go back to work.

I'd love to have a day, even an afternoon, to go heads-down and finish the chapter -- maybe May will be more conducive?

The Writers Group and the Screenplay

My Writers Group met last week, and another piece of my screenplay was up for discussion.

Hmm. Have I talked about the screenplay recently? I back-burnered the postmodern-y, genre-bending romantic comedy I originally brought to the group, and instead I've been offering pieces from the thriller I started, and blogged about, a couple of years ago.

It's about time for me to incorporate some of the great feedback I've been getting and write a new draft. One which, uh, actually finishes the script, which kind of ran out of gas at the Act 2/Act 3 transition and has been languishing ever since.

It's called Dark Green, by the way.

A Colder, Rainier, Better Week?

The weather in Toronto is supposed to get back to seasonal norms starting tomorrow -- rainy, and in the mid-single-digit Celsius range -- from the June-like temperatures we've been enjoying.

For all that, I think it might be a better week for me. I took a real kick at my sleep deficit today, and I'm feeling excited about both Cold Iron Badge and Dark Green. I'll keep you posted, of course.

I Should Just Call it the 'Weekly Update' or Something...

2008-04-14T23:07:00.004-04:00

Welcome to another lazy Sunday -- so lazy, it lasted through most of Monday!

Script Happens
Posting the latest Cold Iron Badge preview has been another kick in the motivator, and I've been moving forward with the script for Chapter 3. I'm at the stage where I need to get the stuff I've been writing in my notebook on my lunch break out of my notebook and into the computer, and carving out the time to do that has been another challenge.

You Can Get Pigtails & Potbellies Online?
My old friend Mike White returns to comics after several years away from the game with his new web strip, Pigtails & Potbellies. It's about a pig, a little girl who doesn't talk much, and a guy who makes Steve Dallas look like Steven Hawking.

Seeing new comics from Mike is just pure, unremitting joy -- every panel is so full of energy and fun! I can't recommend his work enough, so I'll just ask you this: Do you want to be happier?

Then read Pigtails & Potbellies.

Dreams Can Come True... Especially Weird Ones
Some of you will remember, back in January, when I posted It Turns Out I Have a Secret History -- about discovering that my great-grandfather, Victor Lauriston, had written short stories for the old pulp magazines. Including, to my shock and delight, for the great-grandfather of modern fantasy and horror fiction, Weird Tales. H. P. Lovecraft was featured in the same issue.

Through a fortuitous bit of web alchemy, Steven H. Segal, the editorial and creative director of Weird Tales -- yes, it's still going strong -- saw that post, and asked if I'd be interested in telling my story in the 85th Anniversary issue of Weird Tales.

To say that I was, yes, definitely interested would be to understate the case by several orders of magnitude. It's fair to say that email was the most exciting thing that happened to me in January -- and I got my new job that month.

So: My piece appears in the current issue of Weird Tales, the 85th Anniversary issue, #349. It's available in stores, or directly from the publisher.

I'm in Weird Tales.

Wow.

To say that this is a dream come true is not hyperbole, but a simple statement of fact. A weird dream, to be sure. But my dream.

And, just to give great-grandfather a run for his money? Also featured in this issue are luminaries like Ken Hite, Tanith Lee...

And Michael Moorcock.

I doubt I'll be able to top this one, but I'll have more updates next week, plus any one-off rants that time permits in between.

Cold Iron Badge Preview 2

2008-04-11T22:45:00.007-04:00

Pages 4 - 7 of Cold Iron Badge. This scene introduces our protagonist, by the way. (Click images to enlarge.)

Cold Iron Badge

By Stephen Geigen-Miller and Patrick Heinicke

Coming Soon

The Adventures of Sunday Sundries Across the 8th Dimension

2008-04-06T15:39:00.006-04:00

I'm once again invoking artistic license, and proceeding with numbering these updates as though there had been a 'Sunday Sundries VII' last week. Mostly because the Buckaroo Banzai reference was too much fun to wait another week for.

I skipped the update because, well, not a whole lot of note had been happening. I spent a lot of last weekend too tired to do much besides stare at the walls, after having coordinated moving the office to a new space that Friday.

No, I didn't have to do the actually lifting and carrying -- and thank goodness -- but the stress of being responsible for the whole deal wore me right out. Keep in mind, I've had my job for less than two months, and I was single-handedly dealing with organizing the whole move. Exciting, I learned a lot and the new location is great. But it was tiring.

But that was last weekend.

Writing!

Yes, I've been writing, and man does it ever feel good. I realized that it wasn't that I don't have any time -- it's that the time I do have wasn't allowing me to write in the way I was used to.

So the solution was a change of approach.

I've been writing on my lunch hour -- the new space is on the third floor of an office building, and there's a small cafe on the main floor. If I take a late lunch, it's pretty quiet and there's lots of space.

I wasn't sure what kind of results I'd get, having just under a hour to write. But it seems to be working out so far, as does the other big change -- writing longhand.

Yeah. Longhand. My laptop is old, clunky and has a lousy battery, so it would be a pain to drag along on my morning commute, and a bigger pain to try to use in the cafe.

But my notebook and a pen? Hella portable.

Old school, that's me.

Cold Iron Badge!

What have I been working on, this past week of lunch hours? I've been doing a bit of editing on a friend's project, but mostly I've been getting back to Cold Iron Badge. And I finally, finally seem to be getting some traction on my script for Chapter 3.

In more exciting news, Patrick has finished pencilling Chapter 1 -- congratulations! -- with a hefty chunk of those pages also inked and lettered. Which means that we'll have another preview for you shortly!

Coming Soon: Sunday Sundries Against the World Crime League!

There's a lot more to talk about -- especially the big online discussion that's developed over the past couple of weeks regarding the economics of webcomics, but that's a big enough topic to warrant a post of its own.

I'll try to marshal my thoughts on that sometime this week. Assuming that I don't have to move any more offices, that is!

Sunday Sundries VI: The Undiscovered Blog

2008-03-23T22:30:00.003-04:00

Well, I feel tres nerdy, dropping Star Trek references in the titles of the three most recent Sunday Sundries. But really: Not a lot of franchises get to six. It's Star Trek, Star Wars and various slasher series from the 80's about nubile adolescents being disembowelled. And I very much didn't want to call this update Sunday Sundries VI: I Stab Your Naked Head.

Wasn't this Supposed to be a Writing Blog?

So, it's the end of a long weekend -- no holiday on Monday for me. Progress on my writing continues to be of the barely-eked-out variety, but it is happening. While things are still going swimmingly at my job, life has been handing me a few lemons on other fronts lately -- enough to outstrip my capacity for lemonade-making.

My writers group meets this week, and I'm hoping that will help to re-energize me.

That's about it. I was hoping to pull it all together with a witty conclusion for you, but that seems to be beyond my capabilities tonight. Eh, they can't all be gems.

Sunday Sundries V: The Bad One Where I Ask Why God Needs A Starship

2008-03-16T18:29:00.004-04:00

Outrage quota met; now back to work!

Whew. The big Bill C-10 post is done (see below), and I'm glad. To be honest, it had turned into kind of a monkey on my back. I only have so much time so write, and when I use that time to blog about writing, rather than, you know, actually doing it... Well, let's be gentle and say that it feels like maybe not the best approach to time-management.

Rewarming the Cold Iron Badge

I'm going to work on the work-family-me time balance this week. I've set myself a goal of having two important things completed for Cold Iron Badge by the end of the Easter weekend. One is Chapter 3, which has been taking far too long. The other... well, no point in going into that unless it pans out. Honestly, it's nothing too exciting yet.

Dammit, Jim!

Hey... Come to think of it, why would God need a starship...?

I Say No to Bill C-10

2008-03-15T14:47:00.008-04:00

All right, you keep talking about this Bill C-10 business. What is it?

Bill C-10 is what's called an omnibus bill; that means that it bundles together a bunch of changes to many laws and treats them as one act of legislation in order to get them all approved in a timely manner.

It's apparently about 500 pages long, and mostly involves absolutely trivial changes to tax codes and related regulations. It was also a housecleaning bill, an effort to try to make changes that have been planned since the Liberals were in office.

It sailed through the House of Commons with approval by all the political parties.

That sounds efficient and non-partisan. What's the problem?

The problem is that, buried deep in the legislation, was this change to the rules governing tax credits for film and television production:

“Canadian film or video production certificate” means a certificate issued in respect of a production by the Minister of Canadian Heritage certifying that the production is a Canadian film or video production in respect of which that Minister is satisfied that

(a) except where the production is a treaty co-production (as defined by regulation), an acceptable share of revenues from the exploitation of the production in non-Canadian markets is, under the terms of any agreement, retained by

(i) a qualified corporation that owns or owned an interest in, or for civil law a right in, the production,
(ii) a prescribed taxable Canadian corporation related to the qualified corporation, or
(iii) any combination of corporations described in subparagraph (i) or (ii); and

(b) public financial support of the production would not be contrary to public policy.

Okay, blah blah blah party of the first part, eyes glazing over... Wait a minute!

Yeah.

"Contrary to public policy"? What does that even mean?

Apparently that would be at the discretion of the Minister of Canadian Heritage, but it would include "gratuitous" sex and violence, and other projects that include "criminal content".

Wow. Do a lot of people make Canadian movies and TV with criminal content?

According to representatives of the Ministry of Canadian Heritage itself? It has never happened.

Well, who decides what "gratuitous" sex and violence is?

A panel appointed by the Minister of Canadian Heritage, made up of representatives from the Ministries of Heritage and Justice.

What criteria would they use?

They either don't know or won't say.

Okay, that's kind of reactionary and heavy-handed, but this is public money, right? Maybe it shouldn't go to controversial projects?

That's where the argument gets even more complicated, I'm afraid. The tax credit system isn't "arts funding." Telefilm and the Canadian Television Fun do that sort of funding -- where money is paid out to creators to provide direct financial support to their projects.

The tax credit really is what it sounds like -- a credit towards money invested in the production of Canadian film and television, to compensate for the cost of salaries.

The tax credit, in other words, allows Canadians to profit by paying Canadians to make Canadian productions.

Because those salaries are a huge percentage of production expenses, the tax credit comprises a significant part of the budgets of Canadian film and TV. Because it's money investors/funders are guaranteed to get back, it has become a vital part of production budgets -- essentially as "in-kind" funding. And it has never been dependent on content in any way -- as long as a production qualifies as Can-con, it qualifies for tax credits.

Putting that previously-certain funding in jeopardy means putting the financial underpinnings of the entire system in jeopardy. It means that artists, producers and funders will be put in the position of having to self-censor -- deciding whether to risk their money on whether or not the Minister of Heritage and a panel of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats decide your project is "offensive."

Because the criteria, apparently, will be retroactive. A movie or TV production could be approved, then have its tax credits yanked after the fact.

The resulting investment chill would make it difficult to develop a project with any controversial, thought-provoking, transgressive or intellectually and artistically challenging content at all. Investors simply won't be able to risk it.

Whose stupid idea was this?

Prominent religious-right types in Canada were giving themselves rather public pats on the back over having convinced the Conservative government to move this law forward. Ironically, that was probably one of the key factors in stirring up public opinion against it.

The Conservatives deny it, saying in their own defence that the Liberals are actually the ones who cooked up that part of C-10. It's true; the idea for the provision originated some years ago, when Sheila Copps was Heritage Minister. There was an understandable -- although, you will notice, quickly forgotten -- uproar over a movie about Karla Homolka being eligible for tax credits. Just like every other movie and TV show that meets the existing guidelines (the guidelines are, basically, "no news, sports, reality shows, games shows or porn get tax credits.")

So the idea of introducing a "public policy" clause to the tax credit system was cooked up. But it was a bad idea.

I find the notion of cashing in on Karla Homolka's infamy absolutely disgusting. But as wiser people than I have pointed out, "Tough cases make bad laws." Panic legislation -- law made in a frenzy of overreaction to a single, egregious event -- tends to go much too far, much too fast, with far too little reasoned debate.

This is a classic example. Giving politicians and bureaucrats arbitrary power to decide what movies and TV shows can and can't be made? I don't care who thought of it; it's a bad, dangerous piece of legislation. I don't care who stops it; it just needs to be stopped.

The Liberals, incidentally, claim that the Conservatives tweaked the wording in a way that would give the Heritage Minister much more arbitrary power to decide what constitutes being "contrary to public policy", including the "after the fact" part.

But is it really censorship?

As I mentioned in my last post, that's a thorny issue. So thorny, that I'm going to stick with the short answer. Yes.

Come on. It's not really censorship, is it?

In the strictest, most semantic sense? No, no it isn't.

But in a real, practical sense the intent is clearly censorious, and the effect would be indistinguishable from censorship. The insidious and cowardly part is that because it isn't technically censorship, the government can deny that it's attacking freedom of expression while still making it impossible for movies and TV shows they disapprove of to get made.

Is this thing a done deal?

Not quite. As I mentioned, because C-10 was a 500-page omnibus bill that was supposed to only contain technical tax law changes that everyone had already agreed to, it sailed through the House of Commons with absolutely no scrutiny, and then went to the Senate -- normally pretty much a technicality.

Then someone actually read the thing. And spotted the new part. And a public uproar ensued. Almost everyone in Canadian film and TV blew their collective gaskets, free speech advocates joined in and the media started paying attention.

So the Senate yanked the Bill from moving on to third reading -- which would have passed it -- and sent it back to the Senate's Banking, Trade and Investment Committee for scrutiny. They have the power to propose changes to Bill C-10, and send the revised version back to the Commons. The Liberal majority leader in the Senate has promised that they will send it back with changes remove the censorious component of the Bill.

Wait. The Canadian Senate did something useful?

We were all surprised.

And what can we do?

You can speak out, so the Senators know that their leadership on this issue is appreciated, and their action supported by a broad spectrum of public opinion.

You can write to the Prime Minister, the Heritage Minister, and the leaders and culture critics in the opposition parties, so they know that we are opposed to Bill C-10 as it stands, and demand they withdraw any component of it that would directly or indirectly censor Canadian film and TV production.

You can join the Facebook group that was formed in opposition to C-10; there were a few hundred members when I joined, a day or so after news of the Bill's provisions swept through the industry. Now there are over 34,000. It's a great source for more background, contact info for sending letters and emails, and news about what others are doing to help stop C-10.

The stakes are nothing less than freedom of speech, the future of Canadian film and TV as both an industry and art form, and stopping the government from sneakily using tax policy to enforce a reactionary conservative social agenda.

Please do what you can. Join me in saying no to Bill C-10!

Sunday Sundries IV: The Funny One Where I Travel in Time to Save the Whales

2008-03-09T23:01:00.003-04:00

Something Semantic, Something Pedantic.

I keep trying to write something about Bill C-10, and why it's an odious attempt to use tax credits for film and TV production to attack freedom of expression. But I keep getting hung up trying to address the issue of whether it really, technically qualifies as censorship, or not.

I'm just going to have to do an end-run around the hair-splitting. C-10 post coming soon, with the censorship issue tidily ignored.

I Continue to Suck

I also still haven't made much creative progress; that makes three weeks running, and it's starting to piss me off. I need to find a way to deal with this, work, take care of the family, make time to write and do it without having to stay up so late that I turn into a freakin' sleep deprivation zombie.

Webcomics that Bring the Awesome

I mentioned Socks and Barney a little while ago, but it bears repeating: Steve Conley's political satire starring past, present and aspiring White House pets is smart, pointed and funny. And he occasionally quotes me!

And I totally have such a crush on Octopus Pie. Meredith Gran's strip about two young women living in Brooklyn is not only one of the best, and funniest Odd Couple riffs I've seen in a long time, it somehow manages to be scathingly sarcastic and adorable at the same time.

Daylight Saving Time: Threat or Menace?

Right. I've been staring at the screen trying to figure out a clever, dynamic way to wrap up this post for entirely too long. My brain in shutting down. I'm off to try to get my body clock straightened out, post-Spring Forward.

I've Read 3d6 Lame "He Failed His Saving Throw" Jokes Already

2008-03-04T22:24:00.004-05:00

I don't think I'll be surprising any of you when I state, for the record, that I am a king-hell geek.

And my route to geekdom wasn't science fiction and fantasy, which was only one part of my voracious appetite for books. It wasn't comics -- most people assume that, since I write the things, but I didn't really get into comics and graphic novels until university. That's Greg's fault, and a more fitting subject for another post.

No, it was role-playing games. And for that, you can blame Patrick, the co-creator and artist of Cold Iron Badge, who introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons, about twenty-seven years ago.

My first adventure was the legendary (and infamous) module, The Keep on the Borderlands. I played a Thief. I don't recall what his name was. He didn't survive my first game session, but I was hooked for life.

I discovered role-playing games and acting at very close to the same time, only about a year after my family moved from Toronto to London, Ontario. I couldn't have articulated it at the time, but I was feeling tremendous culture shock and alienation. I didn't fit in to my monocultural suburb where most of the other kids were budding Type-A-personality jocks. I needed to escape, and yet I needed to belong. I managed to find two ways to do both, and they both involved my personal ace: My imagination.

And, maybe because gaming and acting came into my life and became my passions together, there was always some overlap in my approach to them.

Acting was very much a game for me. And I brought acting to my role-playing games years before more immersive, emotionally intense gaming became popular. Which sometimes disconcerted my peers. They just wanted to kill things and take their stuff, and suddenly my elf would start asking whether it was really moral to break into these ancient tombs and loot them.

So, I role-played like an actor, and performed like a gamer. Did either suffer from the cross-pollination? No, I don't think so. And I also think, oddly enough, that both helped to make me a better writer.

Okay, the acting you can probably see. But am I reaching to say that D&D improved my writing?

Well, an old-school role-playing game, where you sit around a table and have to picture what's happening in your head with only some description and maybe a scribbled map and some simple miniatures, is a great exercise for the imagination. If you can't see it, vividly, you might miss something important.

A lot of games -- especially those old D&D adventures -- were all about the creative problem solving. (And having cool powers and killing things, but that's another story.)

Role-playing games are inherently collaborative. Success depends on collaboration between the players, and between their characters. The entire game is a collaboration between the players and the Dungeon Master. Is it a coincidence that I'm drawn to inherently collaborative media, that most of my best writing has been done in collaboration?

And, of course, role-playing games are about creating a vivid, exciting, compelling character, and then bringing that character to life by putting them through interesting and challenging situations.

And that doesn't even touch on running the game -- being the Dungeon Master. Which involves, for starters, bringing to life a cast of thousands, intricate plots, cooking up creative problems to be solved and inventing entire worlds to inhabit.

So yes: Gaming, like acting, was protein to my growing writing muscles. But drama club is one thing. It's marginally less uncool than being a D&D geek. Was the creative aspect really what mattered? Maybe you ask, weren't all those role-playing games escapist?

Hell, yes they were escapist! And thank goodness. Sometimes we all need to escape. Especially bright but socially awkward kids and adolescents who aren't sporty or pretty enough to be on the popularity fast-track.

Escape, yes. But also friendship. Fun. Empowerment. Imagination and a creative outlet. And through it all, no matter what other games I played, and no matter how much I loved them, there was Dungeons & Dragons. I played it first. I played for close to three decades. I'd be playing it now if I could.

Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died today. He was 69. I never met him. Never had a chance to thank him in person. So I'm going to thank him now.

Thank you, Gary. Thank you for giving me hours (days! weeks!) of fun. Thank you for helping me develop my imagination. Thank you for giving me worlds to play in, where I could be happy and safe while I grew and got stronger and learned who I am.

Thanks.

Sunday Sundries III: The Search for Sunday

2008-03-03T13:26:00.003-05:00

I missed updating on the "real" Sunday. So I am proclaiming today -- Monday, March 3rd -- a "Sunday of the heart." As a wise man -- okay it was Cowboy Wally -- once said, "I consider every day to be Sunday." It may not be accurate, but it's truthy.

Oh, sure... I could just accept not posting on Sunday and move on, but then I'd have to come up with another clever name, and I don't think I have it in me. Monday Meanderings? Monday Miscellaneary? Not The Sunday Sundries? Ugh. No. See what I mean? Let's just agree that today is Sunday.

But it wouldn't have made the hugest difference, to be honest; there isn't a whole lot to relate this week. Between work and a bug that I picked up (via the kids' day care? Through the doctors I work with? Bad oyster? Who knows...) I haven't done much on the creative front.

Oh, I finally read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Yeah, a little late. But I promised myself that wouldn't buy it and read it until the first weekend after my first paycheque at a new job, as a reward. So, I am now unafraid of spoilers and can get on with my life. I will impose a review on the rest of you if anyone is really interested.

I managed to read while sick, but not write -- so I haven't made as much progress on my screenplay or on Cold Iron Badge as I would have liked.

However, the next Cold Iron Badge preview should be ready for posting soon. It introduces the protagonist, who you haven't met yet.

Sorry. I'll try to be more interesting this week, and have a fun anecdote about moose-wrasslin' or some such next time out.

I should also post about Bill C-10, and how Canada's conservative government is trying to use what looked like a brain-numbingly dull omnibus bill of tax code revisions to try to impose their narrow ideology and intolerant Puritanism on funding for Canadian film and TV. But that'll have to wait until my brain clears just a little more.

Sunday Sundries 2: Electric Blog-aloo

2008-02-24T12:24:00.004-05:00

The weekly round-up returns. With a vengeance. Well, no. But it returns.

Socks & Barney Tips the Hat to an Ignorant Canadian!

Fellow comics guy Steve Conley is an old friend from the convention circuit. I was surprised to see that his new webcomic was political satire. Not because I didn't think he had the wit or cartooning chops to pull it off -- he's got those in spades. But Steve has always been in the running for the title of Nicest Guy In Comics; did he have the touch of Alien-esque acid in his blood that a satirist needs?

Oh yeah, he does. Socks & Barney, which is basically election year political commentary by the Clintons' cat and George W. Bush's dog, with a supporting cast of real and fictional pets of the various candidates, quickly became one of my daily must-reads. It's smart and funny and has just the right amount of acid.

Anyway, Steve runs news and commentary about the presidential race on his web page as well; I forwarded him a couple of links to articles in the Toronto Star about the Democrats Abroad primary (which Barack Obama won handily). He posted them, with a very kind tip of the hat to me. If you have any interest in the future of America and therefore, you know, the world, you really should check out Socks & Barney.

New Job: Awesome, But Time-Consuming!

My new job -- it's at the University of Toronto -- has been great so far, but the adjustment to my schedule has certainly impacted on my writing time. I'm getting up a bit earlier, although not a lot, because the kids are early risers anyway. And then I'm busy until after they're in bed. And then I'm pretty worn out, which doesn't make for the most productive writing time.

But the good energy that came from landing my job -- and the feeling of generally coming unstuck that came with it -- have balanced out the tiredness a bit. I've gotten back to Chapter Three of Cold Iron Badge, which is going to be challenging and a lot of fun to write. And I've been mulling over other projects, too, like finally finishing one of my back-burnered screenplays. More news as it happens, of course.

The Writers Continue to Group!

My writers group met last week, which was cool, because one of my projects was up for discussion. Unfortunately, illness and confusion led to a lower-than-usual turnout (and there are only five of us to start with), so Nicole and Dave had to bear the considerable burden of critiquing me on their own. But they were able to rise to the occasion admirably.

I submitted Act One of one of the long-neglected screenplays that I mentioned above, and came away with some really good feedback that will help me build a better second draft. Of course, I really should finish the first draft first...

More Cold Iron Badge Coming Soon!

Patrick just needs to finish some final edits, and then we'll be posting a second preview of finished pages for Cold Iron Badge. I'm very much looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Cold Iron Badge Preview

2008-02-16T23:19:00.011-05:00

As promised, the finished Cold Iron Badge teaser. These are the first three pages (click the image to enlarge)...

Cold Iron Badge

By Stephen Geigen-Miller and Pat Heinicke

Coming Soon

Sunday Sundries

2008-02-10T14:11:00.000-05:00

I Have A New Job!

I start Monday. This will obviously have an impact on my writing, but the funny thing is, it might be a good one. Unemployment is pretty enervating and depressing. I'll have less "free time" now, but I'll probably put it to better use.

Good Triumphs For Once!

The deal is tentative, and has yet to be voted on by the membership, but it looks like the Writer's Guild of America strike is over.

While the agreement they reached with the studios doesn't contain everything the WGA hoped for -- no new contract ever does, really -- the writers stayed strong, and united, and made significant gains.

Congratulations to the members of the WGA!

New Cold Iron Badge Teaser Coming!

At least one person has mentioned wanting to see a Cold Iron Badge sampler that contains, you know, words to go with the pictures.

I will be pleased to oblige. I'll post the finished version of pages 1 - 3 shortly (that's the same material I posted earlier, but with finished art, and yes... words.)

It Turns Out I Have a Secret History...

2008-01-23T15:03:00.000-05:00

So, I'm sitting here trying to decompress. I was supposed to have a job interview today, but a crisis interfered. I have yet to hear back to find out if I can reschedule and interview for the extremely good job I was hoping to land. Like I said, trying to decompress.

So, I'm trying to think about other things. And I remembered something really, really cool that I haven't had a chance to blog about yet.

A couple of posts back, in my response to the Eight Things You Didn't Know About Me meme, I mentioned being a fourth-generation writer.

The first generation (that I know of) was my great-grandfather, Victor Lauriston. For those of you keeping score at home: Yep, that's where my middle name, Victor, comes from.

He was best known as a journalist and historian; he wrote histories of Kent County (around Chatham, Ontario, his home) and its towns that are still considered definitive. There's a school named after him there. He was beloved and justly acclaimed.

He also wrote fiction. I've read a couple of his novels; one of them was pretty clearly a thinly-disguised autobiography about a young man in southwestern Ontario who wants to be a writer.

The protagonist of that novel is said, in passing, to have tried writing short stories for both U.S. and Canadian publications, without much success.

I never knew whether that was part of the thinly-veiled autobiography or not.

Until this week.

I was thinking about my great-grandfather, partly because of that blog post, and partly because he's the only other person in my family to focus on writing fiction at all. The last time I tried looking him up online, I got a lot of mentions of the school that bears his name, and a couple of citations of his books in other works.

But the web, of course, is ever-growing, so I thought it was worth another check.

Wow.

I found several websites devoted to short stories, and specific magazines. I found an incomplete list of Victor Lauriston's published short fiction (the site apparently tries to list every short short writer ever; this page starts with the LAU's, but you'll still need to scroll down.)

And check out that list! My great-grandfather wrote pulp. He wrote mysteries. Westerns. Thrillers. Adventure stories.

He was published in Black Mask. And Argosy! Eighty years ago, my great-grandfather was in on the ground floor of the genres that I write in today.

That's amazing. That's awesome.

But that? That wasn't even the jackpot. The reason I know that the list that I linked to above is incomplete is that I found another online reference to a published story by Victor Lauriston. That reference is on a site devoted to a particular magazine.

His story, 'A Changeling Soul', appeared in the January, 1925 issue of that publication.

Of Weird Tales.

Weird Tales!

Weird Tales, to put all this into a little context, was a seminal pulp magazine. It created the modern horror and fantasy genres as we understand them, just as other pulps of the day launched modern science-fiction.

How seminal was Weird Tales? Some of the other writers published in the very same issue were legendary figures like Frank Belknap Long and E. Hoffman Price.

Oh, and some guy called H. P. Lovecraft.

Something that I thought was, y'know, just me writing weird tales has suddenly turned into a family connection to Weird Tales. H. P. Lovecraft probably read my great-grandfather's story. My great-grandfather probably read Lovecraft's.

It's a little dizzying to suddenly perceive a legacy that stretches back across generations, and ties me, however tenuously, to the deepest roots of my chosen field. And I know it sounds kind of goofy, but it's somehow incredibly validating. My striving is connected to history -- family history, and the history of the genres I love -- and that makes it seem almost epic in scope.

Now, of course, I have to track down the January, 1925 issue of Weird Tales.

I wish I could let my great-grandfather know that I, for one, consider his achievements as an author of short stories to be profoundly impressive.

And man, do I wish that Weird Tales had a "legacy writers" clause...

Fear: Is it really the mind-killer?

2008-01-19T23:49:00.000-05:00

I've been blogging for long enough that I know that people are actually reading this thing (I thank both of you), and I'm starting to get a little more comfortable with all the blogosphere stuff.

Like, as I did with my previous post, passing along online memes. Or using the term "Friend of the Blog."

I have just now elected Brandon Laraby a Friend of the Blog. We've never met or spoken. But I commented on his blog once, and he replied. In online terms, that makes us BFF's, so a Friend of the Blog he is.

Brandon, like me, is an aspiring writer who's blogging the process and experience of trying to break in. But he's a bit more audacious than I am -- the goal he's set for himself is being the creator of his own original TV series. Check out A Tale of a Boy and his TV Show, and follow his adventures.

As you can imagine, one reason that Brandon's blog interests me is that we seem to be on very similar journeys, albeit at rather different stages of our lives. But recently, a particular post hit me, and it hit me like an overused metaphor.

Because what Brandon is writing about here is - I was going to apologize for the presumptuousness of putting words in the mouth of someone that I don't actually know, but then I thought, "No. I'm a writer. That's what I do!"

Anyway what I think he's writing about is something that I have also been dealing with in my own writing: Fear.

Yeah, fear.

The fear that drives us, as writers, away from certain choices, certain kinds of and approaches to material, and towards others. Brandon has I think, and to his credit, confronted his fear; he blogs about realizing that he needs to follow the impulse that's pushing him towards creating darker, more intense material.

I need to confront the fear.

The fear of my ideas. Of the work they would lead to. Of the places I'd go, the parts of myself I'd be visiting, to do justice to those ideas.

I don't necessarily consider myself a comedic writer, but I do pride myself on writing witty characters. I don't write comedies; I write dramas about people who just happen to be funny.

But what that sometimes means is that my characters and I are hiding behind irony, banter and word-play. Hiding from real emotion.

There are stories I want and need to tell that will require me to convey, and to feel, real emotions. Dark, scary emotions. The kind you can't portray with a witty quip, or a quick montage of a happy couple running through a field with balloons.

And I'm scared of those feelings. Scared of anger, pain, hatred, despair. Scared of fear.

But Frank Herbert was right: Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

It's okay to be scared of the darkness, scared of what I'll need to confront if I go down into the bad places inside of me. But I can't let that fear rule me. If I do, I'm limiting myself as a writer, and as a human being too. It's good to be clever, witty and entertaining. But I can go farther, if I don't let fear hold me back. It would be wrong to let fear obliterate my stories, or my art.

So that's why I thank Brandon Laraby, who I've never met, and who is a Friend of the Blog: He reminded me that I need to face my demons.

Eight Things

2008-01-16T15:37:00.001-05:00

It had to happen sooner or later: Member of the blognoscente, all around smart guy and friend-of-the-blog Rob 'Tragic Lad' Clark tagged me with a blog meme.

Well, there are worse ways to kick-start blogging in the new year. So, without further ado...

Eight Things You Didn't Know About Me

I was almost an actor

I came out of high school having been a die-hard drama-club member. I had found friends, community, acceptance and a love of the theatre. I had a virulent case of the acting bug. Nothing, I once said, made me feel more alive than acting. Oh, one more thing: I was good.

I applied to every Canadian university with a decent theatre program (both of them) and got into York University.

Now, theatre students at York generalize for their first year, then specialize into streams. Some streams require an audition - including, needless to say, acting. I was accepted.

My short version - the cute anecdote version - is to say that I learned something very important in university: I learned that I didn't want to be an actor.

The longer version is that I didn't really fit into the acting program -- maybe I was too cerebral, maybe I just didn't get it -- and I wasn't asked back for third year. That by itself might not have been enough to stop me from acting, although it was a big blow to my confidence. But so many other things came up at the same time. There were personal and family crises that sapped my strength and focus and threw me into a pretty serious depression.

On the less-miserable side, it was also the time that Greg and I starting developing and writing Xeno's Arrow, which gave me a creative focus and outlet outside of acting.

Not being an actor may be one of the main reasons that I'm a writer.

My fifteen minutes may, in fact, already be up

I spent the summer of '93 living in Toronto in a basement apartment with some friends, scrambling from odd job to odd job. The phone sales jobs were lousy, didn't last and the less said about them the better.

But then I started getting work as an extra.

If you don't have a really expensive lifestyle, or too many responsibilities, being an extra is great. Decent hours at about minimum wage, but with free food and (because it's actually more economical to keep 100 extras waiting around than it is a small film crew, or 1 star) very little actual work. A lot of time is spent reading, playing cards, flirting - everything I would have been doing anyway, but for money and all the cheap coffee I could drink.

I didn't get work on anything that'll stand the test of time, but there is a movie where you can not only pick me out of the background, but wherein I actually fill the screen for a few seconds.

Yeah. PCU.

The scene I'm most clearly visible in - the one where my mug is front-and-centre on the screen, briefly but recognizably - was actually one of the funnier moments in the film (and I say that without pride, since it's not like I was "acting" or anything - I look like that because I was wicked hung over that day. So, thanks, Sean and Michelle!)

Not only that, but apparently that same scene was included in the theatrical trailer (on the "put all the good jokes in the previews" principle, I assume.)

So, here's a sobering thought: It's possible - it's likely! - that although PCU. was hardly a blockbuster, between the trailer and the movie itself, more people have seen me in it then ever have, or ever will, read everything I've written put together.

I have been way naked in public.

Yeah, it was a frosh week thing. You may have done this yourself, or heard of it - a competition called a "clothes line." Everybody splits up into teams, starts to get undressed, and lines up their clothes on the ground. Longest line wins.

Well, my team didn't win, but that wasn't for lack of trying on my part. I got down to my drawers. And I was thinking. Or rather, not really thinking. You know, frosh week is an exciting time, and you only get one chance to make a first impression, right?

So yes. I went All. The. Way.

And that was how most of the people in residence met me.

(Oh, bonus fact: Someone who is now a well-known Canadian comedian and TV star was on my team. But she only went as far as her skivvies. You know who you are...)

I have climbed the CN Tower

People who only met me before or after the time in my life that I was in shape probably don't know just how fit I actually was. The difference between "thin Stephen" and, uh, "not-quite-so-thin Stephen" is almost as dramatic as the difference between "thin Elvis" and "not-quite-so-thin Elvis." I was at the gym an average of five times a week, alternating between hard cardio and weights. I was never a super-cut, bo-hunky jock - I don't have the bone structure or the willpower to avoid fluids for days at a time - but I was fit.

How fit? One fine October day in 2002, I climbed the CN Tower.

Okay, I didn't free-hand scale the exterior or anything. The CN Tower Stair Climb is an annual charitable event in Toronto to benefit the United Way (there's another one that happens every spring that benefits the World Wildlife Fund). You sign up as an individual or as part of a company team, get donations and you climb the stairs from the ground floor to the Observation Deck of one of the tallest free-standing structures in the world.

How many steps is that? One thousand, seven hundred seventy-six.

Yeah, I was fit. While I'm all for supporting the United Way, I was mainly doing it as a symbol to myself - a symbol of progress and achievement. I had done a lot to lose weight, to make more active, more healthy, more fit.

Since then - years of stressful jobs and all the anxieties that go with parenthood - I've gotten pretty far out of shape again. But I still, once upon a time, climbed the freaking CN Tower. I know what I can do when I really try, really go for a goal. And now, my goal is to do it again. Maybe in the fall of this year, maybe in the Spring of 2009. But I've done it before, and I will do it again.

My time, by the way, was 18 minutes, 36 seconds.

I'm a fourth-generation writer

My parents were both newspaper reporters. My grandmother - my dad's mother - was also a reporter, and is still a working writer. Her father was an acclaimed journalist, historian, and novelist. There's a school named after him in Kent County.

So I'm in the fourth - currently, the least professionally successful, but I am continuing the legacy - generation in my family to make writing a vocation and a career.

That makes me unusual in my circle of friends - I never experienced growing up in one of those families where writing (or another creative pursuit) was considered impractical, exotic, or weird. Writing was just something people did.

The ink in my veins? It runs very deep.

I have seen the Greys

Like many of my fellow Gen-X-ish types, I went through a conspiracy theory phase. It was the zeitgeist, I guess. X-Files was on the air, and books and comics were all about "conspiracy chic."

The embarrassing part is that I managed to develop and nurture my obsession without the benefit of pot.

But yeah, I lapped that stuff up with a spoon. I didn't really believe there were Nazi UFO bases at the South Pole, or Satanist clones on the Moon, but it sure was fun to think about. And I did believe that governments were in league with the military-industrial complex to do horrible things. Which they are, but I took the obvious and true examples of such as proof of the esoteric, baroque, whacked-out shit.

I was widely read in the field. I thought about this stuff all the time.

And there came a time that I was working back-to-back double shifts at my horrible, stressful, crappy dead-end service job at the infamous Fun City. Back-to-back double shifts, for nearly two weeks. I wasn't sleeping much, or well. I was living on coffee and candy bars. And I was re-reading Communion to relax.

And there came a night that I saw them. The Greys. The little grey aliens with the big heads and eyes. The Zeta Reticulans.

Oh, just out of the corner of my eye, in the dark. I didn't think they'd taken me anywhere or, you know, done any probing. But I saw them.

And, fortunately, the rational part of my brain was strong enough - awake enough - to say, "Dude. That didn't actually happen. You need to calm down."

I went to bed. Got a good night's sleep. Went cold-turkey on conspiracy theories. Oh, and I read Foucault's Pendulum to deprogram myself.

I thank my lucky stars that the internet wasn't quite as ubiquitous in those days. If, instead of getting a good night's sleep, I had had the option of going online and "researching" what I'd just seen, I might have found some sort of validation for it. And that could have started me down the slippery slope to the Land of Tinfoil Hats.

As it was, I escaped unscathed, but with a keen understanding of just how closely we skate to the edge of the irrational, and a newfound skepticism that has served me well over the years.

I cried at the end of 'A.I.'

Actually, I wept. Like a baby.

I know. I know, okay? I'm not going to get into the details; they're very personal. I'm a good enough writer to know when I'm being gamed by the story, and I knew Spielberg was gaming me even as the tears were running down my cheeks.

I know. I know. You know what? I don't have to justify myself to you. Moving on...

I have calmed down a lot

I have a bit of a reputation - especially, and this is ironic, but understandable, among my dear friends who have known me for a long time - of being very verbally combative. Of delighting in debate and argument for their own sake. Of uncalled-for, pointless sarcasm - not necessarily wit, but sarcasm of megascovillean proportions. I could be freaking venemous, sometimes in the service of something I really believed in, but just as often as an intellectual exercise or to vent my emotions.

You know, I don't really have time for that crap anymore.

A lot has changed since my blistering-snark-at-the-drop-of-a-hat days. I'm older. I'm not an underemployed slacker anymore. I've kissed girls. I've developed a thicker skin. There are only so many hours in a day, and I don't even get to spend enough time doing important, fun and fulfilling stuff that makes me and other people feel good - why waste precious minutes being angry or making someone else feel bad?

Oh, I'm still sarcastic, no doubt about it. I still enjoy banter - in my circle, that tends to be how we roll. But I don't seek argument for its own sake. I try to have a sense of proportion. I avoid invective, even in discussions where I feel strongly about an issue.

I mean, who wants to be remembered - by their friends, let alone everyone else - as "that argumentative, sarcastic, kind of mean guy"?

Not me.

So yes. I have calmed down. A lot.

Thus endeth the epistle.

I actually doubt that anyone who doesn't know at least a couple of those things is following my blog. Conversely, anyone who knows all eight is probably married to me. Do let me know if anything you've read was genuinely a surprise, okay?

As per Rob's post, I'm going to tag some friends and fellow-bloggers in the hopes of passing the meme along. Let's see... who's blogging?

Okay, how 'bout Dilys, Tara, Rachel and Michael? And anyone else who feels inspired!

I Wish You A Brave New Year

2007-12-31T18:10:00.000-05:00

I don't really have a lot to add to the title of the post, actually.

I'm finally over my cold/bronchitis/mystery bug. 2007 -- really, a pretty bad year for me -- is finally over. I've been regrouping and planning, and I'm looking forward to a 2008 that will be full of changes and new opportunities.

Happy New Year.

Ha Ha Ha Cough

2007-12-17T11:59:00.000-05:00

Funny story: I'm still sick. I finished my course of antibiotics on Thursday, and while I'm definitely not as sick as I was before, I'm still getting bouts of violent, pull-a-muscle intense coughing.

I'm going to give it a couple more days with over-the-counter cold medicine and as much sleep as I can muster, and then I'm probably going to see a doctor again. Hopefully, a different one.

So, no writing to speak of. I'm definitely well enough to think again, and that's a welcome improvement. But pulling together the energy to write -- and just as importantly, the time, what with the kids and trying to rest -- that's been a challenge.

I feel like a European in 1914: I'm still hoping it'll all be over by Christmas. But I'm also entertaining the possibility that my wish could be an equally naive one.

Devil What Needs A What Now?

2007-12-10T20:18:00.000-05:00

"Devil Bunny Needs a Ham"

"You and your friends are living pleasant and complete lives in Happyville. You are highly trained and well-paid sous-chefs, who have decided to climb to the top of a tall building, as fast as you can.

Devil Bunny Needs a Ham. And he's pretty sure that knocking you off the building will help him get one.

Perhaps he is right. Perhaps he is not."

Devil Bunny Needs A Ham was a great early release from the inimitable folks at Cheapass Games, a company based on the idea that board games don't have to be expensive, since people already have all the stuff that makes them expensive -- like dice, and counters. It didn't hurt that their games are invariably easy to learn and great fun to play. (Like Kill Dr. Lucky, a very unofficial prequel to Clue, where players compete to do in the hard-to-kill titular character.)

Anyway, Devil Bunny Needs A Ham -- the title is so much fun to say and type that I'm not going to bother abbreviating it -- is a simple game. The players compete to be the first to climb a building. There is a random element that will knock you down (make you move back) if it lines up with you on a vertical line on the game board.

The random element is, yes, the eponymous Devil Bunny. And this is what I love about the concept: The designers at Cheapass Games obviously, at some point during the creation of this game decided that a pointless back-story was yet another element of board games that was completely unnecessary.

Seriously. Why does any board game not based on a licensed property need a backstory? Players aren't told that Battleship is actually about the Battle of Midway. Monopoly is theoretically about real estate moguls in Atlantic City, but you don't need to know that to play, and it's never mentioned in the rules.

So why are you trying to get to the top of a tall building? Because that's what you decided to do.

What's trying to stop you? Devil Bunny. Why? Because he Needs A Ham.

Devil Bunny Needs A Ham has become my personal catch-phrase for "Why ask why?"

But more importantly, I think that it's important to remember that any narrative, no matter how elaborate the continuity or the backstory, has at some point if you examine it closely enough, a "Devil Bunny Needs A Ham" moment. A point at which the logic of the backstory has to be reduced to "Just because."

Just because it's more fun that way.
Just because we need dramatic tension.
Just because it's the premise.
Just because Devil Bunny Needs A Ham.

Why doesn't Peter Parker patent and license his web-fluid/web-shooter invention, providing a huge boon to law enforcement while solving his personal financial problems forever? Because Devil Bunny Needs A Ham.

Why doesn't the Federation consistently use transporter back-ups to bring back the dead? Because Devil Bunny Needs A Ham.

Why does Dorothy want to go back to a crappy dustbowl farm in the middle of the Depression when she could live in Oz? Because Devil Bunny Needs a Ham.

Why can't the Professor from Gilligan's Island, a polymathic genius in every other respect, fix a damn hole in a boat? Because... well, you get the picture. It involves Devil Bunny and Ham.

Because if we did that, there wouldn't be a story.

Screenwriters have a term for what happens for when the premise or element that makes there be a story gets removed -- through studio notes, rewrites, whatever: It's called "pulling the pin."
(If a development executive said, "How about they just fix the boat?" That would be pulling the pin.)

I'm not sure, however, that there's a widely-used phrase for the logical inconsistency, the "just because" factor in a premise, backstory or continuity that we have to accept at face value in order for the story to happen.

But I have one. If you ask me, I'll say, "Dude. Because Devil Bunny Needs A Ham."

Yeah, I don't think it'll catch on either.

My Lungs Strike A Blow For Freedom

2007-12-10T18:26:00.000-05:00

The freedom to completely incapacitate me. My "cold" -- yes, I'm still sick -- is actually bronchitis, according to the doctor at the walk-in clinic down the street.

So, no writing. I've barely been able to think. It felt like I had a glue factory in my head, and the constant, violent coughing was, if possible, less fun than it sounds.

Thanks to sleep, antibiotics and prescription cold medication, I seem to be on the mend.

Or I Could Just Be A Glutton For Punishment

2007-12-02T23:04:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking about short fiction again, lately.

Over the past few years, I've written the occasional short story -- including two pieces that I wrote as part of my back-from-erstwhiling.

Prose is, in general, something I that flounder with. I don't know how novelists do it -- 250, 300, 500, 800 pages of characters and plot and description and all the rest?

But it's not just a matter of sustaining a novel, because the same thing has cropped up in my short pieces too. I'm good at character and dialogue, and I can handle plot. They aren't the problem.

It's description. Every single time.

I worry, too much, about my descriptive prose. I worry that I've described too much, or not enough. I worry that I'm being too direct and explicit, or too poetic and opaque. I worry about the voices of my characters, and the discrepancy I see between their dialogue and the narration when I use the first person.

I don't know why I over-think this stuff. I'm not exactly a master of plot, either, but I don't seem to get hung up on it.

That's why it's kind of a big deal for me to pull my short stories out of the trunk, and dust them off.

I have one piece that probably just needs a little tweaking, and then can go to market. That one, I've actually already submitted to four publications with no takers so far. I'm not sure why -- I think it's quite good. I might make it my next writers group submission and get some more feedback.

I have another piece that I recently submitted to a short story contest, so we'll see how that goes. It's pretty solid as well.

And there's a third story that needs some major clean-up. (Among other things, I switched from the third to first person half-way through.)

So, given my anxieties around prose, why am I doing this?

For one thing, I'd like to at least try to confront my anxieties around writing prose.

And I have these stories, and they aren't doing me any good just sitting on the hard drive collecting... well, not dust. Random electrons, I guess.

Also, short fiction -- especially in genre fiction, which is what I tend to write -- is a far more open medium than most to newcomers and "emerging writers."

And although the money isn't big -- one of the reasons that it's a comparatively easy market to break into -- getting paid anything for my work would provide some much-needed validation and ego-boosting right about now.

So, I'm going to review the three short stories that I think are solid enough, and finished enough. I'm going to rewrite where I have to. And I'm going to start getting the work out there.

There you go: The first, and probably simplest part of my plan for the New Year. Keep good thoughts in your head for me, okay? It's a simple plan, but it still involves wrestling with a demon or three.

Just Feeling A Little Calendar Shock

2007-12-01T23:00:00.000-05:00

It's December.

We're putting up the Christmas tree tomorrow.

2007 is gearing up to wind down, and I know it's trite, but I don't know where it all went.

As the end of the year approaches, I'm thinking -- of course -- about 2008.

Plots. Plans. Schemes. Dreams. Things I want to change. Things I want to stay the same.

There's going to be lots to consider, and lots to discuss. I'll keep you posted.

Solid in my Solidarity

2007-11-29T14:55:00.000-05:00

My cold has been pushing back against my immune system, so I've been a little too low-energy to write or blog much.

I did, however, make it out to the rally to support the WGA on Wednesday.

There was marching and chanting; I walked the line. It was very cool. I was right next to novelist and screenwriter Tanya Huff. I saw screenwriter/arch-blogger/ringleader Denis McGrath, but he was wicked busy leading rings, and I was wicked busy marching and chanting, so I didn't have a chance to introduce myself.

Oh, and it turns out David Cronenberg was there, but I didn't know it at the time.

Solidarity! Rally Wednesday to Support the WGA!

2007-11-26T23:05:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday, November 28th, I'm going to be part of the International Day of Solidarity with the members of the Writers Guild of America -- and I hope you will too!

Members of the Writers Guild of Canada are rallying in Toronto in support of the WGA and their strike for fair treatment and fair compensation.

In Toronto, WGC members and other supporters (that's where I fit in) are meeting from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM, outside the former Hummingbird Centre (now called the Sony Centre) on Front Street just east of Yonge. All are welcome!

Rallies will also be taking place in Montreal, and in Australia, Ireland, France, the U.K. and other countries around the world -- it's truly an international event!

Join us, and support the writers. Solidarity! Forever!

(I got the details from Denis McGrath's blog -- which is an amazing resource for anyone interested in screenwriting and the Canadian film and TV industries -- and from the unoffical WGAw strike blog United Hollywood.)

And Sometimes, My Subconscious Is Just Messing With My Head

2007-11-25T18:20:00.001-05:00

This morning, I got up for about an hour, got the kids out of bed and gave them some juice, all the usual AM stuff. Then Sarah (my co-habiting co-parent) took over the Captain's Chair while I went back to bed.

Which was great, but I must have spent the entire three extra hours of sleep I got in REM, because I dreamed, and dreamed, and dreamed.

Now, I don't necessarily believe that our dreams always have deeper meanings. Maybe yes, maybe no, and maybe they're just Rorschach blots that only mean as much as we think they do.

But these dreams made me wonder. And wonder. And wonder.

This one was by no means the strangest, but it was perhaps the most inscrutable.

Sarah and I were at a large stadium, watching a track and field kind of thing. The entire crowd -- including us -- was excited, because of the main event: A young boy, about eight or ten, was trying to break a world record by running more laps than anyone else in history. And it looked like he was going to pull it off. He ran, and ran.

We went down to meet him when he took a quick break (even my dreaming mind knows that Guinness allows breaks). He was wrapped in a towel, surrounded by well-wishers. Sarah and I had just shaken his hand when suddenly, we all heard the news.

The little boy had just been elected Pope.

He smiled.

And I thought, "Well, here's a Pope who won't have any trouble matching John Paul II's record for longevity."

Now, for some reason, I have an intuition that this dream has something to do with my writing. Maybe just because my other dreams were so clearly telling me something about other parts of my life (but that's a story for, well, never, because they were very weird and personal).

Regardless, I'm having a little trouble figuring this one out. Is my subconscious trying to tell me something, and if so, what? Or is my dreaming mind just being a dick again?

I could use some feedback on this one. Any thoughts?

Rabbits Can't Count Higher Than Five -- But I Can

2007-11-24T22:42:00.001-05:00

I should have been more clear, in my post yesterday, that I wasn't naming "My Top Five" webcomics, but "Five of My Top" webcomics. I was focusing more on putting together some thoughts that would help my answer my question than on sharing the webcomics love.

There are, most definitely, more than five webcomics on my "must read" list.

I read Diesel Sweeties every day. And, to keep with the theme of yesterday's musings, I should add that I'm not quite sure how I heard about it. Oh, wait... yeah! I saw the t-shirts for sale at the Beguiling! And they were smart, and funny and ironic, and about robots. And I thought, "Well, if the comics are as good as the shirts..." They are.

I get my daily dose of Doonesbury online now. So I never need to buy a newspaper again.

As Tara points out in her comment on my post, our friend Sean Bieri runs the always funny Jape weekly at Serializer.net (part of the Modern Tales family of web sites that are also home to both Galaxion and Xeno's Arrow). We've known Sean since 1994 or thereabouts, from many Artists Alleys at many Detroit and Chicago comic cons.

Another friend who migrated online from the world of print is the brilliant Carla Speed McNeil, whose awe-inspiring "aboriginal SF" series Finder appears online before being compiled into trade paperbacks. We know Carla from many conventions when were all slogging through the mud of the self-publishing trenches.

And of course, the wild steampunk adventure that is Girl Genius, which I have adored since it was printed on paper, back in the day. I've been reading Phil Foglio since his 'What's New, with Phil and Dixie' strips ran in the back of issues of Dragon magazine. And that was in the early and mid-80's. Crap. I'm old.

Oh, and I read the gamer-geek workplace sitcom PvP, although I get annoyed with Scott Kurtz once or twice a year. Not because of the strip, which is consistently amusing in a low-brow, Family Guy sort of way, but because he writes something in his comments section that makes my blood boil. But I always get drawn back in, because his strip is just that funny. I think I heard about it from my old friend Michael.

And I've been getting back into Sinfest, via a recommendation by another old convention chum, online comics reviewer Johanna Draper Carlson. Sinfest is like a philosophical hip-hop frat-boy version of Bloom County.

I figured a list of five would give me enough to go on in terms of figuring out what draws me to a webcomic -- and as you can see, the same reasons do keep coming up in my other favourites, including yesterday's sixth mention, Rachel Hartman's Return of the Mad Bun.

I consistently follow creators that I appreciated in print when they move online. Reviews, criticism and commentary play a big role in drawing me in. Word-of-mouth is vital.

As I begin thinking about how to get more people to read both my existing webcomic and my upcoming webcomic, I'd like to hear from anyone else who has thoughts on the subject.

What gets you to try a webcomic?

On the Mend and Thinking Again

2007-11-23T13:54:00.000-05:00

Well, my cold seems to be receding at last, after more than a week. Not fun, but it beats the two-month cold I had around this time last year by, well, about seven weeks.

I expect to have my brain re-combobulated enough to start doing actual creative work again some time over the next couple of days.

Webcomics. I'm thinking about webcomics quite a bit, these days. In addition to creative questions (what can I do to make a good webcomic?) and more mercenary issues (what can I do to make money from a webcomic?), I've been wondering about how people - readers - discover webcomics.

That lead me to think a little harder than usual about how I have discovered webcomics. In no particular order, here are my five of my favourite (currently running) webcomics, and how I discovered them:

Order of the Stick
Read about it on Eric Burns's and Wednesday White's webcomics review blog, Websnark. At about the same time, my friend Rob (a.k.a. Tragic Lad) sent me a link to the very same installment that Eric Burns had written about. I followed the link. I liked. I read through the archives. I'm hooked.

Achewood
This strip was getting a lot of online buzz during a major story arc about a year-and-a-half ago, the legendary 'Great Outdoor Fight.' Again, I read about it on Websnark first. Burns and White were both raving about Achewood. I gave in and clicked on the link the day they discussed the strip where Ray Smuckles rips a guy's freaking face right off. And wow. And I liked. And I read through the archives. And yeah, I'm hooked.

Questionable Content
Essentially a relationship-driven sitcom about twentysomething slackers, which is the kind of story that I can still get really into, if it's smart enough, even though I am no longer a twentysomething slacker. Questionable Content features the relationships of a group of twentysomething slackers who, yeah, are friends and have relationships and hang out in the same coffee shop. But then I found out two things: First, this strip brings real depth of characterization and emotion, creating genuine drama, and second, three simple words - nutty robot hijinks! I read some commentary by, yes, Eric Burns. Followed the link. Yup, read the archive and got hooked.

Galaxion
I've mentioned Galaxion before; it's a sometimes-funny, sometimes-romantic, and always gripping science-fiction epic by my old friend Tara Tallan. It features the crew of a starship who may or may not be stranded in a parallel universe after a hyperspace experiment goes horribly right. I've known Tara for about fifteen years, and I've eagerly followed Galaxion through a couple of previous incarnations, so when it debuted as a webcomic it automatically went to the top of my Must Read List.

Dinosaur Comics
Ryan North's comic is a minimalist-art, dialogue-heavy strip with obscure and surreal jokes, pop-culture references and goofy puns. Featuring a Tyrannosaurus Rex and his friends. Oh, and the art is exactly the same every day - only the text changes. It's brilliant. It's the sort of thing I would have created if I were about a decade younger, and much cooler than I ever was. Not many comics, no matter how clever, can make me laugh out loud, and this one is a delightful exception. Back when comics writer Warren Ellis's online community, The Engine, was still active, Ellis would post Ryan North's daily strips. I liked. I followed the link. But I didn't delve too closely into the archives, because that way lies madness.

Some Sort of Conclusion
Well, the key points are pretty obvious. Word-of-mouth, or in this case click-of-link, is what got me reading four of these five webcomics. In many cases, backed up by commentary/analysis/ speculation, or by multiple recommendations. People I know and trust, and people I don't really know but whose opinions I respect, have a far greater influence on me than advertising. Positive reviews are a pull-me-in factor, especially if they're grounded in some sort of analytical thinking.

So, let me ask, you hypothetical multitudes: What webcomics do you read? How did you discover them? Why did that process of discovery work? Pray elucidate.

And a Brief Post-Script
Oh, and my friend Rachel Hartman's Pau-Henoa comics, on Girlamatic under the name The Return on the Mad Bun, are just as good as any of the aforementioned five. But I specified currently running and (sniff!) it'll be concluding shortly. Which makes it easy for you to get caught up on. Go read. You can thank me later.

Today's Secret Word Is... Blah.

2007-11-22T16:37:00.000-05:00

I'm still fighting this stupid cold (which has hit the whole family to one degree or another).

Oh, and there was snow on the ground this morning. It's still there.

So, not much energy or focus for bringing the creativity.

Yeah, blah about covers it.

Old Friends, Old Spaghetti, Old School

2007-11-19T15:49:00.001-05:00

Over the weekend, I got together with some old friends for dinner.

The meet-up was instigated by Tara Tallan, writer/artist/creator/soooper-genius behind Galaxion, one of my favourite comics and favourite works of science-fiction in general.

Tara and I got involved in small press (that is, amateur) comics at around the same time, through about the same people. She made the transition to professional self-publishing a couple of years before Greg Beettam and I did with Xenos's Arrow.

Over those long and strange years, we, and the others in the group that became known as "the Toronto comics gang with the weird obsession with Big Boy" travelled to many, many conventions, went to movies, gamed, and generally were totally awesome together.

Well, that was a while ago. Most of us are still in touch, but some of us moved away. Many of us dropped out of comics, as creators, at least temporarily. Many of us have families now.

Tara's recent insight was that, since we generally all still do like each other, that at least those of us in the Greater Toronto Area should actually try and get together for once.

And that is what as many of us as we could schedule did. Tara, her husband David, me, Rob and Franz. Dinner was at one of our favourite old dinner-after-the-comics-convention haunts, Toronto landmark The Old Spaghetti Factory.

Except for the fact that we're all older, tired-er and more cynical (I was cynical to start with, so no loss in my case) it was pretty much like old times all over again. We talked about what we've been up to, creatively and otherwise. We talked about what was inspiring us, in comics and in other media. We debated the origin of the word "spumoni."

(Bonus fact: I was wrong - it's not named after a place called Spumonia!

We did everything we used to do, in fact, except flip over a placemat and draw comics on the back.

It reminded me how much of an impact that camaraderie and being part of a community has on my creativity. It's part of what jonesed me up to finish Chapter Two of Cold Iron Badge. It was, in fact, totally awesome.

Thanks, guys. Let's not wait another five years for the next one, okay?

Behold the Meh

2007-11-18T18:03:00.001-05:00

I have a cold, not a bad one, but certainly an annoying one. It's been dragging me down a little and making me feel not very bloggy.

Which is ironic, of course, because if there's one word that sounds like something you should feel like when you have a cold, it's "bloggy."

Despite that, I managed to get the first draft of Chapter 2 of Cold Iron Badge finished earlier today. Then Patrick and I will discuss and revise a bit, and I'll move on to Chapter 3 (while he continues to draw Chapter 1).

This wasn't quite as heroic an accomplishment as I'm implying, since I had originally told Patrick I'd have a draft of Chapter 2 done for last weekend. I nonetheless consider myself awesome.

Awesome.

The Big Reveal: Cold Iron Badge

2007-11-15T23:22:00.000-05:00

And now, the big reveal.

Finally, I can put a name to the new comics project that I've been calling, well, the New Comics Project, and a name to the Genius Artist. These are the first three pages.

Cold Iron Badge

It's a fairy tale.
But not everyone lives happily ever after...

Coming Soon.

Script by Stephen Geigen-Miller.
Art by Patrick Heinicke.
Story by Heinicke & Geigen-Miller.

(Oh and just for the record: This material is copyright 2007 by the credited creators.)

Mental Decompression: Thankfully, Not Explosive

2007-11-14T14:10:00.000-05:00

Ah, that's better. Brain re-combobulating.

Did anyone else ever play that game with an apple when you were a kid? Twisting the stem of your apple, and with each twist, saying a letter of the alphabet? The letter you were on when the stem finally broke was supposed to reveal the initial of the person you would someday marry, or something.

Note: I never got anywhere near "S," so what does that tell you about the effectiveness of applemancy?

Regardless. I was feeling a little like an apple stem on the penultimate twist, for a while there.

I overdid it a little trying to finish chapter two of the New Comics Project, and had to take a breather. As the Genius Artist pointed out, it's not like I'm on a really tight deadline for the script, so a couple more days to get it right is no biggie.

I expect to have the chapter finished shortly. And yes, around then, I'll be able to do the Big Unveil and give a name and some details to the oh-so-secretive New Comics Project.

Still Can't Post! Still Writing!

2007-11-11T00:59:00.000-05:00

I'm making good headway on Chapter 2 of the New Comics Project, but I hit a snag: A character we're introducing in this chapter was giving me some trouble. I was having a hard time pinning down her voice.

This is probably a good time to mention that some -- many -- of the characters in the Project existed previously, although in very different forms and iterations. Some were mine, and some were the Genius Artist's.

The character giving me trouble? She was one of his.

So we had a quick check-in about her, and I talked through my thoughts about the character. And we agreed on how to approach her. I feel more confident, now, about attacking the scene she debuts in.

When I told the artist that, his final comment, I think a slightly bemused one, was along the lines of, "Okay. But I didn't really say anything."

Sometimes, it really helps for me to put my thoughts in order, and get them outside my head, whether it's onto the page or into a friend's ear. Talking helps.

And, of course, not being told, "That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard, you talentless chump!" helps a bit too.

In related news, the Genius Artist is working on a three-page teaser, to preview the Project. So unless he hits a snag too, we will soon be able to give you a little taste of what the heck I've been going on about.

Can't Post! Writing!

2007-11-09T20:12:00.000-05:00

I'm almost done Chapter Two of the New Comics Project.

I told the Genius Artist that I'd do my best to have it to him by the end of this week, and that's promise that I intend to keep.

And man, does the stuff he's been working on ever look awesome.

You'll get a preview as soon as he and I both agree that the material's ready to show around.

No Scabs In Scranton

2007-11-08T12:49:00.000-05:00

I thought I had said pretty much everything I needed to about the WGA strike, especially since I'm not actually, you know, on strike.

But then, at the WGA's strike blog, United Hollywood, I came across this piece of information, which is too awesome not to share.

The Office actually has at least one more script in the can, ready to be shot. But production had to be halted when the entire staff of the show joined the WGA picket line.

Then, Steve Carell informed the producers that he would be unable to report for work, due to a health problem -- swollen balls.

Now that's some freaking solidarity.

Steve Carell, and the entire staff of The Office, you rock beyond words.

Two Decisions and a Metaphor

2007-11-07T16:15:00.000-05:00

(First decision...)

I'm going to focus on the New Comics Project. It's what I'm feeling most passionate about, and it has the advantage of being something that's actually happening. Right now.

(Second decision...)

However, when I do turn my attention back to the New Screenplay, it's going to be with the goal of actually writing the screenplay.

I can only work on an outline for so long, and I think I hit "so long" with the discussion and notes around the draft that was reviewed at the writer's group meeting. The feedback I got was really helpful, the ideas that it sparked had real possibilities. But the thought of pouring that energy into another draft of the outline is not at all appealing.

(And here comes the metaphor...)

The actual writing -- of a screenplay or anything else -- is a journey. An outline is an itinerary for that journey.

I think it's time to stop planning the trip and hit the road.

Fuck You, Mr. Miniwheat

2007-11-06T14:07:00.000-05:00

Is this what it has come to?

I'm angry. Oh, yes, I'm angry. But not just angry. More than anything else, I feel betrayed.

I have never trusted cereal mascots. They always seemed just a little too enthusiastic about what is, and let's be honest here, the dullest part of the most important meal of the day. I mean, toast is more exciting. A bowl of freaking cereal was never worth a single one of those early-morning song-and-dance routines, never mind the obsession verging on addiction that some mascots brought to the breakfast table.

But then I met you. You weren't singing or dancing or going to ridiculous lengths to steal something that you could buy for a couple of bucks in any grocery store.

There you were, your tiny, vulnerable body lying on the psychiatrist's couch. Desperate, confused, but so determined to confront your troubled psyche head-on.

You weren't some catchphrase-spouting pitchman. You suffered. You were a mascot driven into the depths of neurosis, almost to insanity. You were a food divided against himself: One side sweet frosting, the other nutritious wheat. Your identity was riven in twain, but you railed against it, fought for understanding, for integration. For wholeness.

And oh, Mr. Miniwheat, I loved you then.

Because I understood. In the depths of my soul, I too have known pain. I too have felt the incredible stress, the pull and tear, the inner turmoil between seemingly irreconcilable parts of my own nature.

I felt not just for you, but with you. I related. We were like brothers, Mr. Miniwheat, although you are wheaten and I am fleshen.

But now, our kinship lies in tatters. You have destroyed it, and in destroying it, you have come close to destroying me. And for what?

For strawberry, Mr. Miniwheat. For vanilla. And for coochie.

The new commercial for strawberry miniwheats was bad enough. There you were, my friend -- no, my cereal self -- telling us, selling us the joys of the new strawberry flavour. Singing and dancing with a bevy of hot mod girlies and a harem of backup singers. You weren't like me any more, a schmuck just trying to make it. You were way past "making it".

I had to wonder, when did you become one of the beautiful people? Was strawberry really the only flavour you had tasted on set? Were you living it up while I can't even live it down?

Were you trading on my fellow-feeling for you as someone who had been there, man, and partying like a small, wheaty Lindsay Lohan behind my back?

Of course, I felt guilty for doubting you. I felt shame. For you were sweet, yes, but also healthy. How could I lose my faith in you? How could I not trust the one cereal that spoke to my heart even as you nourished my body?

But then came vanilla.

I stared as I saw you, Mr. Miniwheat, on that tropical island paradise, being anointed with sweet vanilla flavour by a winsome miniwheat-groupie. You sang. You danced. Then you bounced out of the cabana like a cereal without a care in the world.

And I knew that it was true. You had no cares. You didn't care anymore.

Do I really need to describe the denouement? You, partying on the beach with those singing moai, and those welcoming hula girls wiggling their grass-skirted hips, jiggling their lei-garlanded chests in my face, then pulling away, as though to say, "No, no. We are only here for the rich and powerful Mr. Miniwheat. You can look, chump, but don't touch."

Well, aloha to you too.

You've changed, Mr. Miniwheat. You aren't the cereal I fell in love with any more. You're not some confused grain-based guy trying to find his way in the world. You're not the lovable schlub I identified with so keenly. You're a fucking rock star. I don't even know you.

I thought we were finding our way out of our pain and our self-doubts together. Now, you've plunged me back into the depths of despair. My God, what does it say about my life when a frosted wheat square is getting laid more than me?

Was it always a lie? Were you laughing at having hoodwinked us even then, those of us who felt that, in you, we had at last found a cereal mascot who spoke for us, the sad, the lonely, the confused?

Or did the years of celebrity, with the money and the parties and of course the sex -- did all that change you? Do you have a fragment of your true, sweet but also nutritious soul left?

Or did you sell that too, when you sold out everything else, including my heart?

I don't know. I'll never know. And even if there is a tiny part of your already miniature self looking out from behind your eyes and hating what you're doing to yourself and me, I don't care. Because it's too late.

It's too late.

You broke our bond. It's over. You were part of me, my high-fibre former friend. But you abused my trust. You lost my respect. We're done.

Fuck you, Mr. Miniwheat. Fuck you.

A Brief Update

2007-11-05T23:00:00.001-05:00

Today I looked over some of the notes I got at last week's writers group meeting. I'm still thinking about how to move forward with the New Screenplay, but I feel like I'm 90% or so decided. My gut and my heart just have to finish sweet-talking my brain and my neuroses.

I'm going to use a block of my writing time this week to review the outline, and that's also when I'll make my final decision and start whatever the next phase ends up being.

In other news, the WGA strike has begun.

Of course, being Canadian, there's only so much I can do to support the WGA members. If I lived in New York or L.A., I'd take snacks down to the picket line. But as it is, that would be a heck of a commute.

What I am going to do is this: I'm going to take a leaf from bloggers and professional (Canadian) screenwriters Denis McGrath and Jim Henshaw, and immediately begin a boycott of any and all American television produced by companies that WGA members are currently striking against, including those they're trying to get brought under WGA jurisdiction. That's, basically, everything except news programming.

I know it's not much. But it's what I can do.

Well, that, and sing "Solidarity Forever" in the shower, but to be completely honest, I'd have been doing that anyway.

Mulling: It's Not Just For Cider Anymore

2007-11-03T23:10:00.000-04:00

As I type (while also sipping on a root beer with all my customary delicacy), Boogie Nights is playing on IFC in the background.

That's an interesting, albeit trivial, coincidence, because I've been thinking today about an interview with the writer/director of that movie, Paul Thomas Anderson, in the book I'm currently reading -- Best Interviews 1994 - 2004, from the magazine Creative Screenwriting.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying: I have been mulling over how to approach the New Screenplay.

I have thought about it while thinking about how other writers deal with their screenwriting. I have thought about it while thinking about how I deal with my screenwriting. I thought about it while my daughter was sitting on my lap, watching a Blue's Clues video, just before her bedtime.

I'm thinking about it now.

And I think I'm close to an answer. I feel a hunch, an intuition, bubbling up from the simmering soup of my subconscious.

But it's not quite fully formed. Almost, but not yet.

I think I need to sleep on this. For one more night. And see what the morning tells me.

Good night.

I'll Be Fine... As Soon As The Bleeding Stops...

2007-11-02T23:08:00.000-04:00

And how did writer's group go, you ask?

Actually, it was productive, and a lot of fun. It always helps recharge my creative batteries to talk shop with my peers. I enjoy discussing my work, and other people's work, with people who have useful insights and sharp analytical capabilities.

And Nicole made spaghetti. I do love spaghetti.

But yes, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, it was my turn up at bat. Or my turn to be hit with the bat, that might be more apt.

It's not surprising that there was -- how to put it? -- a lot to say about my submission. The outline for the New Screenplay, which is the project that was up for discussion, is kind of an odd beast.

It's probably the "youngest" work that the group has yet reviewed. Of the five participants, I'm the only one who didn't have a longform project that I wanted to bring to the table already underway, and created something new specifically for the first meeting. So it's very much in the early stages, with all the plot holes and handwaving and stupid ideas I would normally have edited out long before showing it to anybody else still flapping in the breeze.

Also, I'm doing something that I normally strongly encourage people to avoid at all costs: I'm flouting the genre. Without going into too much detail at this early stage, I can say that it's a romantic comedy that relies on the audience's expectations, based on familiarity with the genre, to subvert those expectations.

That means that part of the point of the story artistically, for me, is that it not pay off in the usual and expected way, while still paying off in a different way that is powerful, satisfying, emotionally honest.

I know -- an "emotionally honest" romantic comedy. I'm already treading on dangerous ground.

This inner tension between the genre and the actual thrust of the narrative may be why I had the slightly bruising experience Thursday night of hearing one of my smart colleagues say, "Your story still has no Third Act, dude."
And replying, "Actually, I think it does have a clear Third Act."
And having the other three people in the room, all of whom are also very smart, say, "Um, no Stephen, it really doesn't."

My subversive, slightly perverse and rampagingly un-commercial intentions aside, there is clearly a lot of room for improvement. It's obvious, first of all, that the act turns in the outline, the dramatic reversals and changes that mark the phases of the story, are not strong enough. A lot of the other feedback I got was just as solid, and just as indicative of work that I need to do in other areas.

It was challenging, but I loved it. It gave me so much to go on! I'm excited. And fired up. And not sure how to proceed.

I have, first of all, another project on the go -- the New Comics Project, which is only a quarter written. It's important to me, and it's going to move forward much, much faster than a movie script ever could. If the Genius Artist and I do it as a webcomic, as we've discussed, there's no reason we couldn't start serializing it online just after the New Year. And it's a really fun project to write. So that's a priority.

More importantly -- because it's not like I couldn't alternate writing projects from day to day -- I need to figure out how I'm comfortable moving forward with the New Screenplay. Thursday's comments showed that, yes, there are definitely some very important gaps in the outline.

So how much work do I put into fixing the outline? Do I polish and polish what is essentially a twelve-page synopsis of the story? Of course it has some gaps -- if all the gaps were filled in, it wouldn't be an outline! And would overworking the outline suck all the creative joy out of the project for me? Should I just start writing the screenplay? But am I ready to start the screenplay?

So, yeah, great feedback, leaving me with a lot to consider. Further thoughts will be posted here as my agonizing unfolds.

(Oh, on the subject of feedback? If anyone wants to let me know that you are still reading and I'm not just talking to myself here, that would be cool too.)

Solidarity Forever!

2007-11-02T09:41:00.000-04:00

So, barring a last-minute shift of tectonic proportions from "management" (the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers), it looks like the Writers Guild of America is going on strike, with Monday the most likely start date (as per this article in the Toronto Star).

While I'm not a member of any of the creative guilds, I'm solidly on-side with the WGA. One of the many popular ways for the writer to get screwed has been exploiting the absence of industry agreements dealing with whatever new media have come along (whether videotape, DVD, web delivery of content, or whatever comes next).

The WGA wants to fill that loophole. Obviously, this will not only benefit the current membership, but also future generations of writers. Since my goal is for that to include me, self-interest alone motivates me to deem this strike a Good Idea.

But there's more to it than that - as the WGA knows, since it's membership are going to be sacrificing their salaries now for those future generations.

Between the corporate domination of media by huge conglomerates, and the not-entirely-unrelated tendency of the entertainment media to focus on celebrities like movie stars and a handful of directors, the writer doesn't just get screwed, but forgotten.

It's downright ridiculous that the people who have the ideas, the people who invent the stories, the people who provide words for those movie stars to say, not only get no attention, but no respect and no money.

The attention, I can live without. Writers, even in Hollywood, are often idiosyncratic, introverted and vaguely nerdish. We'll never be as famous as movie stars, or directors. Most of us would go over like a lead balloon as guests on late-night talk shows. And that's okay -- if we were pretty extroverts, we'd be actors too.

But it all starts with the writer. The story, the movie, the TV show, the webisode, mobisode or Flash animation, whether on basic cable or digital cable or DVD or the web, lives or dies by the writer. If the writing doesn't work, nothing else will.

And yet, writers don't get a piece of the pie. Just a hewer-of-wood, drawer-of-water paycheque. Sure, it's a big paycheque by most people's standards. But should that really be it, for creating the work that gives everyone else involved something to do? If new and exciting media provide new and exciting money, the writer deserves a share if anyone does.

The members of the WGA know that. They know that they, and future generations of writers, deserve a reasonable slice of the secondary media and new media pie. They're willing to fight for it, to stop doing the work they love and put their feet on the pavement to fight for it.

For that, I can put up with watching re-runs of The Colbert Report.

Solidarity, brothers and sisters. For the union makes us strong.

You Want My Honest Opinion, Huh?

2007-10-31T23:39:00.001-04:00

Today, I spent some time getting down some thoughts about somebody else's writing.

In the writer's group that I'm part of, two members (there are five of us) get our work critiqued at each of our monthly meet-ups. Thursday, my screenplay outline is up at bat, and so is a chapter of Charles's novel. So today was all about organizing my thoughts about his work.

As I've mentioned before, this is my first writer's group, so I'm still finding my way to a degree - I have some comfort zone issues, not about being criticized, but about feeling free to criticize.

People who know me well are probably staring at their monitors right now, laughing uncontrollably. I have a bit of a reputation for being a downright bloodthirsty critic.

But here's the thing: that's among my nearest and dearest. I really do have comfort zone issues with critiquing. It's funny, but the better I know and the more I love someone, the more likely I am to hold nothing back when I respond to their work.

It's a trust issue, and it's something I have to work on, while making sure that I don't overcompensate in any direction. I need to strike a balance, one that respects Charles as a colleague who has requested my honest opinion, and myself as someone with an opinion that's worth expressing honestly, even if I'm sometimes a little reserved about doing so.

I'll post some thoughts about how writer's group went tomorrow, after I get home. Right now, it's later than I wanted to be up. My honest opinion: It's time for bed.

No Mo' NaNoWriMo, Yo!

2007-10-30T22:19:00.000-04:00

Sorry, was that oblique?

("Oblique" is the "literary" term for something that "makes no sense.")

What I meant to say was, I won't be participating in National Novel Writing Month this year.

I thought about it, but it's not like my life is a whole lot saner than this time last year, when I boldly decided to NaNo, and barely scratched the 50,000-word target. Confidence-building exercises are only beneficial to the degree that one is successful enough at them to build one's confidence, I find.

And it's not like I'm short of ideas or need additional motivation to park my keister and write.

Right now, I've got the New Comics Project on the go - very exciting, the writing is moving forward nicely, and details will follow as the situation develops. I've also got the writer's group, with the New Screenplay I've been outlining. And then there's the Other Screenplay, which I finished a while ago, and need to circulate to some interested parties for feedback that will then need to be incorporated into a second draft.

I don't need the arbitrary structure of NaNoWriMo to get me writing - I am writing. I don't need it to jump-start my creativity. And, as nice as the built-in socializing is, and as much as that sort of thing does facilitate my writing, I have that already too - via the writer's group, and the "studio days" that I've been taking with my friend and former Xeno's Arrow co-creator, Greg.

NaNo is a great idea, and I wish nothing but fun, success and the total absence of writers block to everyone participating this year. But I'll be taking a pass. I'm too busy.

With, among other things, my writing.

"More Frequent Updates" I Said. Ha.

2007-10-30T16:52:00.000-04:00

Hmm. I'm not all that great at this "blogging" thing, am I? Anytime I'm doing something interesting enough to blog about, I'm too busy doing it to blog about it.

But other people are interesting and blog about it at the same time. How do you do it, interesting people who blog? How, I ask? HOW?!

In other news, I turned 36 yesterday. I'm working on a neat new comics project with an old friend who also happens to be a great artist, so that's exciting - more on that later, since he doesn't want me to post any samples yet. (There's no finished art, only designs.)

Oh, and the writer's group meets on Thursday. I circulated my submission, an outline for a new screenplay, to the others at the meeting in late September. I haven't thought about it much since - I've been busy with the aforementioned New Project. I should re-read it before I have to defend it, huh? :)

I Now Have A High-Speed Connection

2007-09-20T11:36:00.000-04:00

Halle-freaking-lujah!

I swear, it's like someone turned the gravity down a couple of notches, giving me super-powers!

This may facilitate me posting more frequently henceforth.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Writer's Group

2007-09-01T00:11:00.000-04:00

As I sit at the keyboard, sipping on some decent Scotch (with soda, or I'll have twelve headaches tomorrow) it occurs to me that I have not mentioned that I recently joined a writer's group.

So, just to be official: I recently joined a writer's group.

There are five of us. There's Nicole, and Greg, both of whom I have mentioned here on occasion. There's me, who has also come up here once or twice. Dave and Charles, who I met for the first time at our inaugural meeting last Tuesday, round out the group.

This is my first writer's group. I've always been a little skittish in the past about them, and I can't quite articulate why. No, not because of the Scotch. ::)

I think I've always, on some level, suspected writer's groups of being glorified social clubs, venues for people to noodle over vanity projects and feel like Capital-W Writers. Places to talk about "writing", instead of talking about the work.

This is, patently, an absurd notion. Many well-known writers have benefitted from being part of writer's groups, including writers that I enjoy and admire. Steven Brust was in a writer's group. Cory Doctorow too. J. R. R. Tolkien was in a writer's group with C. S. Lewis for crying out loud - the legendary Inklings.

So perhaps the concerns I had about writer's groups were really concerns that I projected on to them. Concerns about myself. I do have this tendency to let planning get in the way of action, process get in the way of practice.

I don't think that's going to be a concern with the new group.

The group - we don't have a cool name like "The Inklings" yet - was Nicole's brainchild, and she was very clear from the get-go that she wanted a small, focused group of writers, working on longform projects, whose feedback would be beneficial to the other members.

Based on the outcome of our first meeting, it looks like her plan was a good one.

Greg and I are the odd men out, since the other three are all working on novels. I'm working on a new film script, and Greg... well, I shouldn't steal his thunder. He's got a non-novel, non-film thing.

I got really solid feedback on my outline, and I think - I hope! - that I was as helpful to the others. I'm looking forward to our next meeting, in late September. My work will next be up for review at the meeting after that, in October.

I think, having finished an entire screenplay - the new one that I haven't blogged about yet - and having realized just how hungry I am to write and better my writing, that my concerns about writer's groups have evaporated. The anxieties about my own productivity are fading away, and don't need to be projected any longer onto organizations that, after all, are only as good or bad as the people in them.

I seem to have gotten myself into a very good one. This bodes well.

I am not, in point of fact, dead or anything

2007-08-25T09:08:00.000-04:00

I even still have use of all my limbs.

But what I've been discovering is that it's very hard for me to write anything else while I'm blogging about what I write.

Also, my day job went poof in April - long story for another time - and while that DID free up a great deal of time, I've been restricted to dial-up, which makes blogging a pain.

So: Lots is going on, as it always is. I am getting back. And I am actually writing quite a bit. I just finished a completely new screenplay - that is, nothing I ever mentioned on the blog - and I'm working away on other projects.

I'm not sure at this point how regularly I'll be blogging about the writing - although I'd like to - but I may redirect the blog into a more general, my-life kind of thing to give me something else to think and write about besides my writing. Even I can overdose on meta.

My Unconscious Mind Can Be Kind Of Unsubtle

2007-01-11T16:16:00.000-05:00

Last night, I dreamed that I was on Saturday Night Live.

To be absolutely clear, let me emphasize by using a little bit of what we in the business call "italics" (or italics):

I dreamed I was on Saturday Night Live.

My wife Sarah's whole family are lucid dreamers. I'm terribly jealous. Most nights, I can barely recall my dreams, let alone rewrite them on the fly.

But this one stayed with me.

In my dream, I had been a member of the cast of SNL sometime in the mid-Nineties. Briefly. Very briefly. To be specific, for one disastrous episode. After which I was fired.

In my dream, I was making a living washing dishes. reliving that one opportunity and how I'd blown it, every day of my life, wondering how I could have made things turn out differently.

Now, clearly, the book I'm currently reading - Live From New York, which is of course a history of SNL - is partly to blame.

But just as clearly, my subconscious is trying to tell me something:

Stephen! Don't be a used-to!

A used-to is different from a has-been; a has-been was "somebody" and now they aren't. Really, there shouldn't be any shame in that, and if our culture wasn't so rampagingly warped by the cult of celebrity, there wouldn't be.

I'm not a has-been I was never a "somebody." Not even in the very small pool of independent comics. But I was a creator. A writer. I wrote. I'm a used-to.

My subconscious doesn't want me to look in the mirror, and say to myself, "I coulda been a contendah." It wants me to be a contender. It wants me to get Back From Erstwhile.

This has not been an easy journey, so far. 2006 was a horrible year for me on so many fronts. I was hammered by bad news, by poor health, by turmoil internal and external to my life. My unsuccessful attempt at National Novel Writing Month, for instance, was bold, but probably naive. I spent most of November fighting a virus that I'm only now starting to shake off.

But a New Year is traditionally a time to re-focus and approach new goals, or old ones with new resolve.

I am going to continue to get back from erstwhile. I am going to write, not be a used-to. I will not be the guy who got fired after one ill-fated night after being cast to replace Chris Farley and then had to wash dishes for the rest of his life.

Time to renew, re-focus, and resolve.

Happy New Year.

Choking on the Art

2006-11-03T13:28:00.000-05:00

Unlike some of the other participants in National Novel Writing Month - I'm guessing, just an impression I get from visiting the online forums, that many of them are university students or twentysomethings, with no kids - I didn't stay up late on Hallowe'en so I could start writing at 12:01:01 AM on November 1st.

In fact, all of November 1st was a wash - along with the rest of my office, I did a volunteer day with Habitat For Humanity, and as someone who usually pilots a desk, I was definitely not is any condition to do any writing that night.

So my big launch was last night, November 2nd.

The story so far?

1,065 words. Well below the 1,725 per day I'll need to hit to "win" (anyone who makes the 50,000 words in a month goal is considered to be a winner).

A couple of things held me back, I think - I had to start writing a little later than I'd planned because of another commmittment. But more importantly, performance anxiety was rearing its ugly head once again.

I get the impression that many NaNoWriMo participants are more focused on their goal than their results - that, while they're working to write actual prose that makes narrative sense, they're open to running with anything that works within that broad mandate to help them reach their 50K.

But I went and had a Big Idea.

A bunch of experiences, feelings and interests came together in a story that I just have to tell. A story that has to be a novel, which is another first for me. So, I went in worrying about getting it right, rather than getting it done.

It's old news to anyone who's been following this blog, and a long-standing writing habit of mine. I get worried about every tiny little detail - as though that mattered in the first draft - and get hung up on wordsmithing, when I should be getting the words in my head onto the screen.

1,065 words isn't a bad start. But I'd really like to hit that 50K. I hear you get a t-shirt if you win. And I need to relearn that the first draft is for the broad brushstrokes. Getting the ideas and the words out there. It's for passion, not perfection.

So tonight, I take a deep breath, refocus, and give my inner critic a swift kick in the nads.

Well, Now I've Gone And Done It...

2006-10-06T12:36:00.000-04:00

I just signed up for National Novel Writing Month.

Xeno's Arrow On Modern Tales!

2006-10-02T14:52:00.000-04:00

Xeno's Arrow, the science-fiction comic book series I co-created and co-wrote with Greg Beettam, launches today as a webcomic on Modern Tales - one of the most well-known and successful professional webcomic sites in the world!

Our new home will be in the Longplay section, which is reserved for completed, long-form comics work. This struck us as a perfect opportunity to use our existing material to reach a new audience.

You can check us out at http://www.moderntales.com/comics/xeno.php

As I said, this is archival material, starting with issue #1 of our self-published series. We'll be publishing new installments on the first Monday of every month - about half an issue's worth, depending on story breaks, so the first half of issue #1 is what's online right now.

So, is there anything new for those of you who've read the story before? Yes. You may only get half an issue, but it's in full colour.

On the web, it costs the same to publish in black and white, purple and chartreuse, or with the whole palette, so Greg decided to take advantage of the opportunity. And speaking as the non-artist, may I just say wow. Wow. WOW. Gorgeous.

Check us out today, and on the first Monday of every month.

Season Premiere

2006-09-18T14:01:00.000-04:00

Back from my summer hiatus. It's the new fall season, and it's time for the premiere of Season Two of Back From Erstwhile.

A bold new direction! More thrills, more chills, more laughs. And I've added an adorable wise-cracking kid to the cast, so you know I haven't jumped the shark yet, babies.

Whew. Sorry. I was channelling the annual NBC preview specials from my childhood. I'm better now.

But yes. I'm back. Back to Back From Erstwhile. (Upon reflection, that's a pretty clunky title, isn't it? Still evocative, though. I think I'll keep it.)

So, I can imagine you asking - assuming that anyone is actually still checking for updates - have things been happening?

To quote J. R. R. Tolkien, "Lots, and none at all."

Not a lot of writing has happened - the screenplay, for instance, remains incomplete at exactly the same 84 pages it had achieved some four months ago. Nothing seems to have come of the spec work.

What have I been doing? Well, working and taking care of my family, of course. But I've also been clearing the decks. Getting my ducks in a row. Pick your metaphor.

The kids are now both in daycare, which you wouldn't think would make a huge difference in my life, since I work full-time, but the impact has been profound. Basically, the kids are sleeping better. So Sarah (my wonderful partner) and I are sleeping better. So everything is better. I actually have the physical and emotional energy to use my creative faculties again.

Also, over the past two months, exciting new opportunities have opened up. Details are pending, but there are two very interesting projects, both of which have a much better chance of panning out than the spec work did.

(One is basically a lock, and I expect to be announcing it here before the month is out.)

I feel like writing again. I feel alive again. I feel renewed.

I have that sense of imminence. That things are about to happen.

So watch for updates. There are going to be some interesting ones.

Welcome to the second season.

Fiscal Year King - Part One

2006-07-18T14:46:00.000-04:00

I sit in the quiet cool of the air-conditioned board room, waiting for the axe to fall. Around me, the others, awkward in their suits and ties. It could be any of us. It will be only one of us.

The Chairman sits in silence, looking at the papers in front of him, once in a while glancing up at us. He looks bored. The bastard.

Beside him, the man we call The Executioner when he's not in earshot. The right hand. That's how it goes: The Chairman picks a head, the Executioner swings the axe. My tie's too tight. I fight the urge to tear at it.

Johnson's on one side of me, stinking of the sweat that's rolling off him. He got screwed on the Barcelona deal, and everyone knows it.

Torres on my other side, slouching in his plush leather chair, wearing a half-smile and looking like he doesn't give two shits. Like the Chairman. He's got the look down pat. But it takes more than that to be the best of the best, you sack of crap.

Jamming

2006-07-17T11:38:00.000-04:00

As I said, I signed what amounts to a confidentiality agreement regarding the material I was working on last week, so I can't get specific. This I can say:

I was working to develop and hone ideas created by someone else - taking some general notes and making them specific, so that potential buyers can see a sample of how the idea could actually work. Any real payment or further participation is pending support from buyers. Spec work, basically.

So, Karol asks (see her comment on my previous post) specifics aside, how did it feel?

Awesome.

I love collaborative work. I have a knack for it, maybe because good ideas get me charged up, no matter whose good ideas they are.

I love trying to find the heart of something so I can help to improve it. I love taking something that's roughly hewn, finding the good in it, and smoothing away the extraneous.

It's an amazing rush.

I love my own projects (I'll be going back to the screenplay now that I've got my material in to the creators), and working alone has unique joys that collaboration doesn't fill.

But wow, did it feel good to jam on something again. I'd forgotten how much I liked it. I'd forgotten how good I was at it.

I'd forgotten how much I missed it.

Of course, I may find out tomorrow that the original creators hated every single idea I came up with, threw out my contributions and now spit when they hear my name. It was still fun.

I'll keep you posted.

I Could Tell You, But Then I'd Have To... Oh, You Know The Schtick

2006-07-14T11:25:00.000-04:00

So, things have been on the quiet side here, lately.

The past couple of months, that's been because I haven't written any writing to write about.

Well, that's no longer the case. For the past week, I've been doing some interesting work on a very interesting project.

But I can't talk about it - signed a confidentiality agreement and everything.

At this stage, it's a lot of fun, and draws on a lot of my strengths as a writer - but it's way to early for anyone, including me, to get excited about it. Like many projects in their early stages that involve confidentiality agreements, this one could turn out to be nothing, or it could turn out to be big, or I might not be in it for the long haul. Could go a bunch of different way.

But I am writing. Just wanted you to know.

My Subconscious Is A Real Geek

2006-06-27T10:09:00.000-04:00

Apparently, when I can't make the time to write on a regular basis, my subconscious steps up to fill the gap.

But it seems that my dreaming mind writes fan-fiction.

Last night, in a crossover of universe-shatteringly epic proportions, the characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation travelled back in time to save Jean-Luc Picard, who had been erased from history by a malevolent cosmic entity.

To accomplish their mission, they teamed up with the "Scooby Gang" from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, who were attempting to save Buffy Summers from a similar fate - but the first order of business was to rescue Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy (of Law & Order - my subconscious also likes procedurals) from a car accident arranged by the cosmic entity in an attempt to kill the heroic prosecutor.

They had saved McCoy by the time I woke up.

My waking theory is that killing Jack McCoy would have ensured that Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy was never born, but I'm afraid to take it any farther - writing an ending awake to fan-fiction my brain cooked up while I was asleep is a little much, even for me.

Still: Coolest. Dream. Ever.

Has It Really Been Two Weeks?

2006-06-23T15:04:00.000-04:00

Yeah, it has. Two weeks since I've posted. That's really annoying.

There has, in fact, continued to be rather a lot going on. My daughter started day care. My wife had surgery. I was so wiped out following the big conference at the Day Job that I a) got sick and b) actually fell asleep in a public waiting room at the City's Day Care office.

So I've been pretty sucktacular at finding time to write. But I'm getting together with my dear friend and former screenplay-writing-partner Nicole over the weekend, and we'll be kicking an idea or two around, so there should be something more interesting to report shortly.

Life: It Keeps Happening

2006-06-09T13:02:00.000-04:00

Whew.

Work - my Day Job (tm) - is returning to a more measured and predictable series of demands on me and my time, now that our big annual conference is over.

From this weekend forward, I should be able to do some more writing. I need to get back to my daily updates. And finish the screenplay. And there are other irons in the fire.

There have bit a lot of irons in the fire, lately. Personal irons, family irons, professional irons. A lot has been happening.

It's a Time of Change.

I've often thought - and I know I'm not alone in this - that whether it's literally true or a function of perception, changes in our lives seem to occur in rapid, clustered bursts, interspersed by longer periods of relative stability.

It's like the evolutionary theory of Puncuated Equilibrium - well, it is, in the same way that Social Darwinism or Moral Relativism are like evolutionary theory or the work of Einstein.

(In other words, not really like that at all. But it makes a good metaphor and provides a vocabulary.)

So the changes are coming fast and furious right now. Many good, some not so much. I can see resolution - stability - on the horizon. Coming in stages, incrementally, but coming all the same.

And bit by bit, in stages and increments, I'll be able to devote more energy, and more time, to my journey back from erstwhile.

Life On The Front Burner

2006-06-02T15:46:00.000-04:00

Work has been taking up a lot of time and mental energy this week, as has family - we've had company because of my son's birthday. So, this week has been light on the writing.

I'm going to try to regroup a bit and write over the weekend (although I'm working on the weekend, so we'll see if that happens).

I'll keep you posted.

(This Post Has Been Redacted, For Good But Dull Reasons)

2006-05-29T13:57:00.000-04:00

Nothing to tell, really. I just near to hear back from someone about something. Details as they happen and stuff.

Moonbeam and Mizzenmast

2006-05-26T11:49:00.000-04:00

I woke up in my brand new body. Sat up. Looked around.

But if you've taken the trip to the Moon once, you've seen all there is to see. The transmat equipment, the matter assemblers, the rows of people waking up, the people who've become other people and not-people and just plain whatevers for the holidays.

I accessed my onboards, did a quick self-diagnostic. Body built exactly to order, tall and lean, dark and powerful. Neurons and synapses firing and connecting as they should. Fractional but functionally insignificant memory loss.

Functionally insignificant?

I dug a little deeper. Looks like I'd lost my fifth birthday party, something to do with a petting zoo, and the smell of my father's cologne.

That, in exchange for everything the Moon had to offer? No contest.

Hell, losing a memory of Dad? I should be thanking them. Take it all, with my blessing.

I stood. My garb was there, at the foot of the bed. I picked it up.

Black shirt. Black pants. Black boots. Black hat. Black mask. Black belt. But the sword, it was all of silver, elegant and deadly. Just what I'd wanted.

The thing standing next to me glanced at my blade. He, maybe she - well it obviously had quite an imagination. It looked at bit like a freshly-flayed and very oversized bat. It smiled after a fashion.

"Going my way, Sailor?" it hissed.

"I'm afraid not. I've got a solo charter."

Even a flayed bat can look surprised, as well it should. It looked at me again, knowing that I was either independently wealthy or had just gone into several centuries of debt for the sake of one vacation.

I smiled, then pulled on the mask.

"I believe," I added, "That my guide is here."

He could only have been my guide. He stomped up the the aisle towards me, on one leg and one peg, a hook raised in greeting. His coat and hat were weather-beaten crimson, and a cutlass, curved and heavier than my rapier, hung at his side. His old-ivory grin was a little too wide for comfort.

Good. I hadn't ordered comfort.

He stopped. Glanced at the bat-creature without interest, then turned back to me. "Be you Captain Black, him that men call the Dragon?" he asked.

I nodded. "And you, sir?"

"Why, I be exactly what ye asked for. As requested. The fiercest and the fieryest. The best and the baddest. Deep as the briny, deadly as a shark, wise as a whale and wilder than a hurricane."

He paused. Drew himself up. Doffed his hat.

"I be the Madmiral of the Luna Sea, at your service."

In Other, More Important News...

2006-05-26T10:24:00.000-04:00

My son turns one year old today!

Happy birthday, Darwin.

Some Days You're The Roadrunner, Some Days You're The Coyote

2006-05-26T10:13:00.000-04:00

My new plan gave me that all-fired-up energized feeling - so I went back to the screenplay last night. Wrote almost 5 pages, bringing me to 82 pages total.

That puts me within striking distance of finishing a feature film screenplay. It feels like I'm getting very close to the climax, so I don't think the script is going to run to 120 pages. Something between 100 and 110 - so, between 18 and 28 pages to go.

Part of me wants to throw caution to the wind and make a big push to finish by June 1st.

Part of me is afraid that the light I see at the end of the tunnel is an approaching train.

The Writer's Dilemma: MYOB vs. WTF

2006-05-25T11:59:00.000-04:00

It was the dissonance of the scene that really fascinated me.

A butchily-androgynous figure, short and stocky, with hair in an army-short buzz cut.

Jogging up Bay Street.

In a t-shirt and scanty panties.

And when I say scanty, I mean lacy-frilly front - with reasonable coverage, to be sure, but still clearly underwear - and a thong-tacular nothing-to-the-imagination back.

(Of course I looked. I mean, I pride myself on being cosmopolitan and all, but come on. You know you would have too.)

As I said, I pride myself on being cosmpolitan, and while I'm seasoned pretty mildly myself, my circles include some far from vanilla flavours of wild. Any one of those elements, and I wouldn't have given it a second thought.

But the androgyny, and the panties, and the jogging up Bay Street at 9 in the morning?

That was worth a second thought. And a second look.

And honestly, my second thought was "This has to be some kind of put-on." Because the scanties, they just took the whole scene over the top. Hello world, this is my ass.

I figured there was a hidden camera.

And the other side of the cosmopolitan coin is being jaded. Cynical. Blasé. So I muted my reaction. So as, you know, to look cool.

In a way, I regret that. Not that I should have rubbernecked like I was in the stands at the Naked Tennis Classic, but I wish I'd had the not-cosmpolitan, not-cool, not-just-minding-my own-business-no-eye-contact reaction to say, "Hey, if you've got a minute, I'd love to know more about you, and what you're doing. For instance, did you know that you're not wearing pants?"

I didn't do that, because it would have violated the urban code. And that code is important. Minding your own business when other people are doing no harm is vital to getting along in a city the size of Toronto. Two and a half million people can't always be saying, "Hey! Who are you? Explain what you're doing! What's with the panties?

Now if I want to know who androgynous-panty-jogger was, what his or her motivations were, I have to write them. And I'm not alone. Almost all artists who work in narrative forms and media feel this compulsion - to fill in the blanks. To tell the story.

Was there a hidden camera? Was she trying to provoke a reaction? Was he just an exhibitionist? Did she lose a bet? Was he testing us? Testing me? Did I pass or fail?

I wonder if the writing, the narratives, that comes from city-dwellers is in one way or another all about filling in those blanks. About finding stories to fit the characters. About answering the questions we aren't allowed to ask.

I've decided who that was, jogging up a busy downtown sidewalk, underwear-clad and ambiguously gendered. Have you? Tell me a story...

Looks Like Rain

2006-05-25T09:37:00.000-04:00

I think I'm emerging from the drought.

I've been sleeping better - my son's schedule is shifting back towards him sleeping through the night, and when he sleeps, I sleep. And that means I'm not too tired to write after the kids are in bed.

It's still been hard to fit in, but I managed two straight nights over the weekend - and for the first time in a long time, I just grabbed a notebook and scribbled away, instead of sitting down at the computer. Liberating, albeit hard on the back. And the following night I managed about 2 1/2 pages of screenplay.

So, I can make it happen again. This is good. My original goal - to have a first draft of the screenplay done by, let's see... last weekend? Well, obviously that's not going to happen. I also won't be done by my fallback position of June 1st. But I'm writing again.

One unexpected fringe benefit of the drought, and the resulting low rate of blogging, has been that people have had a chance to get caught up on my posts. This has lead to two interesting comments.

The first was from Sarah, my amazing wife/co-parent/partner-in-crime. Her first thought on reading recent posts was, "You don't get very personal." Until now, that has been true. I've been reluctant to get too into details about life, family and friends, out of concerns for their privacy.

But I obviously have Sarah's permission to talk about her. And it's been getting increasingly awkward to refer to everyone else as "a colleague" or "my former collaborator" or what have you. So, I'm going to get just a little more personal - and I'm going to start using names.

First names only. Nothing confidential, of course - if you can figure out who I mean from first names only, you already know us both and have already heard the story.

On that understanding, I had an interesting conversation with my friend Tara over the weekend. She mentioned that my variations-on-a-theme-of-Blah-I'm-Not-Writing series of posts was getting a tad tedious.

Tara suggested that I change my ground rules a bit, and try to write and post a short piece every day. Now, blogging what I write is a bit different from blogging about my writing - the latter is what I didn't want to count towards my daily writing target.

But there's no reason I can't do both. This is still going to be a process blog. I'm just going to be posting the results of the process more often.

This does not mean that I'm throwing in the towel on the screenplay. Again, no reason I can't move forward with that while I'm building up the old thinkmuscle.

What I'm going to try to do, though, is write a 250 word piece - non-fiction, fiction, essay, brain-dump - every day. 250 words isn't much. That's a single page, typed and double-spaced.

I don't have a dowsing rod or a trick knee, but I have a feeling that the drought is over. Today, it looks like rain.

A Progress Report Will Be Issued...

2006-05-16T12:49:00.000-04:00

... But not until there's progress to report. We are well past "Argh!" to words that I'd rather not post.

My son's sleep schedule has shifted. He's waking up more in the dark, cold pre-dawn hours. Fun for him - he can nap whenever he wants. I, on the other hand, have a day job.

The resulting exhaustion has had a huge and terrible impact on my productivity.

I'm going to try to at least do some writing - my original goal of 250 words of whatever, if nothing else - even if I don't have the energy or focus to work on the screenplay. And I'm going to look for times and places that I can write when I'm more awake, like when I'm on the subway.

Thanks to everyone for the support. I'll be keeping you posted.

From Blah to Argh!

2006-05-11T11:43:00.000-04:00

Well, last night did have "less on the go" than Tuesday night did. But I wasn't taking the post-Tuesday-night exhaustion into consideration.

So: I didn't do any writing last night.

This is starting to really frustrate me. I mean, other things come up, there are priorities and responsibilities that come first - like my children. I understand that. I understand that there will be ebbs and flows to the cycle of craziness, and that I'm just in the middle of some busytime.

But it still bugs me, especially because I'm really feeling the momentum on the screenplay. I want to get down to it, get it done, and then start fixing it. I itch for this.

Which, view in the abstract, is a good sign - I'm feeling the need, which means I'm well on track to habitual writing - but that doesn't make it any less frustrating.

Argh is the word, all right.

If I can write every day for the next week to ten days, with average or better output, I'll be done the first draft. I know what I want to do. I can see it.

Now I have to write it.

Blah

2006-05-10T15:25:00.000-04:00

No writing last night. I should be able to get back to the desk tonight - there's less on the go.

I always suspected that problems would start to arise after I was about two or three weeks in to my program - I was basing this hunch on similar experiences I and others have had with starting to work out.

Sure enough, that's when I started hitting personal and other-commitment obstacles to sitting down and writing.

The fact that it wasn't surprising doesn't make it any less frustrating, though.

Blah, indeed.

There's A Reason This Isn't A Math Blog

2006-05-09T12:37:00.001-04:00

Four pages and a bit last night, bringing the total to 74.

Yes, 74 - I hit 65 on Saturday, 69 on Sunday. The screenplay's getting long enough that I occasionally forget the actual page count. That's sort of cool, in an innumerate kind of way.

I'm still worried about having enough plot complications to sustain the story, but there's been no sign yet of running out of steam. I'm going to have to watch myself, though - being over the half-way mark has me wanting to race ahead to the finish line... and that's exactly how to under-write!

My mantra for today: Plot complications are my friend.

Firing On Most Cylinders

2006-05-08T10:28:00.000-04:00

I wasn't three for three this weekend. But I'm still pretty pleased.

I missed Friday - it was a very stressful day, and the end to a very stressful week. But I managed almost 6 pages on Saturday, and 4 on Sunday.

The screenplay now stands at 65 pages, which puts it over the half-way mark.

I'm trying to focus on moving forward with the first draft, but it's hard. I'm already rewriting in my head, thinking about scenes that need to be moved earlier or later, characters that need to be more or less present, elements to emphasize more or less.

I'm also a little concerned because I'm now into the second half of the middle, and I have an unfortunate tendency to under-write the middle of a screenplay, so they run short. I'd like to avoid that problem. I think I have enough potential complications to keep my characters busy for a full 110 or 120 pages.

We'll see.

More on this problem later; it's related to screenplay structure, which I may end up doing an overview of after all, so we're all speaking the same language - and more importantly, as a refresher for me.

Looking Through A Frame With Two Sides

2006-05-05T09:59:00.000-04:00

Last night: 5 pages, bringing the total to 59. The screenplay is at least half done.

And you know, I'm starting to see the shape of it - and where it's going from here. It's exhilarating.

Of course, now that I see the shape - the frame - I look back at what's already been written, and I see what doesn't fit. There are elements that I'll have to finesse into the frame, and elements I'll just have to saw off.

But that can wait. I'm going to finish the draft first, and revise later.

This not some profound insight on my part - it's a generally-acknowledged truth that you'll find in many books and courses on writing, especially screenwriting: Don't go back and revise until you're finished your first draft.

To try to move forward while revising on the go is the path of madness, or at least of endless fiddling (almost the same thing - ask Nero). Each change sends ripples throughout the draft, and trying to smooth out the ripples makes more ripples. Better and easier by far to finish, then look back on the work as a whole.

There's no point in trying to make your work fit into a frame that only has two sides.

Come to think of it, that hot dog vendor did have shifty eyes...

2006-05-04T09:40:00.000-04:00

No writing last night - far too wiped out. Damn you, food poisoning!

I blame Tuesday's lunch - I don't think I'll be indulging in more street meat any time soon.

I'm feeling much better - and tonight I try, once again, to get back on track.

Too Sick to Think of a Clever Title

2006-05-03T11:31:00.000-04:00

This will have to be brief - I've got what feels like a mild case of food poisoning.

"Mild." Ha. Like there's a gentle, sunny, zephyr-like version. It's better than severe food poisoning, but several orders of magnitude more sucky than my preferred alternative, which is not having food poisoning.

Fortunately, the symptoms didn't kick in until well after I finished writing last night. Last night's total: About 6 1/2 pages of the screenplay.

Given that I don't know whether I'll be up to doing any writing tonight, it would be premature to say that I'm back on track. I'm going to see what the day brings.

Not Quite Back on the Horse

2006-05-02T12:52:00.000-04:00

Last night was the first time since I set my goals that I sat down to write, but failed to hit my target: I managed 2 pages of the screenplay.

I started at a reasonable hour, but had seriously underestimated how tired I was. I think I was nodding off at the keyboard by the time I realized that what I needed to do was sleep.

So. Not quite back up to speed, yet. To answer's Karol's question - in yesterday's comment - it's more like I tried to get on the horse, and didn't make it, and fell, but my foot got caught in the stirrup and then the horse drags me around the corral. Hilarity ensues.

Tonight's goal: 4 pages, and I start writing early enough that I finish before my eyeballs try to crawl out of my head.

I Fell Off the Wagon, So I Need to Get Back on the Horse

2006-05-01T09:55:00.000-04:00

Ouch.

That was not a productive weekend.

I did no writing on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. Three days without even sitting down to write.

It was a very full weekend. That's going to happen, sometimes. It's going to be interesting to see if I can recapture the momentum of the screenplay. I think I can, and will.

Tonight, back on the horse.

Backtracking to Move Forward

2006-04-28T12:41:00.000-04:00

Four more pages last night, bringing the total so far to 44.

Last night was also my first "you can't get there from here!" moment. A one-page scene I wrote just didn't, couldn't connect to what needed to happen next. I had to backtrack and write something new, something that fit the flow.

But it was a good scene. Full of things that needed to happen - just not then.

So it became my first "floating page." It's forging ahead in advance of the leading edge of the screenplay - right now it's page 44, but it doesn't connect to the story as a whole yet.

I think I know where that scene will fit. I'll need it shortly, and when I do, it'll be there.