My Unconscious Mind Can Be Kind Of Unsubtle

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

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...

I just signed up for National Novel Writing Month.

Xeno's Arrow On Modern Tales!

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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)

Nothing to tell, really. I just near to hear back from someone about something. Details as they happen and stuff.

Moonbeam and Mizzenmast

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...

My son turns one year old today!

Happy birthday, Darwin.

Some Days You're The Roadrunner, Some Days You're The Coyote

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

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

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...

... 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!

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.