Posts Tagged ‘ writing ’

I feel like my perspective has shifted over the past seven-and-a-bit weeks, and for that I wholeheartedly blame my son, Jack,  and Michael Chabon.

I’ve fallen into a routine – as new parents tend to do, apparently – and at about 11.30 every night, I give Jack his last bottle before he goes down for his sleep. I know that this won’t last that long as pretty soon he should be sleeping from 7pm or so – but right now, it’s probably the highlight of my day.

After he’s had his bottle, I burp him, change him, swaddle him, then hold him until he falls asleep – and while I do this, I read. Sometimes I read out loud, sometimes I read silently, depending on how sleepy he is. I’ve been getting through a few books this way, and the latest one is Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs.

As is par for the course for Chabon, his first collection on non-fiction i’s exquisitely written. Some of the stories are aimed at his children. Some, such as the one about his teenage sexual experience with his mother’s friend, you kind of hope aren’t.

But as I read them and look at my dozing son, I realize that I want to make sure I tell him my own stories. I want him to be able to learn from my mistakes and know that it’s okay to make his own. I want to tell him about the time I did this, and that, and maybe even the other.

And I want to tell him story-stories. Not just true stories but stories. I’ve become acutely aware over the past two months that time has passed right on by while I haven’t been paying attention. I’m thirty-five years old and I have exactly one piece of published writing, and I think I’m being generous counting even that piece as ‘published’.

So it’s time to change that. It’s time to gird my loins, refocus, giddy up, pick myself up by the bootstraps, and whatever the hell else I need to do to get myself together.

I need to make sure that the stories I haven’t told yet are told by the time my son needs to hear them.

In no particular order…

Get past the first three chapters of Alastair Reynold’s House of Suns so I can start Glen David Gold’s Sunnyside.

Tell everyone that my favorite book is Carter Beats the Devil and you should all read it right now.

Write another column for DVDSnapshot because I’m way late with that.

Read this week’s comics (I’ve only read Dark Reign: The List: X-Men; huh, I was right, whadda ya know?).

Watch last night’s Fringe.

Rewatch last night’s FlashForward.

Don’t forget to DVR Dollhouse tonight.

Send people over to Tiny Broken Films.

Draw a name from a hat for the Captain Britain Giveaway (I promise, I’ll get in touch with the winner Monday at the latest).

Work out how to run the next giveaway, yes?

Finish Starman Omnibus Volume 3.

Remind people that High Moon collected comes out next week and you can get it on Amazon for only a little over $10 for 180 pages of goodness.

Put some comics on ebay.

Turn people on to Adam Pawlus’ excellent Figure of the Day Star Wars figure blog.

Stop buying toys under the pretense that the unborn will play with them in five year’s time.

Email back the awesome artist who emailed me this week and write something for him.

Spend some quality time with the dog.

And the wife, I suppose.

Stop telling said wife that due to the size of my head, the unborn will come out like the Mekon only less green.

Pimp some other folks‘ blogs. Like these. Because I don’t do that enough, and I do read blogs, I just tend not to comment that much.

Comment more on blogs I read.

Block out the beat sheet for the next spec screenplay I’m working on, which has a premise so awesome that it’s a guaranteed hit. Guaranteed, I tell you.

Rewrite the last spec screenplay I finished after leaving it to sit for a few more weeks.

Try and think of some topics to blog about that aren’t just random images.

Or, you know, lists.

Conquer world.

There, that should do it.

You may have noticed that the content on the blog has been a little bit light recently. Not to worry – I’m just chronically busy at work at the moment.

I’m also reassessing the comics I pick up (yet again) due to the impending arrival of the offspring in a couple of months. It’s not like I’m dropping Spider-Man or anything, but lets just say that some of the lower-level books are on the chopping block even though I do like them.

I also finished the first draft of my first full length screenplay over the weekend, and printing that 109 page baby out yesterday made me grin like a schoolgirl. Lots of re-editing to do on this one, but for the next month or two it’s going away while I start work on another – and I’m pretty damn pleased with the idea for this one. SyFy movie of the week, here we come…

Anyway, the point is – not much of a post today. Sure, I may Tumblr something later on, or Posterous something but that’s probably about it.

Remember though, send me a direct message through Twitter with the name of Captain Britain’s first love interest by end of Friday to get in a draw for the three Captain Britain trades reprinting his early UK appearances! (If you’re not following me, I’ll follow back soon as I can to get your DM!)

Posted via web from Comic By Comic’s Wonderous Posterous!

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(Oops, we’re missing a word on this page – that’s what editors are for!)

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As always, click the pic to embiggen.

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Before I submitted Mecha Simian to Zuda, I submitted The Thin Dead Line, with artist Wei Li, which was rejected.

Still, no point in it going to waste so I’m going to post the eight pages here for those that are interested – I’ll be throwing up a lot of other materials and sketches up on my other blog for those that are interested, starting with the original script.

Click here or the page below to embiggen.

These past few days have seen a little bit of progress on my screenplay. I’m currently reworking the opening to make a few changes – which are already reflected in the later pages, so I’m back-filling, if you like.

The main changes are as follows:

• I shifted a funeral from the start of the screenplay to pre-story, about six months earlier. I realised that the emotions would be too raw for the rest of the screenplay with the funeral right at the start. A shame, as it was a strong opening. Ah well.
• I got rid of a character who served the same purpose as another character that I liked more.
• I need to establish the protagonist’s dictio more strongly from the start – and add more hints of true character before that becomes more apparent so that it doesn’t come out of the blue.

It’s kind of freeing, knowing exactly where characters need to end up at the end of these first few scenes, but oddly constricting at the same time.

I’ve also changed a major plot point which happened before the screenplay starts. It makes more sense this way, I think, because now it fits in better with what happens in the screenplay itself.

My main problem is that there’s a lack of conflict in these early scenes. That definitely needs to be punched up some if it’s going to draw a reader in – but I can brush that up on the next pass, I think.

Even though Mecha Simian is free online, sometimes you just need more – so over at my website, I’ve uploaded the original script for Mecha.

It’s slightly different than the final product and in it Mecha’s ship was named, but it’s there in all it’s over-enthusiastic glory!

Check it out here!

I just realised that I didn’t update when the thing I hinted at in the last post went live – but then as about five people have seen this site, I guess that doesn’t really matter too much!

Anyway, I have an entry in this month’s Zuda Comics competition - Mecha Simian . The entry, written by me, drawn by Greg Woronchak, colored by Lisa Moore and lettered by Ama Darwin, is Mecha Simian.

It’s a touching story about a cyborg monkey, his talking spaceship and a couple of big guns – honestly, if there’s anything else that makes a cool comic, I don’t know what it is.

For those not in the know, Zuda Comics works like this: ten comics are chosen from submissions (and they tend to get a lot so making the cut into the ten is a pretty big deal in itself) for any given month’s competition, then the ten face off for a month of voting by readers – and the winner get’s a year’s contract to produce more of the same comic for Zuda. Zuda is the online arm of publisher DC Comics, best known for Batman and Superman, amongst many other properties.

The actual mechanics of the ranking process are carefully shielded black magicks, but consist of voting, stars given, favoriting, comments and views.

As of writing, poor old Mecha is running in 7th place – so why not head on over, register online and vote for Mecha Simian?

No surprise here – up for Best Supporting Actor, Heath Ledger:

I suspect that Josh Brolin, Michael Shannon, Robert Downey Jr. and Philip Seymour Hoffman don’t need to bother prepping a speech.

There’s a full list on CNN here which doesn’t appear to have the technical noms on there.

If you’re interested in screenplays, right now you can read the following nominated scripts by clicking on the links below! I’m still working on finding the In Bruges and Slumdog Millionaire scripts – if you happen to know where they are, let me know!

The nominees for best original screenplay are:

In Bruges
WALL-E
Frozen River
Milk
Happy-Go-Lucky

and for best adapted screenplay:
Slumdog Millionaire
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Doubt

Yesterday’s inauguration speech by President Obama was, I thought, really well-written and delivered.

I haven’t always agreed with Obama’s message (personally, I think ‘Change’ is a little ambiguous and catchphrase-y for the basis of a presidential campaign) but I do think that he’ll make a good president provided he listens to his advisors.

The one thing that gives me pause about Obama’s experience is that he doesn’t have any financial experience – and right now, the US needs a strong guiding hand. Yesterday’s Wall Street losses suggest to me that I’m not the only one concerned about this – but still, there seems to have been some recovery today.

Anyway, that was a really well written speech. Toby Ziegler would be proud.

I’ve decided to start a new blog (this one) and website (also this one) that I can use a little in the future.

This blog will be less comics-oriented than my other blog (and probably won’t be updated quite as regularly) and the site will also host various stuff I’ve written. Right now it’s still a work in progress, although I do have one comic script online right now.

This is my first dabble with WordPress so let me know what you think!

So I’m working on a few pitches for San Diego ‘just in case’ – and because I enjoy it, dammit, and it’s good practice. I’ve got most of the books I want to do it for from the big two, and I’m pulling together the rough outline of a couple of original ones too – again, just in case, and because I’m firmly of the opinion that a good idea never goes entirely to waste.

It’s got me wondering though – if you could take over one of Marvel or DC’s ongoing books, or create a new one out of an existing property, which one would it be?

Which book needs an overhaul or a new direction?*

Which old character can you dust off and reinvent?

Promise I won’t steal your ideas – I’m just curious to see if any of you out there think along the same lines as me!

*And no, you can’t undo One More Day. That ship’s sailed!

Let’s see…an hour with JMS talking about the writing process?

I’ve enjoyed a lot of JMS’s work; the first four years of Babylon 5 contain some of the best hours of TV ever, and I’ve enjoyed a lot of his Spidey and FF work, and can appreciate that even the stuff I didn’t enjoy was very well written – so this was really a no-brainer for me.

And it was quite probably the best class I never paid for.

Yes, there was the usual advice you get from these things: if you want to write, write. But there was also a lot of other things too.

He suggested that everyone speaks in the writer’s voice – but the trick is realising that they will speak about different things and have different viewpoints.

His 9/11 issue of Spidey is one of the most memorable comics of recent times, and even though people have criticised some elements of it, there is no denying that it’s a powerful and important issue, and perhaps the truest emotion that I’ve ever seen in a comic. He was going to turn down the suggestion, but decided to make a list of whys and why-nots first. The first thing he wrote in the why-nots column was ‘There are no words.’ Forty five minutes later he had the entire issue written, and it wasn’t changed through to production.

JMS’s invocation of Norman Corwin will definitely make me check out his work.

I was also very taken with JMS’ theory that the more important the emotion, the less words you need.

As an example, he used this:

6 words – Will you go out with me?
5 words – I like you a lot.
4 words – I care for you.
3 words – I love you.
2 words – Marry me.

What, he asked, is the most powerful thing you can say to someone?

1 word – Goodbye.

Damn.

He’s good.