That feeling when you, so far, spend the majority of the bomb cyclone morning on a comics pitch that you're 99% certain will never happen because comics have always been your primary source of creative heartbreak but you nonetheless remain excited enough about it that you consider writing it anyhow while the thing you're supposed to be writing stares at you, arms crossed, foot tapping, breath visible.
Comics organization project, update: temporary shelving to keep them off the cold Paintshop floor. Managed to make get a standing desk in there too; antique accountant’s desk fit just fine. Project status: done until spring.
favorite dance scene since
Sitting here working on whatever this is I’m working on and plugged in so H.E.R.B.I.E. can charge up just in case the bomb cyclone bombs it all up and I feel a bit like Robocop (my chair is probably more comfortable, though). Doubt I'll ever get used to having to charge up my external pancreas.
Proud to have become a sponsor of Mastodon this morning.
Finished Williams’s AUGUSTUS: his place as one of my three favorite authors is secured (STONER, my favorite book, got him on to the list). A remarkable novel.
into the new because
As I've moved this space to being more of a Tumbl-y microblog (it took a long time, but I'm fully sold on title-devoid posting here) and away from its original iteration as a repository of text-based daily word-hurling, I've become – I wouldn't go so far as to say troubled by it – acutely aware of a noticeable lack of text. And, while you might be celebrating, I'm not – the site header does, after all, declare me a Writer, more or less.
Maybe it's all part of that shift into a new creative epoch (evolution is mandatory) I've mentioned off and on throughout, or maybe it's something else; either way, a desire to post more writing here has been omnipresent – it's been the figuring out how to do it in a way that makes it workable and enticing for me (i.e. not contributing to feelings of rush or pointless haste and not making me sacrifice the Main Projects to kowtow to some wholly self-inflicted deadline) and enjoyable for you that's been somewhat more elusive.
The plan – subject, as ever, to change: a new release of something every Wednesday, be it an essay – this will be the only time I write about writing these things, I promise –, a bit of flash fiction, or a who knows what. I'll work on these Wednesday and Saturday mornings (though I'm writing and posting this one solely on Wednesday morning, hence the more rambly nature), releasing early to newsletter subscribers on Sunday (this will commence the first of the year, so obviously not this week or next, but with 2023's first dispatch, on Sunday, 01 January) and to the wider digital ether on Wednesday as I start work on the next release. The other four mornings will be spent on whatever the Main Project is of the week or month or lifetime; tiny thoughtlets, some titled, some not, will be released as they pop into my brain, composed and released in 15 minutes or less.
Posted it several times, but since this is something of an intent-post, I’ll do it again: Montaigne, on “Grotesques”:
Sketchy though they are, the (four minute and thirty-three second) Attendance Card exercises (patterned after Lynda Barry's in MAKING COMICS) have served their purpose and will absolutely, 100% continue – and serve as a model for what I'm doing here: I love doing them (in spite of this morning's evidence that I have no clue how to draw hands) and they, along with the spate of releases since 2020, have freed me from a perfectionistic claptrap that plagued me for the last ten years. The pieces I release on Wednesdays will be similarly sketchy and incomplete, a sort of weekly attendance card, weekly challenges to myself: whatever comes out of four-to-six hours of work is what comes out – most won't work; a few, perhaps, will. Maybe some weeks I'll build on the previous week's (or weeks') releases, transform them, play with variations – who knows: the point is that I don't know until I write them...
Hey, idea: why don't I call all of these Sunday/Wednesday grotesques/releases The Informalities? Hey, that works. Sweet. I've missed that title – arguably the best I've come up with.
Also: last week's Woodshed triage should be considered the first of these Informalities and is now so tagged.
The things that will stay and/or leave, at least as I see them in the moment of this writing:
Staying: whenever/whatever statuses and pictures and etc etc / whatever weird shit strikes my fancy here, along with occasional 15-minute-or less thoughtlets; Attendance Cards; PRESS (A) TO START (though it might move to an annual release from a semiannual one, TBD as I continue to play with possibilities with the second release - some of the weekly releases might find their final form there - hey, I like that); the newsletter.
Leaving: THE SOCIALIZED RECLUSE (I loved doing the show, I loved getting to talk with cool people, but I really need a break; it might return sometime in the spring, but in a different iteration); certain other projects that have languished and faded; efforts at being someone I'm not.
Arriving: The Informalities, V2.
Bringing this maunder to an end by mentioning that I've been in a "I need to do something more with my life" as I've done this writing thing for half my life now and, well, here I am. Countless ideas ran through my head of what I could do – run a non-profit again, open a bar, etc etc – but, after much headdesking and handwringing, I've reached the conclusion that I'm going to double or triple down on writing because, at this point, fuck it.
Best reason, I think, to do anything.