TWO FISTED HOMEOPAPE January/17 - Foster the passion of writing in our communities.
Does that mean then maybe model some writing for the next generation?
♫ I applied for a rescue dog,
But if I get you dog,
You're rescuing me ♫
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2022 -- bounce.
Busy, with focus.
When there’s stuff to be done, I’m pretty good at knocking it out. I’ve had this script on my desk for the start of this new year, and I’ve been smashing out anywhere from 3 to 5 pages a morning. I had my plot outline done, my page-by-page breakdown done, and then I just started scripting it out and making each page [and also double page spread] work for all it was worth.
It’s a nice feeling to be productive, and be happy with what you are producing. I’ve finished the script, gone over it, polished it, and sent it off to my editor. A good win for the start of the year.
It’s the in between times that kinda do my head in. Cooking up multiple pitches, with no real time frame except “Dear lord, as fast as you can so you get something picked up and can get productive again, GAH!” - but that’s the worst timeframe because I rarely do my best work in a frantic rush. But I also don’t want to have zero timeframe and then just endlessly rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic. A happy middle ground is the ethereal happy place. Sometimes I find it, sometimes it finds me, sometimes I get lost along the way.
This year is about making some stuff happen - so I’m waiting on pitches [waiting sucks], and I’m manifesting some other stuff into reality - I already have [THE LADY KUNG FU PROJECT] with Louie Joyce all lined up, the script to SHE Vol. 2 out to Chris, and beyond that I think I need to fit in one more comic project, however the hell I do that.
Between it all, I’ll keep the brain wheel turning with other stuff, like the one below…
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Welcome to Faraday, thanks for your visit!
Wow, I was overwhelmed by the response to this one. I wrote a solo writing rpg that’s just one page and sets you up to write a journal about being a suburban kid caught in some local mysteries that lead you down a horror-themed rabbit hole.
You can check out Welcome To Faraday here, and get it for free or PWYW
I made this one-page beauty because I’m teaching a Suburban Horror unit this semester, and I wanted to push some creative writing specifically and there wasn’t anything out there doing it for me. So if you can’t find the thing you want, make the thing you want. So I made it, and I’ll definitely teach with it, but I thought I’d put it up where people who dig that stuff can stumble across it.
The itch.io site is where a bunch of indie games can live, from video games, to more text based rpg stuff like this. I’ve bought a tonne from there, because they’re rad *and* I also want to teach with them, so I hoped it’d find a little home there quietly. I didn’t expect much to happen, honestly, that place isn’t a community home for me, but I know it can’t hurt to be there.
Just a week or so into its launch there, it’s been scrolled in front of tens of thousands of eyeballs, and I’m nearing 100 downloads, with some people choosing to throw a few bucks in so I’m clear in profits to buy the kids some books or myself a nice comic trade paperback, or something else.
For something I made and love already to just passively live online and net me anything more than Zero Dollars is awesome. I hope this lives a long life of just existing to the side and making people happy.
I have plans to write more of these - I had the plans last year, and the response to this has me excited for it, so I’m already pencilling in plans for a mystical kung fu tournament game because of course I am! It’s a fun creative exercise and hopefully people dig it.
Thank you to those who reached out to me with your enthusiasm, to those who shared the link, to those who downloaded the game [free is fine, don’t ever stress about that], and to those who share my nerdy passions. It’s been a nice way to start the year. I’ll keep you posted as more develops throughout the year, I hope.
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Writing as a kid.
I loved writing as a kid. I didn’t do it as much as I wish I had, but the spark was always there. I knew in Year 3 that I wanted to grow up and tell stories - I thought I’d write horror novels, but surround a kid with the works of Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Dean Koontz and watch what happens. Clearly, the works of PKD, Hammett, broader works by King, and eventually Ondaatje, Scorsese, Cronenberg, Chabon, and others broadened my scope.
But I knew I liked paying with words.
I wrote some short stories. They were terrible. I should have written more. But they were a start. I certainly also told a lot of stories, I love a good yarn over a beer. But that skill would come later. As a little ween, I wrote some stories, but I also wrote non-fic.
I wrote articles in the style of Basketball Digest - I loved reading that little magazine every month. It was like $3 and I would devour all of the stats, and then sink into the articles about specific players, or whatever else they wrote about. I wonder where I left those old things? No doubt there is a landfill somewhere out there now, which is a shame.
But I would write about players I liked, and also recaps of games I’d watched on tv or fictional games I’d make up. The job of journalist always fascinated me, and was very close to being a path I’d take - I was turned away from it a year or so before uni, and I’m thankful for it, I think.
I also used to write movie reviews. Just short bullet reviews, summing up my thoughts and likes about what I watched. I filled a whole notebook with them. There was no audience or intent for these reviews - I think I only ever showed maybe one person that the notebook even exists - but I’d sit down and write half a page after watching something because it was a nice thing to do. My brain knew this was a way for me to process things.
But I wonder what I would have done with an audience if I had one? I don’t think I needed one, or even deserved one, my writing was [still might be] horrendous. I was just writing for me. But I can see now one option I would have enjoyed as a kid if I’d been given the chance and that’s a newsletter.
I think having a kid put their writing up on a blog can be a touch precarious, you really don’t want that kind of outreach nor input from The Entire Internet. That’s not even an audience you want, but an email newsletter would be curated, would go to mates, to family, stuff like that. I would have dug the hell out of that as a kid, but alas we never really had the internet at all when I was a kid. I’m trying to think if we even had it in late high school, and I want to say…no. I’d hear stories at school about this thing called “the internet” and that the modem made insane sounds, but beyond that, I don’t think it was even something I wanted to go chasing, it was an ethereal world and one I assumed was only for the most hardcore of Computer People. Man, I was strangely sheltered. I was also happy reading magazines from the newsagent, so the internet held little appeal.
But looking back, yeah, I would have taken pride in a newsletter. It would have been nerdy, and have served only an audience of like a dozen people, but I think that scope of audience would be enough to provide motivation as well as the desire to be good.
I got thinking about this because I just read the YA graphic novel THE LEAK, in which a young girl starts up her own newsletter and tries her hand at a little journalistic investigation for it. It’s fun, and touches on social issues parallel to the Flint, Michigan water crisis, and I liked that the character was passionate about writing at that age. I always felt the same. I hope this comic inspires kids to find their way with whatever passion they have in them - and, naturally, I always hope that passion is writing, but I also think writing is a passion we should nurture more in our communities.
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PERHAPS YOU'D CARE TO SAMPLE
Mimics on Kickstarter - a small D&D pamphlet about how to creatively use mimics in your game, and has a bonus extra of the same but for Gelatinous Cubes. I’m all in for this one, the digital is quite cheap.
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GRIST FOR THE MILL
WATCHMEN tv show - I’m two episodes into this and it’s very intriguing so far. It’s got an interesting level of interaction about race because it’s stars Regina King in the central role, in a world where the president has made a huge deal of providing reparation for the Tulsa Race Riot, but then it also features King and the main cast as cops who have been targeted for harassment by a racist group in the present day. It’s an interesting line to thread because the last few years have shown police to be painted as the aggressors in more situations than the victims, and so I’m interested in this approach that’s a strange narrative balance.
I also appreciate that Damon Lindelof didn’t script an adaptation of the comic for the small screen, instead opting for this story that’s set after those events, with new characters.
‘SALEM’S LOT - I’m about 140 pages into my first reread of this and it’s still a masterpiece. Trying to line this up as someone’s second published novel is wild in my head because King is just so good in these pages. I’m this far into the book and we haven’t even broached the subject of vampires yet. I’ve just been following Ben Mears as he returns to this small town and then proceeds to spark a romance with a local young woman. The rest has just been set dressing of what makes the town tick. From what I’ve read so far, I’m thinking the important threads to pick up on in this novel [beyond the vampires] are the fact that small town gossip and small town law enforcement might be about the same thing when it comes to dealing with problems, and that everyone harbours their own slices of guilt and terribleness and we deal with them in our own ways. The book is an amazing cultural study of a small town and that there is already plenty of evil bubbling away that is to be feared long before any scary creatures are ever introduced. The world’s greatest evil is just a death by a thousand cuts from all of the little things we allow all around us.
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Be one of the good guys, because there's way too many of the bad.
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POST CREDITS SEQUENCE
Like everyone, I’ve got the Wordle bug. But let me explain why.
I love Wordle. It’s a word game, I love those. It’s basically Mastermind, but with letters/words, I really love that. I can do it with the kids, that’s something to really love.
But here’s the thing.
There’s only one game a day. It’s not a rabbit hole. You get in, you do your one word challenge, and you get out. You can’t go back into the previous 200 entries, you can’t just keep hitting refresh and doing a new word, until you’ve killed 2 hours. It’s just one thing. Like 5 minutes; less.
I love word games, but having the ability to just keep doing them over and over in some kind of app or something, it’s no good for the brain [I’ve not researched that, just assuming]. I don’t want to get lost in something like this, I want to get lost in a book, in a conversation, in a walk, but not in something like this.
It’s like doing a crossword in a newspaper - do one and then you’re done for the day. Wake the brain up, shake off the dust of 2022, and then be ready for what the day will actually bring you.
During these holidays, I’ve also been using the New York Times Crossword app because there’s one mini crossword and one little spelling bee activity, and then that’s all you get for the day [or, that’s all I get for the free version, I dunno what paid subscribers roll in]. I can also do those with the kids.
Then there’s Lumosity, you do the 3 activities you get for the day for free, and then you bounce. I try not to recycle through them and lose an hour, I just like using my brain.
So that’s why I love Wordle. Mostly because it’s Mastermind, but with words, but also because it reminds me of what a fun little challenge should be.