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My Writing Process is a Mess
May 08, 2023

At the end of January I was invited to contribute to an anthology of short science fiction stories. The editor gave me a rough timeline, word count, genre, and theme, but otherwise free reign to write whatever I pleased. Right now these large collections are popular in self-publishing circles, where an editor does all the hard work of organizing, formatting, and ultimately selling the book. What’s unusual is that he would solicit stories from specific authors.

I had to pass on the last one. I didn’t want to miss out again.

So the first thing I did was read a few stories from his previous collection to get a better idea of what he wanted. That helped reduce some anxiety and clear my mind for the project. I’d anticipated certain boundaries or expectations that just weren’t there, giving me a little more creative freedom. When it came to working out my contribution, I just let my mind wander. I’d been listening to adventure stories from the early pulps and decided I’d like to play in that sandbox. It would be a tale of an erudite man with a beautiful woman drawing him into an adventure.

The final result didn’t quite work out that way, but it was a start.

Actually it was several starts, as I floundered around with different characters and setups. By now the main trajectory of the story was clear in my mind and the difficulty was finding the right vehicle. After starting and stopping, sacrificing thousands of words and severals of hours, I finally hit on something that felt right. The earlier efforts weren’t wasted, as I may be able to play with those ideas later. But at the very least, it got me to where I ended up.

Even then, the sailing was far from smooth.

The only outline I use is the Hero’s Journey in my head, and even then I don’t reference it often. I let my mood control the flow of information and action, and simply trust that if I’m getting bored or tired my potential readers are as well. Sometimes I plow ahead, hoping it’s not so bad. Sometimes I stop before I dig myself into a hole. Most of the time I think about things while I’m in the shower or laying in bed and identify what doesn’t feel right.

My process is messy.

Sometimes I see an opportunity to use something I’d written earlier as a payoff later. Sometimes I have to go back and put in a setup for the payoff I just thought of. It’s a good thing I don’t write novels, because I’m forever going back and forth, forth and back. I don’t do this often, but this time I wrote the conclusion before the climax, just so that I’d have something to work toward.

You’ll see how that worked out.

Right now the story sits around 8,200 words. I have a separate document with 1,850 words of things I wrote, removed, and replaced. I thought I finished the story a couple weeks ago, but last Friday I abruptly closed the book I was reading, went to the computer, and rewrote the conclusion. A clever twist, a few jokes, and nice descriptions got mercilessly excised. And I didn’t care in the least, because I can write all of those things some other time.

You only get to end a story once, so you want to get it right.

So far only one other person has read it. I still had a few niggling doubts about a specific character, but felt it was time to stop tinkering and let someone with a fresh perspective take a look. She told me that I was being too nit-picky: it’s fine. We’re all our own harshest critics. Is the story any good? Well, two of us think so. 

But it’s not done yet.

My reader noted one section that’s confusing and suggested some missing words. I know it’s not perfect, and it never will be perfect. In a couple years I’ll probably read it again and see things I wish I could change. 

That’s just how it is.

There’s a chance the editor will pass. Maybe I misjudged his goals and missed the mark. That’s fine. I can shop it around to other publications, or publish it myself. I’ll keep you updated here. But in any case, I’m thankful that I took on the challenge and have something to show for it.

 

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Star Wars is dead and the more apathy you show the faster it will be allowed to rest in peace.

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If you'd like to buy the story and read ahead, it's available in the Fall 2020 issue of Cirsova, available here: https://amzn.to/3yRRywY

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Is Ladyballers Doomed from the Start?

The most honest analysis I've seen.

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F1 is Modern Western

As a nation, the United States is unique. We don’t share a genetic heritage, but a creed. Americans and our ideas come from all over the world. But we’re at our best when take those outside ideas and make them our own. Everything we have came from another culture, but there was a time when we could take things and collectively make them better.

Democracy? Check. Rock’n’roll? Check. Heck! Chinese food? Yes, we did.

Don’t hate. You know I’m right.

One of the greatest art forms we’ve given the world is the western genre. While rooted in courtly romances of King Arthur, we took the idea of the man on horseback who makes things right on his quest for something spiritual and made it distinctly American. Most of the time, these stories aren’t historically accurate, but that’s not the point. They’re soaked in the American ethos. For better or for worse, the western has become the American myth, even more so than 1776.

And the cool thing about myths is that you can take them and tell other stories. 

Star Trek (and later Firefly) took the western to space. 

A few weeks ago I was able to see F1: The Movie on IMAX, and I had high hopes. Director Joseph Krasinski had proved himself with Top Gun: Maverick, which is about as American as a modern movie can get. But mostly, I just wanted to see if he could do with racecars what he’d done with fighter jets. In that regard, I was everything I’d hoped it would be. The idea of Americanism didn’t even cross my mind, since F1 is primarily a European sport.

Boy, was I surprised.

Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes with all the careless cool of Paul Newman in his prime and a Steve McQueen swagger. While Pitt has never played a cowboy and isn’t a racecar driver in real life, Newman and McQueen played both, and did both. Hayes has been keeping himself busy with no-name races since an F1 crash nearly killed him some 30 years before. But when Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), an old friend and rival, needs some wins to save the team, he tracks down Sonny.

And the old dog knows a few tricks.

Naturally, his tactics put him at odds with his teammate, Joshua Pierce (Damson Idris), and his cocky attitude is a big red flag to the team’s engineer, Kate McKenna (Kerry Conden). So the movie all the tropes of a sports film, and I don’t think I need to summarize further. But it’s not a sports film. Or rather, it’s not just a sports a film. Surprise, surprise, it’s the western myth transposed into a racing a story.

It’s spelled out in the trailer, but it didn’t strike me until the very end.

Kate calls Sonny Hayes an “old school rough and tumble cowboy” in a line used in the marketing. When he arrives in the garage, only Ruben knows him. Sonny is the stranger in town. Like James Garner in Support Your Local Sheriff, his method of restoring order and winning is unorthodox and effective. Like Shane, in that Alan Ladd classic, he’s guarded about his past. And like John Wayne in The Searchers and so many other westerns, Sonny Hayes is the outsider who must leave civilization once he’s made it civilized for those who belong there.

But he doesn’t.


Perhaps the hardboiled crime story, another uniquely American genre, is also an outgrowth of the western. Philip Marlow is the man who must walk down mean streets, who is not himself mean. As Raymond Chandler said, “He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.” Basically, the man he’s describing is dangerous, but not cruel. Dispassionate in taking revenge, and restrained by a code of honor.

But destined to be lonely, nonetheless.

Why we’ve made that an essential part of the American is a topic for another time. But there it is. And it’s the story of Sonny Hayes. At the end of the movie [SPOILER], he rides off into the sunset as the credits roll. The western isn’t dead. It’s still there, in essence, speaking to our hearts in different ways.

Nothing more American than that. 

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Girl-Power Isn't the Problem: Stop Treating Movies Like TV Pilots

Last weekend I was able to sneak off the theater for a screening of From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Did I feel silly, telling the high school girl at the ticket counter, “One for Ballerina, and a small drink”? Well, not in the moment. 

I probably drank a liter of cherry vanilla Coke Zero, and that didn’t feel so great.

Plenty of box office analysts and Hollywood types are wracking their brains, trying to figure out why movies like Furiosa and Ballerina aren’t drawing huge crowds. Mad Max and John Wick are popular franchises, but apparently telling the stories of the women in those worlds isn’t working. Even if the movies are pretty good.

I’ve seen both, and they’re pretty good.

Some are arguing that no one will go near a movie that looks like it’s feminist girl-bossing. Others counter that movies like Alien and Kill Bill are female-led action films that were successful. Now, I’m not going to say that Ballerina is on par with those modern day classics. But I will say that, as a man watching the movie, it didn’t offend me. The movie never challenged me to confront any internalized misogyny. The small girl doesn’t take down John Wick in hand-to-hand combat.

Honestly, if you like franchise, whether you’re male or female, you should watch Ballerina.

In short, from a purely cinematic experience perspective, neither Furiosa nor Ballerina would be any better or worse with a male lead. Maybe that’s a hot take. But that’s mine, for whatever it’s worth. Well, okay, I wouldn’t watch a movie called Ballerina if it stared a dude. Nevertheless, I think you get my point. Petite women warriors aside, the plots and action are exactly as expected.

So what’s the deal?

Well, what no one seems to have noticed is that Ripley and The Bride weren’t replacing anyone. As we were watching their movies for the first time, we weren’t thinking about other characters for whom we already had a preference. Movies are more like TV than TV right now, and replacement characters have always been a hard sell, regardless of gender. We all remember Sam and Diane. Who still talks about Sam and Rebecca (even though Kirstie Alley won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the part)? I had to look up her name. 

No, they aren’t technically replacing them. It’s a spin-off, set in the same world.

Spin-offs tend to succeed when the characters are already well established (eg: Frasier). Furiosa and Ballerina are more like backdoor pilots, where new characters are dropped in for a single episode to sell us on the idea of a new show. This technique is very hit and miss on TV, and I can’t think of a single example of this working in a movie franchise. Film and television are very different mediums, and should be treated as such.

Still, if it doesn’t work on TV, it’s probably not gonna work at the movies. Not where new characters and spin-offs are concerned. 

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Going Back to 1995

Maybe I’m just getting old, but it doesn’t feel like we had the thriving and distinct pop culture of past generations. Has there been a look or stye, or feeling, that defines this moment? Everything seems to have stagnated for the last twenty years. And it’s not as if I don’t pay attention. 

It’s making me nostalgic. 

Consequently, for the rest of the year, I’m prioritizing movies from 1995, the year I was twelve. At that time, my family didn’t really go to the theater, and when we did rent VHS tapes, more often than it is was older Disney movies or entirely forgettable Christian titles. Now that I’ve grown tired of trying to keep up with new releases, not there’s much worth watching anyway, it feels like a good time to catch up on those 30 year old movies that have become ingrained in what’s left of our pop culture.

So over on Criticless, I made a list.

Some of these are movies I’ve seen before, but not in a long time. Others will be first time watches for me. There’s really no rhyme or reason to what I put on my list. It’s just movies that either interest me, or are currently in my collection, sadly unwatched. As things become available on streaming, I may add to the list. And if I don’t get to everything before the end of the year, no big deal.

Hopefully, they aren’t going anywhere. 

I’ll be posting some reviews and analysis as I go, so be sure to follow me here. 

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