Day 132 of a Month Long Writing Practice

Tomorrow I begin eleven days without internet access, eleven days where I don't catch up with other peoples concerns, jokes, links, lunches. I was wondering what I'd do about my writing and drawing daily routines. Well, here is the deal. I may still write, if I do I'll write on paper. I may still draw, if I do I'll draw on paper. I won't be uploading anything. The paper will just pile up - if I actually use it. I may not.
    After eleven days I will have access to the internet again. Do I take this pile of paper - if it exists - and translate it to pixels ? Do I scrap the paper and restart writing on the screen ? We'll see. Frankly, I don't really care one way or the other. I consider this project a success. I've written things, a handful of people have read some of the things I've written. I'm not keen to remind anyone that there is more here to read. People are flooded with information anyway. Chances are, I will rope in my efforts and energies and put them to use creating something of substance. Frittering away energy is something I've done for much too long, like eating when stress starts to rise within me. Like surrounding myself with acquaintances instead of solid friends.
    So, see you later, here or somewhere else. This has been day 132 of a daily writing practice.

Abandon Ship

In a few days I will take vacation with my family. We will go to cabin country in Ontario and visit with cousins. We will cook together and take care of each other's kids. During this time I will not have internet access. I will most probably abandon any of my daily writing and drawing practices. Writing long hand in some notebook for eleven days may happen but i'm not counting on it. I could, I suppose, do just that and when home again, transcribe it all and upload it. It's an option. I'm thinking that this may be a convenient time to stop all this nonsense and when I get back to reality, simply dive into my graphic novel project. It's a nice thought in any case.
    I guess I could draw a daily drawing out there on the shore of the lake. I could entertain the kids with the bunny drawings. They'll all ask for one anyway. I'll play it by ear, but know ye reader, that this is me starting to justify why I'm going to drop the ball.
    Picking up another ball is mandatory. I am obliged to do so. I simply hope I'm efficient about it. Time will tell.

More Retail Blues

I repeat myself. I tell folks who know the neighbourhood so well that our shop is sixteen years old this year. They obviously are embarrassed.
    The walking dead mewl into the store, unknowing what it is they see. The quickly alive respond, the curious delight, the engaged engage.
    When I was an art teacher in a dead end high school, I realized that I shouldn't spend my energy on the wastrels and the stoners who don't bother to move crayons around on a sheet of construction paper. they frustrated me, they poked my ego, I couldn't get through.
    Have I been making the same mistake in my retail endeavour ? Do I focus more on the dull and bored than I do on those who laugh and get it and actually shop ? Maybe I do. My pride again. Getting in the way. Helping me fog over the good and squeak to whoever will listen about those entitled few who traipse about, touching everything and buying nothing.
    Today a few people came in glowing and shopping. It actually happens everyday. And yet too often I see folks in the neighbourhood and I can't help but think, 'they've never been in my shop'.
   

Help!

My business vacillates from an exciting flurry of activity and vibrancy to an unsustainable drag on pocket book and emotional health.
    Retail is something I've now done for fifteen years and though I sometimes think 'we can make a go of it', it must be realized that it has done gone. I am tired, truly, of fishbowl living. Dancing monkey in a gilded cage ?
    I come back to this place again and again, the place where I'm at my wit's end about what to do, how to proceed, how to unravel my knots. My sword seems rusted and too heavy to lift.
    I can't keep coming back to this place, not at this age. I need activation, radical switching, decision making, power brokerage. I need help.

Time Lies

I'm still amazed at the discrepancy between how long I thick something will take to do and how long it actually takes. My procrastination problem has always had as an adjunct some rationalization that the task postponed needs quite a bit of time to complete. With every passing day I am proving this an outdated attitude.
    There are still plenty of things on my to-do list that I am pushing away but no longer can I entertain the excuse surrounding time. There is enough time in any day to accomplish any number of things.
    My regular attitude has always been to reserve a particular day for a particular task. If I have to go downtown to buy some art supplies, for example, I would pencil that task in the calendar and reserve that day for that task. It takes an hour to go downtown, buy some paper and come back. I did that today, along with some grocery shopping, tile work, puttying cracks in the floor, visiting a potential client, vacuuming the house, doing some dishes, preparing my supper, goofing off plenty, visiting a friend.
    This new approach has emerged with fatherhood. I can't rightly postpone things that need to be down anymore. One can't change the kids diaper later. One does it now. I've been doing things now.
    So, I bought my art supplies. Soon I'll cut some of the bristol up and begging roughing in some panels, panels that will grow into my next full length graphic novel. It's doing to be a good one, I can feel it. I'm not writing it or drawing sketches or planning anything. I will start drawing and see where that takes me. I will trust the process.

The Book

I'll continue trying to read Ishmael Reed, Stan Gooch and Stephen Jay Gould. I'll be tempted with that new pile of books downstairs, Dick Hebdige, Joseph Campbell and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and a few more.
    Fantasy trilogy is done and I may want more. Something decent. Not a ten book dynastic wank-off.
    Between fantasy, folklore, myth, pop culture, paranormal, theory, sociology I have it covered. A little history of science, the occasional witch blog, Black or Native American cultural studies, crappy comics, pamphlets and arcane poetics. I wish I could merge all this in what I myself make. maybe I do and I don't notice.
    I tried to buy art supplies today, some nice bristol board to cut into panels so I can start drawing. I know there will be duds, wasted paper, crappy third attempts, aborted sequences. But that's ok, that means I'm working. Right now all I have is the taste of blood in my mouth.
    The art supply co-op near me had nothing I needed paper-wise. Not for this project. I bought four six by eight wooden panels for painting because I was there and I should have some such on hand when the feeling strikes. Wood over canvas because I scrape and gouge.
    I have to go downtown now. I always knew I had to go downtown. That art supply shop near me has great stuff but never what I need. Once they were out of white acrylic paint. Good job, guys.
    I'll try again tomorrow, downtown. The problem with that is if I do I'll get home later and there is stuff to do around the house. There are radiators to remove, parquet flooring to cut and glue down, expanding foam to stick between the walls and spray.
    Lots to do. I'll find the time to goof-off too I hope.
    It's all going in the book.

The Retail Life

So, I'm going to try and not compulsively greet everyone who comes into the shop. I know some shoppers hate that and it may cause them to not want to return. They want to slip through this life unhindered, unnoticed, they want to purchase or dream of buying without some over zealous shopkeep blathering on. This is not a social club, I'm not here to make friends or impress anyone with my soft melodious voice. It's a store.
    I always say hi and by doing so sometimes I visibly derail the shoppers experience. They were on a particular trajectory before I said anything and then they were lead away from it. They turn to look at me and change the course of their lives.
    Sometimes someone is browsing the books and when I make them aware of the posters, they put the book down and head to the posters. Maybe I could have sold a book. How long has it taken me to know all this. Not so long. Have I implemented what I know ? No, I haven't.
    Will I be like those cold quiet jerks that man art galleries ? The ones who know in their blood that some shithead like me certainly would only waste their time and never once buy anything ? Well, no, I won't be like that. But I'll let the customer come into the shop, deep into it, before I say anything. What if I lose that person in the shallows who didn't know where they were and needed guidance ? I'll cater to adults who are able to ask if they are curious.
    I can't do this much longer.

My Fantasy Novel

My fantasy novel will include a map of the terrain. I'll try not to make the sea in the west. I won't mention anything about anyone going west as some sort of step-in for nebulous death. I won't have swans or giant eagles. I may have elves. If I don't have elves, I won't have radiant, wise, ancient beings of light. I'd rather just have elves than some race of frost people the reader will respond to with 'why didn't he just have elves instead of these non-elf elves ?'.
    The trilogy I'm reading now has too many near-misses of Tolkien and King Arthur. King Arthur makes sense because he actually makes an appearance. Middle-earth and all that show up as if there was no other template available to the author. Even the names echo names found in LOTR but without the cohesion.
    My fantasy novel will be a trilogy but a short one. I want kids to read it but I may mention stuff that school boards wouldn't like. There will be a map and there will also be something I found very helpful in the trilogy I'm finishing up now, a list of characters in the front of the book. Great idea. I need to go back and see who the Dark Lords' first lieutenant is versus the Ancient Power of the Forest.
    My fantasy novel will not have a dark lord that must be defeated by the end of the book. In fact, there will be no dark lord at all. There may be evil and darkness and a deep dark evil but he won't live in a tower in some barren land and he won't have slave armies of gross sub-humans that can easily be slaughtered without misgiving by our heroes.
    My fantasy novel certainly will not have characters, in a moment of sober reflection, face the sea and sing. No one will do any singing in my fantasy novel. If they do, you can bet your shiney behind that I will not include the lyrics. If someone wants to sing they better just sing and get it over with. Like so : "Ranoth, heading back to his chambers after his appointment as Second Guard to the Queen, went by way of the armouries. Through the quiet turns of the stone corridors, he hummed to himself at a volume that was sure to disturb no one."
    I probably won't have any ships in my fantasy novel because I don't know anything about ships and I don't need anyone to hoist sails or stand on the prow as opposed to the non-prow.
    Anyway, it'll be a fun book to read once I get around to writing it. So far all I've got is what I don't want it to be.

Picking

Today is a beautiful June Saturday. I have a shop to run so I'm running it. Noon until 5:30, maybe 6 PM. The internet tells me that everywhere one would choose to look, on can find a street festival, a garage sale, an outside summer event. I did what I could this morning. Garage sallied an original Inuit drawing, signed, for two dollars, a small bronze of a dancing bear playing tambourine for five. Home made leather purses, pure 1970s Quebecois hippie cost a bit more, four for twenty.. A street nearby hosted a many family garage sale so walking up and down a couple of blocks yielded much fun. I could have done it all day. I'd love to do it all day but here I am. One day I won't have the shop and I'll be able to go hunting and picking all day long. But then what would I do with all the crap I'd buy ?
    This is day one hundred of my daily writing project. I committed to a month and have now cracked three.

Pop Has Eaten Itself

On the strength of Bird Dog, I was all poised to strike the record button on my portable cassette player when the disc jockey announced that he'd play some Everly Brothers after the break. Turns out it was a song I hadn't heard before, Cathy's Clown. For years all that was played back was my disappointment.
    One song feeds into another. From old mix tapes, song orders are cemented in young ears. It would jar when it wouldn't follow. It's like when two songs that lead quickly into each other, forming a one-two punch of awesome rocknroll are hacked asunder by some FM radio robot, leaving you hanging. We Will Rock You must be followed by We Are The Champions. There is no need to explain.
    I wonder how some of these songs, forty years old now are still somehow around. I wonder if they have any contemporary analogues. Will there survive some listening structure of format that will accommodate today's songs in forty years ? One hit wonders from 1978 still get 3 million hits on YouTube. Will there be a YouTube to host all of today's songs in the future ? And how many mixtures are there ? Playlist after playlist, burnt CD, the revived cassette, the film soundtrack of curated oldies. So much to sift through.
    There's no way of telling which of today's songs some kid will make a tape of. Like the death of saturday morning cartoons, a focused kids culture exploded into distinct VHS habits changing from family to family. Once all kids were hooked into Bugs Bunny, then some kids demanded Winnie The Pooh to be looped endlessly by desperate parents while others sunk into the sickening appeal of Caillou. A generation torn asunder, unwoven, disentangled. Watching space shuttles blow up in the sky. Sampling can only go so far, what could they do but mash-up ?
    And now we have what once was a years work primed for a conceptual showing in an art gallery along with impenetrable text presented as another anonymous GIF tossed off into the slop trough of our collectivity, shared reactively for the moment and then forgotten.
    That stack of vintage art magazines ? Track down the cover artists. Let's see how they did.

Nomination

I was nominated for a Quebecois comic book prize this year. The gala was held in a posh night spot on the other end of town. I felt it was proper form to attend even though I was exhausted from a long day. Taking the metro there, I thought I'd be late but arrived early enough to grab a seat at my publishers table. I was treated to a pint and sat with friends as the short ceremony begun. My sausage sandwich was too spicy and I didn't win the award. I was only a small bit disappointed and decided it best to walk home. The clear night air did me good and I avoided the busier streets. Montreal in the cool spring evening is gorgeous. The trees are all lush, in sharp contrast to a few short weeks ago when all was barren from a long brutal winter.
    I walked home and thought about working harder. The book that won belongs to a friend and is a marvel of intuitive storytelling. It can easily serve as a reminder for me to loosen up a bit more and follow my nose, not be so high strung and determined to make sense. Freak out a bit more, as it were. I also thought on my walk home that perhaps I overvalue my talent. I am prone to thinking how great I am, easily confusing the thoughts I've had with my actual output. This hit home when I started musing upon a street campaign using a particular local motif. A short block later, there it was, stuck to the street signs, some one else had manifested the idea.
    I tend to daydream a whole heck of a lot more than produce. I manifest but not as much as I imagine I do. Too often I have seen ideas I thought of stare back at me, the work of other hands. I must only look at my actual output and not my potential in weighing my worth as an artist. I still haven't bought the paper I need to begin my next book. A book that will be better than the last one. A book that better be. To be better, the artist must relax into the task, create a work from joy and not perceived audience expectation. I think I can do it.

Tone Poem

It may have been late last night or early this morning when a forgotten phrase re-entered my thoughts. Tone poem is a musical term, I'm not sure if I knew that. I'm shamefully unschooled in proper classical music and its tendencies. A tone poem, I just found out, refers to some piece of music that takes as it's inspiration a poem or a painting, something that once was considered unsuitable to write music around.
    Since my interest in the term came with an ignorance of its meaning, I was free to consider what it may mean to me and my creative process. What a privilege! Instantly I saw an extended mood or tone being explored -in comics, for example. Panel leading to panel, all working out a sense of something rather than a plot. This is done constantly in comics and I have indulged in it as well. It came to me, I will accept, as a reminder to reconsider this approach to making comics.
    Shifting sequential images do not necessarily have to show action. Abstract comics have strung together tableaus of line or form evoking movement or change without showing much else. That's an extreme example. Good ol' regular story telling comics can use multiple landscape scenes or a roving camera eye over details to paint a picture, set a mood, etc.
    I am relishing the idea of slow comics, panels morphing slowly, action taking a back seat. Of course, what one is showcasing better stand up to a plodding movement. Would it work ? Is it gimmicky or wanky ? Maybe tomorrow I'll finally go buy my paper and supplies and start preparing myself for actual work and not whimsical considerations.

Alchemy Of The Shoebox

My purging gets followed by new acquisitions. I have a bit of buyer's remorse for one over-large item. On the plus side I also have been given a whole whack of new items, some keepers, some pass-alongers. Easy come, easy go.
    Matter proliferates.
    New things are exciting and beautiful. Garage sale season is upon us. I am confronted daily with my desires and my failings. It is my job to accumulate and sell items but I must also be wary. Matter multiplies faster than it dissolves away into money.
    This week I have reduced some vital collections greatly. These gestures are instrumental for me, they signify gaining control over a compunction to collect thoughtlessly, to value things reactively, as if simply because I've collected something there is an inherent value there. Wrong.
The value must be revisited. I must check in with myself and see why it is that I'm keeping something. Maybe what once was precious is now weighty and crude. Maybe what once was a drop in the bucket is the star of the show. And so on.
    I will continue to refine, to boil away, to distill until all I am left with is gold.
    First with my stuff, so that I'll have a clue what to do with my soul.
   

Moving Matter

The consistent monotony of retail is not something to build a journal around. The days leak banality. I forget what happens or what happens isn't too noteworthy. I refused antique cigarette prints. The picker saw them on the internet for 900 dollars each. how does one negotiate starting there ? one doesn't. I don't think that guy will come back. My regular picker brought me a load of antique photos, a persons entire life saved from the trash. Some beauties in there. I bought a flat file that is way too big for my space. Where will it go ? What will be dismissed to accommodate it ? It led me to redesign one corner of the shop that I now think works better but that still leaves the file out. I'll find a corner, I'll fill it with prints. When and how i don't yet know. I continued going through my large collection of posters and flyers. I reduced the collection by more than fifty percent. I donated the rest to a local archive intent on documenting independent culture. I al so relieved. My perspective has shifted. I don't care much anymore about clogging my life with other peoples achievements. I'll keep what I like or what I can sell, the rest gets passed on.
    That was today. Like most every other day. A slow shifting of material, around, sometimes in, sometimes out.

Time For Reduction

The days sneak right by me, whistling and side-eyed so I don't notice. They be all nonchalant and before I know anything I'm yawning with hardly any time left but a list still full. Write some shit down, draw a damned cartoon bunny, heat up some almond milk and stir in some ghee, meditate for forty fucking minutes with hands of light over my eyes, my temples, the back of my head, my throat, my heart, my solar plexus, below my navel, at my groin, on my knees, my ankles, the soles of my feet. Breathe in, breathe out slowly, six times a minute. Counting the whole time, nodding off, entering some dream place, left it too long, tired.
    It's quarter to ten in the pm. Nine is the new midnight. Every half hour past that is a whole hour in this new reality. I haven't stopped since six am. No, lies, I had a nap from 8 to 9:30 this morning. I found a book, an anthology of diarists. I read some of it, book leaning on the stroller, in the shade of a big tree on L'Esplanade. Stroller rocked back and forth as kid slept. I'm getting the hang of this. The tiredness is setting in deep. The first few months were nothing. It's starting in for earnest now. My lady has never slept and I'm slowly catching up to her. There is no question, you boy up and get dressed and find the wipes and do the changing. Walk the baby to sleep, rock him, stroll him, shush him. Hours and my voice is strong, my rhythm near perfect.
    The days fly by. To slow them I sort through paper, I rip into my archives, collections of garbage i've held onto for years for no other reason than compulsion. No more. Piece by piece, sorting through the piles, separating gold from dross. Reducing it down. A fine sauce. The rest ? Pass it onto better hoarders, committed ones who see value where now I see weight. Get it out of my house, these stacks of paper, these bits of someone else's press kit. See you later.
    Thankfully I have a friend who can help me, who can watch and suggest and support me as I reduce my keepings by eighty percent. The days go fast. The nights are fleeting. My dreams forgotten. But when I finally rest, I'll know I'm no longer surrounded by bullshit.

Tune Up

Last night I practiced the relaxation technique I learned this past weekend. In combination with deep breathing and particular postures, I came out of my forty minute reverie feeling like a million bucks.
    I hope to add this to my daily routine as a slow lead in to physical activity and spiritual practise. It is well situated between both.
    For many years I have hoped to learn techniques that would enable me to harness the energy I've glimpsed stirring in the palms of my hands. I am committed now to finish at least three weeks of daily meditative practise. I am unconcerned if the lengths of my daily text pieces decrease. I am unconcerned if my daily drawing habit skips a beat. I will still upload a text and a drawing daily knowing that my health takes precedent over these other concerns.
    I have proved to myself that writing is beneficial and that I am able to maintain some sort of discipline. Much clarity has ensued.
    The bunnies come and go with quality and I am ok with that.
    The meditation has been needing to start for far longer than I care to admit to myself.
    I am curious to see how it will affect the rest of my life.
    Stay tuned as I tune myself up for a future full of present days.

Starting Right Now

Do I have the time to show up at the office and churn out a short paragraph about my thoughts and feelings ? Do I have the time to moisturize my face after working outside with sun beating down and pallets of earth moved across alleyways? Do I have the time to worry about Antarctica and the ice sheets and the people and Hydro Quebec and radical skepticism and ill informed rationalism and people who think way too much ? Do I have the time to consider and reconsider and reconsider still my contribution to what seems like a confused and collapsing civilization? Do I have the time to make a comic book and dream of a career in the arts instead of selling everything I have and moving to a small cabin in the countryside?

    Ask me what I would do if I had five years to live and I wouldn't answer 'what I'm doing now' so why am I doing what I'm doing now instead of what I'd do if I had only five years to live ?
    Tell me about it. Tell me about my choices and my decisions and my set backs and cop outs and excuses and fears and paralysis and devil you know. Devil you know will strangle every last breath out of you, five years or no. And by you I mean me.

    Here we are accumulating garbage for the big parade. Accumulating garbage to tuck into the loose corners of our coffins. And coffins ! What an extravagance. We'd be so lucky to get a nice lacquered wooden box to rot in. Some folks never get the option. They sink into the field where they are struck down, maybe thrown into the ravine with the others.

    Sure, go back to school to get a masters degree, join the post docs in line for food and clean water. Wait for the corporate overlords to have their ghost of Christmas past moment, wait for Dick Cheney to shudder at his reflection and take it all back, take it all back, restore the droned children to life, restore the forest to it's majesty, restore the women to their humanity.

    Let's work a tad harder, let's do a little spring cleaning all year round, let's whip it out and get it on, let's high five until the sun rises, let's sort the recycling, reuse the reusables, take out the trash, forgive our shitty neighbours, rejoice with our cousins and see where that takes us.

    This is a moment of missives, this is the time for all times, we've made so many children, let's scrub the sidewalks for them so we don't have to pick glass shards out of their kneecaps. Let's turn off the power so they can breathe. Let's stop with the filth so they can eat some decent food and make their teenage parties something not tinged with ragged desperation born of hopelessness.

    We'll turn around in circles until we straighten out this mess. We'll pull the plug and wear extra sweaters in the winter. We'll collect family members to live with us. We'll turn this boat around, I swear, and plant gardens in every cop car.

    Starting now, starting right exactly now.

Before Work

I've always had a problem with what can be called branding. I like a lot of different things and have had a hard time corralling all those things into the same personality, or more accurately, into the marketing of that same personality. My artistic tendencies are varied, I'm at peace with all my takes and all my interests but the art world, it is said, needs things cut and dried.
    So I like making little books and I also like making larger ones. I have also been driven to understand the necessity for solid narrative. My complaint would be that I have a desire to incorporate all my interests in one and the same art project. How do I make a book that relies upon narrative yet also incorporates a myriad different styles and techniques ? There is the rub.
    This artificial problem only exist in the planning phase of any larger project. Once the work gets under way, things fall into place and what the story demand, the story gets. In the planning phase a veritable buffet of options buffets me about - there must be an abstract sequence, there must be some text, there must be full classic cartoon style for a few pages, there must be collage, there must be free form, there must be must be's. The list goes on and I stand paralysed, in front of reams of cheap paper scratched with half-starts, notes, sketches, thumbnails.
    This happens each time and signals the fact that I have to really start working on the project. I dream big, fold outs and cut aways. I want every facet to be fully represented. This is an ego game. I'm proud of myself. I like that I explore divergent tendencies in the visual arts. I want props for this. I want to make work that is unassailable. What I want is meaningless of course if the work never gets off the ground because I dream too big to accommodate a daily work routine.
    I see a pilgrim, moving through landscapes, shifting landscapes. I see interactions with creatures and magic. I see language games and psychological puzzles. I see formal structures deteriorate into shambles of noise and abstraction. I see abstraction build itself up into cohesive meaning. I see redemption through a willingness to engage with mystery. I see all these things and I feel like snapping my pencils.
    The only way any of these visions, this one overarching vision, will be manifested is if I get the good paper for the final copy, sharpen my pencils, treat myself to some new smudge stick or eraser, consolidate my notes into one pile and just dive in by drawing a panel. One random panel, probably of my character walking. Another panel will follow it and soon enough the notes will be forgotten and I will be on my way.
    I forget each time that I must trust my process. My process, roughly put, is devised between anxious planning and straight forward work. The work itself always, and I mean always, shows me the way. It shows me how to incorporate my love for gibberish or chakras, for lost details and shifting t-shirts. Before I know it, when I'm actually working, all my loves and all my desires make a cameo or even get featured outright. I'm in the storm before the calm, when ideas are whizzing about threatening to take themselves elsewhere, to some other artist who will honour them. I have to trust that they will come around when needed, that i simply have to get my paper cut to the size I need and start drawing a little character about to embark on a massive journey.

Fiction

My first attempt at prose fiction was a couple of pages of fantasy lit, something about a young person moving through the market place. He had a name that I made up and everything. It didn't last. I was rerouted into poetry and lyrics for a number of years.
    What I could call my second attempt revolved around a character loosely based on me. It was to be fantasy lit as well but with all the tropes of psychedelic subcultural urbanism thrown in. He may have made it into ten pages tops, but in my mind he was way bigger than that. He was my Hero. Young, curious, adventurous. That's about it, he wasn't fleshed out. No family to speak of, no origin story, just a boy in a context. The context was mostly empty urban spaces, loading docks and parking lots. I've discussed my fetish for those places in another entry here.
    Two young male characters, fleeting but satellited by feelings and associations.
    Since those guys, I developed a recurring character for my drawn narrative fiction. He's a little kid and maybe not really a he. He has a boy name, he has 'boy' in his name but I'm still not sure. Maybe just a little kid, gender aside for the moment. Now, I've been writing about myself, some memories, some attitudes and opinions and I'm not what one would call a young man anymore. I'm not an old man either. I'm in the middle, I'm middle-aged. I find that I think I've already exhausted my memories, at least the ones I'm comfortable writing publicly about. I've already decided to leave my sex life out of it, to spare the guilty and innocent alike. I've decided to not get into any hairy details about my family life. This writing exercise is more about practise and daily discipline than about airing dirty laundry, mine or not.
    It stands that I've made some small false starts with fiction, here in the context of this blog. I write a line or two, notice I am struggling and there is no ring of truth about it and hit delete. One reason is that I'm starting cold, I don't yet have some hero percolating in my brain. The two characters first mentioned lived inside me before they ever emerged. The next guy will probably take a page out of everyone's book, aborted teen fiction and graphic novel. I don't make up steady characters. I just dwell on attitudes and fragmentary moments. The next step may be to consciously build up a character or two, actually draft out somebody's life.
    The next graphic novel I'm considering may feature 'me', some floating bearded head going on and on about words and identity. But that aside, if I were to seriously try my hand at straight up fantasy fiction, I'd have to venture a bit further than my own front door. At least, I think I'd have to.
    This place is becoming my launch pad and scribble sheet. I am ordering my thoughts as they occur to me and doing so in public - meaning, in a place someone may stumble upon them, unlike in my indecipherable notes and stacks of paper.
    So here I find myself, a myriad of potential projects poking me with their will to live. The strongest ones involve drawing, either 'billy heads' or 'bunnies' without he text being mostly strings of absurdist bumper stickers, in-jokes that are clear to me and maybe inaccessible to someone else. Narrative tends to occur my accident and I'm wondering if that just won't work anymore. Maybe it's time to actually plan some sort of actual story, fill it in with action and characters and see how they improvise.
    It's daunting because it seems like work. I tell myself to just begin inside my head with scenarios but it's not happening, I don't make it happen. I may have to start writing things down somewhere else, secretly, and hope something gels together. I may have to start drawing panel after panel of graphic narrative and see what comes of it. These things make me worried and get me excited at the same time, but mostly worried.
    My fantasy is to pull off a solid young adult fantasy novel, like the kind I enjoyed reading, the kind I still enjoy reading. I just don't know if I have to cross the street to write it or if it's already written and I have to exhume it. And if I have to exhume it, which I feel is most likely, first I have to find where it's buried, and that may take some dirty work.
    I hope you'll follow me along for this ride. I cannot guarantee that the pieces to follow here will not be fiction.  

And Baby Makes Writing And Drawing Happen

This is the fifty-sixth instalment of a daily writing practice. I started with the intention of doing it for one month. I'm now nearing two. It was been a good thing. Sometimes I have no idea what to write about but to date I have yet to skip a day. This exercise has allowed me to hone a skill long desired but generally dormant. I've wanted to do this for a long time but never made the time for it, never showed up to the office, so to speak. Now I am showing up and even doing some work.
    Six months ago my son was born. I never really imagined that being a parent would be part of my life but alas, it is so. This parenthood has forced me to face several pressing issues in my life, one being my penchant for putting things off until the boiling point. With a baby one can't really change the diaper later or make some toast for your hard working partner later. One gets out of bed and jumps into action at a moment's notice. One does things now in groggy states, in wakeful states, no matter.
    When I embarked on a daily writing habit, I wasn't sure what would happen. Several things did. The first thing I noticed was a severe release of pressure. Anxiety long slow-cooking in me and raging out at inopportune times was slowly dissipating. I was not fully released from it's grips of course but I was palpably helping myself. I was doing something good for me that didn't involve hedonism. I found that I was organizing my thoughts and feelings. I was expressing myself, first with memoir and later with personal essay. I reached into my memories and dragged old stories out, nothing earth shaking, nothing dramatic. It felt good, though. It was still a release. I'm sharing the occasional link on social networks and am getting the very occasional page hit or compliment. This is practice. If I pull off a year, I'll have more than enough raw material for some sort of book. If I don't have a book, I'll have a bunch of stuff I wrote.
    Two weeks ago I decided to add another small task to my already over full plate. I started a daily drawing routine. I would cut some four by six inch piece of card and draw a cartoon bunny on it with pencil. I would use a smudge stick to render it. When the drawing was finished I'd stamp my name on the back side, sign it and scribble the year. Then I'd slip it into a plastic collectors bag meant for manga books. I've sold two of these things for forty dollars each. This feels like I've already written about this. I cannot real whether I have or not and the last thing I'll do is slog through previous blog posts to see if I have.
    The drawing is keeping my hand limber. Bunnies are easy and fun to draw and come in a variety of moods and styles. It's all pencil so far, which I enjoy. It's less committal than ink and lends itself to fast techniques of shading.
    So I have a baby, a business that I am not neglecting, a new writing routine and now a daily drawing one. I don't go out as much anymore, I certainly am not drinking or getting high anymore. I have time, I have energy. I'm trying to work towers a plan that will continue to change my life for the better. So far so good.