On Writing It Wrong, To Know How To Write It Right

First up, apologies for a very long silence.

Sometimes, life has a way of ganging right the fuck up on you, and over the last six to eight weeks, it’s been having a huge amount of fun, letting me just get back to my feet and then kicking them out from under me again, school bully-style. My Lease Extension, thank every God of Monies you can name, is finally over, but its last throes were the usual hissing nest of red tape, and a panicked lot of paperwork and running around. I lost my best friend from my teenage years, passed away to a stroke, poor love (she was only in her fifties, and that’s far, far too young), and then there was a lot of Teeth Trouble, which left me in the grip of the Cenobites (no pun) for wa-ay too long.

Woe is me, etc. All of it does, however, bring me neatly to the point:

I’ve not been writing much (one short story, more news about that later). I’ve been trying, but I just haven’t had the spoons, and (somewhat inevitably) it’s been like dragging myself over broken glass. Every creative knows that this stuff happens sometimes: you sit and stare at your screen, and you end up writing ‘All work and no play’, over pages and pages and pages, before freezing to death in the snow. We’ve not had the snow, but my output’s definitely been more Shining than shiny and I am a <very> grumpy beast when I can’t actually write anything decent.

However, in the ‘motivational poster’ corner, this stuff can be a learning experience. Every attempt you make teaches you what that scene is not. It teaches you that the characters are in the wrong place, or saying the wrong things, or not pushing the plot in the right direction. It tells you that you’re struggling because you’re trying to build your furniture all wrong, and here you are, turning the instructions upside-down, while wondering if you’ve put screw A into hole B, rather than the other way round. And you don’t want to start gain, because what you’ve written might actually be okay in places…

Yeah, and that’s the time to break the whole thing down. To realise that it’s broken and to stop trying to hammer it together when it’s already fucked. It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights, it’s time to get things started, and to do the whole damn chapter again.

If I can’t write something, it’s because I don’t have a clear image in my head. We all know the iceberg adage - 90% of your research is below the surface, etc - but you still need that unseen content. It fuels your confidence and everything you do, your ability to construct the scene. If you don’t have it, then you’re drifting loose, fumbling for inspiration and direction, and making no headway. And that’s exactly how you end up flailing.

When those things are clear – when you have the framework, the images and voices in your head - them the words will flow much faster. You won’t be groping for the descriptions or the conversations, because they’ll already be there.

And that, of course, is where the writing it wrong comes in. In finding out what it’s not, you can understand more clearly what it is, hone your focus and make sure you can surge forwards, with everything clearly defined.

Reading: Have just finished Frank Miller’s autobiography, Push The Wall, which was absolutely stunning. It’s very stream-of-consciousness – long sentences and paragraphs – and it reads kind of helter-skelter, but it’s a fascinating look at, not only the craft (relevant to authors as well as comics creators, and very much about the passion invovled, and how we should break boundaries), but the very early days of comics culture, in NY in the fifties and sixties, seeing how it was born, and who shaped it, and the changes through which it went. Weirdly, it felt almost personal as Frank references FP (the one in NY, rather than the one on London, but still) and a lot of people that I’ve worked with, over the years. If you have interest in where all of this really came from, I can highly recommend the read.

Watching: with suitable serendipity, the Defenders saga, so various series of Daredevil, Jessica Jones and then the Defenders themselves. It’s somewhat let down by Finn Jones as Iron Fist, who may be an awesome stuntman, but can’t act to save his life. Watching it felt a little surreal, while reading Frank’s book about Daredevil and Hells’ Kitchen, a juxtaposition of humble beginnings, and of what those stories have become.

Playing: both our D&D games have taken to the ocean, and we’re sailing away, on the thin waters of a new day. Lots of fun outfitting ourselves and our ships, and will we meet beasties, while we all pretend to be Cap’n Jack?

Yeah, you’d better believe it.