August Draws to a Close

[talktooloose]

A. The Wilderness
I highly recommend it. Turn off your machines and hit the trails, waterways and natural places where all (well, most) of the noise is natural and clouds and waves tell each other stories, indifferent to your small human concerns.

Gougou seems to have been born to live in the wild, poor urban pooch. He celebrated his 7th month birthday by joining us on a 7.7km hike through some tough terrain, almost doubling the distance as he ran up and back on the track to keep our group together, thus proving that his herding instincts are present and operative. Further note: short and powerful corgi legs are actually excellent for navigating difficult terrain and especially for scrambling down hills.


B. The Book
I'm working my way through proofers corrections and millions of small adjustments. This run-up to press is always difficult and all the more so this time for working with a hostile editor. My cover was rejected out of hand. The reasons clearly have to do with marketing and if the editor would only (with, perhaps some feigned apology) frame her remarks that way, we could all labour under the illusion that we were a team. Ah well.


C. The Comic
I've been doing background research into schizophrenia and suicide for my comic. Fascinating. As I learned back in the days of my theatre training, the more concrete and researched the world you are creating, the more interesting the art that emerges can become.

I'm fascinated with descriptions of the internal experience of schizophrenia in E. Fuller Torrey's Surviving Schizophrenia. Having this disease can be like experiencing the whole world without filters. You can't recognize a face because you become aware of each feature as a separate entity demanding individual focus which leaves you no processing time to form the parts into a whole. You can't filter out background noises to hear a conversation. Similarly, you can't stop an internal flood of conjecture and surmise and soon you are afloat in morass of input from which the only possible defence is withdrawal.

The result is very specific scenes and dialogues emerging in my script. I'm excited.

I'm also scaring myself. I went to a release party last Friday for Bryan Lee O'Malley's brilliant new graphic novel, Scott Pilgrim. I admire Bryan not only as an artist, but also a sweet and humble man who took the admiration sent his way with gratitude instead of ego. I had a good time but then went home and had major neurotic attacks about my own unworthiness and possible failure as I embark on my own comic and doubts I would ever do it or that it would be any good or of interest to anyone. At the same time, self-aggrandizing images of my own triumphant release party filled up my consciousness, immediately receiving attacks from other parts of my brain, criticizing these fantasies as pure, pathetic self-absorbtion.

As all these thoughts invaded, I was somewhat able to hold them at arm's length and dismiss them for the puff pastry they were. So I'm still here and not running through parking lots of poppies screaming, but I wish it were all a bit simpler.

Comments

[rfmcdpei.livejournal.com]

You're supposed to tell yourself, I guess. Confidence might be synonymous with arrogance in this particular context.

I think the interview went very well indeed.