Memorable characters have something in common:

A juxtaposition evolving into a sublimation thus creating nuance.

Examples:

1. Ordinary Joe becomes super-spy (The Filth)

2. Preacher becomes gunslinger possessed (Preacher)

3. Soldier becomes holy man (The Sadhu).

So far I have this: detective goes on the run. The hunger becomes the hunted, probably the oldest juxataposition in the book.

So - strictly rational detective goes a) on the run, b) in search of god, c) by becoming a renegade sufi clown conjuror. Ah, fuck it, I'm going to bed.

Log 4.2. Stuff

I'm torn. I've got a good intro to part two of what is now the graphic novel which is now titled PSYCHONAUT which is now becoming this months obsession which is now leading to burn out and has thrown me back onto the meditation cushion after a 6 month break from practice.

Why the graphic novel format? It simplifies my writing, and makes dialogue richer. And oddly i like the format - the script. I didn't expect that. The thing with graphic novels is you have to know WHAT is going to happen next. Ya cannae jist blether fer fourteen pagees.

Language and style is this months project, so initially I've created a character who uses a technology that he doesn't understand. He's an ex-soldier and truth be told I don't know why he's doing the job he's doing this has to be worked out. Anyway, he's now a detective, using this technology to find suspects, to increase the "psychic" resonance between them. Bottom line is he doesn't have to understand the technology, any more than I have to know algorithms to use the internet.

But here I'm torn because part of me feels like this isn't a "real" story. That I should be writing about a bunch of young people in a squat fucking with demons as a twist on the superhero story. Finding themselves in alternate realities and that. But I guess I'm stuck with my soldier motif for reasons I don't quite understand.

Ah, bollocks to it. All I have to do is firm up the protagonists backstory, which I'm working on as a flashback, and his motivations for what he does.

How did he end up out of the army and in a detectives job?

What does he want from the job?

Too tired for this....

Log 4.1 Reflections

I got my last piece done despite being dogged by illness. A month of hard graft transformed itself into 4 days of bliss as I became inspired by what I was writing.

I've heard talk that the idea of artists being "magically" inspired, of being swept off ones feet by an idea, is a myth to make ones work seem more mysterious. That artists are in fact crafts people and spend long hours learning a skill. A rather cynical academic approach, in my eyes. Why would anyone sit and stare at a blank page and then string words together in the nowhere of their offices if not for love? Money? Do me a favour. Writing ain't worth money. It's too painful.

Anyway.

I felt like I'd finally found a way to clearly express all those idea's I've had building up over the years, without degrading or relegating any of them. That was quite something.

So it's turned a new sorta leaf for me, in that I'm now looking into graphic novels as a medium for the next month. The novels will take a back seat as I immerse myself in the unsung complexities of comic books: the terminology, the style, the collaborative elements. Writing scripts rather than prose, I guess. Not that I'd be able to avoid writing prose.

There's something about their "punchy"ness that I enjoy. No beating around the bush, no drawn out reflections on root vegetables. Just POW. Pow.

So I read a couple of the last couple of days, PREACHER and CONSTANTINE (odd how my last post actually reflects the use of CAPITALS in scripts, as if I was trying to say something to myself, or maybe I'm doing that now and there's nothing odd about it at all and it's just a coincidence).

With the course I've managed to work on my dialogue and narrative so that "stuff happens" and I don't just think and reflect at length on the nature of root vegetables (a habit I was getting into on my own). To begin with my greatest struggle was not stringing words together to create pictures or emotions, that I had at least a rudimentary grasp of, but creating a...dialogue?...a beginning, a middle and an end. Creating obstacles and resolutions. Now I'm getting that down clearer and clearer, and I've just finished penning a first draft of a chapter/episode/issue. Complete. Beginning, middle, end. Short, simple.

"Short, sweet prose" Alan said, "don't try to astound". Graphic novels are good for that, writing them is good for that, since I'm just trying to get to the point. None of the emotional impact is lost, it seems to me, the way I feared it would be if I didn't draw everything out and use big words or essay-ist explanations.

Just POW. Like a breaking wave.

After the last month my dialogue is good enough for me to compose a sequence and not feel like it's just myself talking to myself. If the parts of the course devoted to scene and characterisation taught me that my language creates a bigger picture, that it should resonate within itself and amplify itself through its continuity within the piece, then dialogue has shown me that the story is a DIALOGUE. It was the essential missing ingredient from my understanding of art (thanks Jo), or my most unrealised ingredient. I feel like I can make stories happen now.

So i wrote this narrative, an introduction in first person, a meeting with an old friend, a flashback. I penned in a few brief notes on movement and posture as I went through, and visualised the scene.

Came to 1200 words.

And I have no descriptions of the frames.

The frames, man, the frames! It's a whole other world. Perhaps because graphic novels are broken down in scripts into chunks - dialogue, scene, caption - the nature of prose is easier to grasp. And fuckin hell its fun to work on a comic. It's fun! I'm enjoying myself. Why does this feel like a bad thing?

Anyway.

I realised that I have no idea what the frames look like, how they run in sequence. I have a basic idea of a man walking through a city and ending up at a church during the first page, so there's this basic idea next to a developed dialogue and it's hard to piece them into a NARRATIVE, to unite them.

That'll be the next challenge, and its a challenge that wouldn't have even presented itself where I to stick to prose. Probably because I'm a bad prose writer, but ya know...that's by the by. Something about having to synch everything in a graphic novel feels more complicated than synching it in prose - perhaps because the dialogue and the scene are, in the case of a graphic novel, different mediums.

workworkwork

I've been working on something for a couple of weeks, something that could be described as a noir, science fiction mystery thriller WITH DIALOGUE. Ideas are coming together and my writing is improving, so that I feel like I am working on something specific, a brainchild, that THING thats been LIVING in my HEAD since i fell out of time and into the collective imagination. And I could go on about how I'm using everything I've learnt up to this POINT, and that this course is the best THING i've done in a long time, possibly my whole life, because it is drawing together my ideas and not impoverishing any of them the way SCHOOL did, or university did, but encouraging them, growing them.

The story is about self and other and place inbetween, about the FICTIONS we are the FICTIONS we LIVE by, about a simulacrum called STANTON which is where all the unsolvable and incongruous elements of B.T.'s existence find a space to dwell unincumbered by the DIVISION from earth that we call HISTORY. Where London is a fiction, and the only real thing is a biocomputer that calculates statistics and is ultimately meaningless.

It is about the COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUS being divorced from the individual and becoming almost autonomous, about its collusion with TECHNOLOGY to create an independent body that will be listened to, but which is some how monsterous because it has been divorced from humanity.

It is about not ONE world but MANY, layered and overlapping, with different times cohabiting and while our world is defined only by selective attention.

It is about all of philosophy being about creating a link to the collective lest the collective become so divorced. It is about the telling of an awakening that will occur with or without humanity. The Goetia is in there, as both a collection of humans, a prebiotic sentience and as an autonomous technology. It is essentially about projection, about creating angels and demons external from the self, and it is about the internet.

That, today, is what its about.

Now, how do I make it different from what's been done before?

Reflections

I'm very close to finishing reading a novel, in bed with lemsip and cigarettes and trying not to get ill again. It's taken a long time (a month) to read this novel, and I've enjoyed it. Thus, I want to finish it. But I can't! I'm thinking about writing.

I'm half way through the course now and I didn't even notice it. A 12 month course and I'm half way through in 2 months. Thats the way, uhuh uhuh, i like it, uhuh uhuh...do do dooo do do dooo do do -- DO --

A review, post haste:

Part 1: spent the whole time rewriting exercise 1 of about 10, possibly 15, forgetting that the rest existed. Ultimately, my assessments were made up on the spot. 2 poems and 2 pieces of prose born of pure necessity.

I learnt: to use all five senses when creating a scene, to free write and then highlight what I wanted to keep, underline what needed to be improved, and isolate those nuggets to be reworked, i.e. metaphors to be made more lyrical, more poetic.

Part 2: I did all the exercises and had about a week to do the assessment, which was jolly good n' whatnot.

I learnt: to use a thesaurus - to expand upon my lyricism with selective words, to get to know my language and to get an understanding of why i've used that language, of the bigger picture involved. I learnt how to echo character in place and place in character - vital.

Part 3: I'm half way through. Its dialogue, so completely new to me. I'm learning to expand what I've learnt previously, to build on it - to tell the story through different characters points of view, still using scene to inform the reader of whats going on. I know need to learn to mirror character in place in dialogue and dialogue in character in place etc, to turn all these elements into plot.

I've been laid low since my last assessment with weeks of illness, and my prolificity has been mediated by it. I need to work through these exercises so i can spend time on the assessment at the end, like I did last time.

Now, I aint a bad student when it comes down to it, but it isn't in my background or experience to organise myself as effectively as some other manage to organise themselves. I had to learn from each of these previous parts of the course, to develop my habits through them. The first thing I learnt was to do all the exercises and give myself time to do the assessment at the end. I still do most of the exercises at least twice, and take at least twice as long as is suggested to do them.

Now I am learning something important: I need to keep track of what I've done. This blogger -- is shit. Its a bad lay out, doesn't print well, I can't see my entries back to back, nor flick through them. I need a hard copy. i am now thinking I should revert to a paper journal for these entries, since the media - which would more be more appropriate for a common place book - has dried up. When it comes to it, I can "paste" (using PritStick) anything i print into the book.

Further, my folder of drafts is my saving grace. It has kept everything together.

My common place book is the weakest part of my skillset, since it is abyssmally scattered between here, a file, a book, face, my draws, my walls and my floor.

The most important points in all of this are thus:

1. Keep things together, and make a hard-copy learning log. I need to be able to see my work-over-time laid out clearly.

2. Sort out my common place book. Do more research on the people and places I'm writing about.

3. In each part of the course, use EVERYTHING i learnt in the previous parts.

4. Keep taking at least twice as long to do everything, and doing it at least twice (although I've done the last exercise 5 times now, which is becoming a common occurrance).

Dialogue

AM:

I began to read a book about espionage and Charlemange. I picked it up for the labyrinth motif, and the mystery of what happened to the protagonists father. I was very disappointed in it. The writing was terrible. It was like reading a colour-by-numbers detective story, or like a transcript of a TV show. The characters were one dimensional stereotypes, although all the ingredients of "good writing" were there: scenes were set well, information was given, all five senses were used, but it had no depth.

I have been conflicted recently, wanting to write something that touches on what it is to be human, an existentialist drama, and at the same time wanting to use a mystery genre and some novelty ideas. The idea of writing a detective story seemed to jar with writing a piece of literature. I wanted my character to be an ordinary person that stumbles across a mystery. Then I realised, a detective is an ordinary person, and that was what the Charlemange book was missing. Everyone was a stereotype. People pull out guns for no reason, except "that's what happens in espionage stories".

So I've let Ben Trovato, my existential occult detective, infiltrate my story about Fat. Fat is now Ben Trovato. I've moved on from Fat coming home with his fathers diary, and introduced Suzanna, who I took for the student handbook, where she is defined as having "no job, no funds, no hope". I made these characteristics a spiritual practice and began a dialogue between them that explores their individual philosophies and why it is they do what they do. I havn't paid much attention to the student handbook otherwise, except for this morning when I read the dialogue guidelines:

"Dialogue must never be written for its own sake and should always have at least one of the following functions:

1. impart information (8/10)

2. enrich the characteristation (8/10)

3. move the plot along (6/10)

4. develop the characters within the story (8/10)

5. further the complexities of the plot (3/10)

6. crank up the pace (3/10)

7. enhance the theme or core truth (8/10)

8. reflect relationship changes and emotions (6/10)"

Beside these functions I have given them a mark out of ten for how well these functions are served in my dialogue. None of them is missed out. Again, it seems only natural to me that these functions are what a dialogue should be about. In the Charlemange book, only one or two of these functions is served at a time, which gives it the paint-by-numbers feel.

The characterisation is enriched because both characters are talking about backstories, their own, and comparing philosophies at the end of a week. The complexities of the plot are thickened, in that we learn of Trovato's motivations and personal ontology. We also learn of Suzanna's. Their relationship is illustrated, and the core truths are begun in their philosophies.

It's little more than a first draft at the moment, but I'm happy with the information that has been developed, and with the themes revealed.

The guidelines also state that dialogue should be kept short, which I didn't do for Susanna because she's telling an emotionally charged story. They are swapping stories, which means that their speech will be longer than usual.

One of the things I've noted is that for every guideline proposed by this book, there is a novel I'm reading that utterly disregards it. This is what makes me think that writing "is" art. Even the guidelines are arbitrary, and I can't help but feel sorry for the people who read this stuff and stick to it, probably writing more than they read and never realising that the guidelines are just a prompt.

PM:

Wrote more dialogue, once between Suzanna and Ben, and twice between Ben and "Loisha" (actually two very different characters). Dialogue improved each time, although I was least pleased with the second attempt.

I also read the course text book for once. It says that you need to have a very good idea of character in order to generate dialogue, of their conflicts, desires, histories. I had to flesh out Ben/Fat considerably in order to do this, which I did by freewriting and creating a family tree. Suzanna and Loisha are essentially the same character, with modifications here and there. There's a relationship developing.

I merged project 3's exercise 3 with project 4's first exercise using an african-scottish dialect, which provided some good ideas and a good sense of character. However, I'm stuck with my detective. He's yet to have a case to solve. I think the best way to find one is through having him converse with lots of different characters, at this stage.

Freewrite

Illness for most of the last month..

There are times when I struggle so much that I feel like giving it all up, but this "giving up" is just an abstraction and doesn't really exist. What would it mean if it did? I don't really know how to give up. Two days after trying I'd only pick up a pen and write something about giving up that inspired me to continue.

I got some good feedback again, and have signed up for another writing course at the local college. This time I'm not signing up for the education - I need to meet some writers. I need some company, any company. There are times when I find this facebook phenomena so utterly dismal - I see old friends I don't know continueing to interact, friends from school who still know each other. Does anyone know what its like to be exiled and have contact denied? To have one of their parents die and the other simply disappear? At times I think "shit, I could fuel such a story with true life grit". At other times I think only that I should never touch those things with a pen - they can drive me, sure, but they should drive me on to better things.

I think of Vonnegut, who took 20 years to write Slaughterhouse5 because it affected him so much. I remember reading him say "people kept asking me what the novel I was writing was about. Some book about Dresden, I'd say". Yeah, man, I know that - "some book about genus loci and living history" I say. With each write these things become clearer - my places become more alive, my characters more in tune. I get clearer with each write.

But I'm on the edge, where I've always been. Maybe it won't always be this way - maybe I won't wake up each day and burn away every hour, the day going in a flash - a flash!, like a thought - and me feeling like I havn't done enough. Perhaps I won't feel like I'm racing against oblivion forever. One day I will start to publish things and I'll be able to sit back and relax a little more. Right now, as always, I'm chasing a dream many aspire to and few ever reach. But I really couldn't do anything else. One day, when I'm known as a writer, people will ask "why did you decide to become one "and I'll say "because I had no goddam choice - it was writing or oblivion" and it'll be the truth.

I need to meet some people like me. People who know the odds, who've felt the end and absence and who have that burning inside that says "make me", "tell me", "sing me - at all costs, and for the love of god, sing me".

I saw a man outside a cafe. He said "I'm forty, I have a good job, a family, a nice home, but I still don't know what it is I WANT to do". I counted my blessings. I know. I understand. I feel it. Its vital, an extra organ, a second heart. I'll never be in that place, at least.

I met a woman in a shop in York. "Look after that man - he's special" she said to my friend. Other people have said the same. I like that - life lines from strangers. I'm the guy who knew Dr. H. Who learnt from Alan Clements. Who was friends with Gaddafi's nephew. I'm the guy that threw everything away so I could start from scratch. A lot of people talk with that attitude, but I've never met anyone who's done it. And every time I say these things I feel like I'm boasting, or making up for an inadequacy. Maybe because I don't believe in it, I garnish it with bollocks. Anyhow, by the by, I'm going somewhere. I can feel it, and its hard.

The dream isn't easy - living the dream is like riding a psychotic horse towards a burning barn.