Plenty of individual panels have been freeze-framed in my head all afternoon, but none of them have led to any kind of sequential storytelling. This is the worst part of being a writer with a weekly column – watching the hands on the clock inexorably winding down to zero hour, the time by which I need to get the thing e-mailed to Mike and Glenn.
You never know where ideas come from. My column Baby’s First Fooprints came about from a little joke I made at Alix’s sonogram; today I was listening to the soundtrack of Angel and I realized that, while I’ve talked a lot about the intrepid Slayer, I’ve hardly ever mentioned it’s a spin-off; in fact, few people ever talk about it, which in its own way was just as riveting as its parent show. Angel continued the story of Buffy Summer’s vampire lover, played by David Boreanaze, who left Sunnydale at the end of season 3 of Buffy because he realized that he and the Slayer had no future. Her path was one of growth and exploration, and his was of acknowledging the past and seeking redemption for its sins.
It was a dark, gritty, film-noir type of show, with its main character struggling for atonement from his evil past. The first episode opened in a bar, and the first time we see Angel he is apparently drunk, which, not too subtly, set the tone of the series – just as the recovering alcoholic is always just one drink away from losing his or her life to the bottle, Angel will forever be just “one drink away” from losing his soul and become Angelus again. Even the supporting characters are struggling for atonement from their past sins – Doyle is a half-demon carrying a secret burden; Wesley is the failed Watcher (and, we learn later, the son of an emotionally abusing father) who must prove to himself that he has something to offer to the world; and Cordelia must expiate the sins of her selfish and cruel high school persona and become a mature and caring woman.
With the introduction of the law firm Wolfram & Hart and the attorneys Lindsey McDonald and Lilah Morgan, the induction of the innocent Winifred “Fred” Burkel and the street-smart Charles Gunn as part of the “We Help The Helpless” team, Angel’s themes became more and more about trust and deceit, hate and love, innocence and guilt, and the duplicity of good and evil. Finally, the show, I think, became the story of the necessity of sacrifice for the greater good, with the ultimate sacrifice being Angel’s renunciation of his promised return to humanity (the Shanshu Prophecy) in the penultimate episode.
A lot of people I know who were major fans of Buffy didn’t like Angel, and rarely watched it, if ever. They said it was too dark for them, too morbid. But I think the shows were bookends – if Buffy was about the empowerment of the dumb blonde in the dark alley attacked by a monster, then Angel was about the monster who wanted to stop living in that dark alley and let the girl escape. If Buffy was about telling women to step out of the shadows and embrace themselves, then Angel was about telling us, all of us, men and women, to use the shadows in our lives to makes us stronger.
When asked my influences, I invariably add William Shakespeare which may seem a bit pompous. Shakespeare? Really? (Aside: this column is not going to deal with the whole “Who Really Was Shakespeare?” debate. If you want to believe someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s play, you go ahead. It’s not germane and, frankly, I’ve read as much on the subject as I care to and so far as I’m concerned, Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s plays. End of discussion.) Please note I am not comparing myself to Shakespeare; simply that I’ve learned some things about writing from him.
Such as:
Theme is tied to plot. There are famous speeches and soliloquies in Shakespeare, where the character stops to speak his or her mind, none more famous than the “to Be Or Not Be” speech in Hamlet. The action, however, doesn’t just come to a stop while the player addresses the audience. They always advance the action of the moment, of the play. The action during the “To Be Or Not To Be” soliloquy is found in Hamlet trying to decide if he is going to kill himself because of the grief of his father’s death. It is appropriate for him to ask this question. To translate this to comics or movies – does the explosion advance the plot or is it there just to blow things up? All action sequences, all fight scenes, can be used to advance plot or explore character.
Explore all sides of the question. What did Shakespeare think on any given question? It’s hard to tell because he would give convincing arguments to both (or more) sides of a question. Example: in his play Measure For Measure, set in Vienna, the Duke feels that the city has gotten morally a little out of control. Pretending to leave town, he leaves Angelo – very upright, very moral, very strict – in charge. The Duke, however, disguises himself as a monk to see what happens. Angelo decides to close all the brothels and, under an ancient law, execute those who have gotten a woman pregnant without the bonds of marriage. A young man, Claudio, has fallen afoul of that and Angelo decides to make him an example. Claudio is clapped in jail and sentenced to die.
Claudio’s sister, Isabella, soon to be a nun, comes to plead for her brother. Angelo is taken with her beauty and, filled with desire for her, agrees to exchange Claudio’s life for a one night stand with Isabella. Virtuously, she refuses.
In the dungeon, the Count – disguised as a Monk – counsels Claudio, telling him, “Be absolute for death; either death or life / Shall thereby be the sweeter.” It’s a great speech about the acceptance of death and Claudio seems both comforted and made resolute by it.
Yet, shortly after in the same scene, after Isabella tells Claudio of Angelo’s offer, he begs her to do it. He expresses his fear of death with, “. . . to die, and go we know not where / To lie in cold obstruction and to rot. . .” Which attitude speaks Shakespeare’s true mind?
Both. Both are true, to the moment, to the character, to the author, and for the reader or audience. It comes down to which is truer for us and that was Shakespeare’s intent or what I learned from it. Shakespeare had a many faceted mind and he used it in his work.
Write for the now. In Shakespeare’s day, plays were popular entertainments. Poetry might be gathered in a book but plays were not. Theater was a low art form, just above bear baiting. Shakespeare himself never gathered his plays for publication; that was done after Shakespeare’s death by his friend Ben Jonson, himself a playwright of no small fame or self-esteem who felt that his own plays were worthy of publication and his friend Shakespeare was almost as good and so deserved the same respect.
Shakespeare was writing to please the crowd, but also to note and comment on the issues of the day. Queen Elizabeth I was aging and indeed would die in Shakespeare’s lifetime. Until the very last, she had no heir. Shakespeare’s War of the Roses documented what happened to the nation when King Henry V died without an heir, the wars and cruelties of both sides and that could happen again if no successor was named to Queen Elizabeth’s throne. He also explored what made a good, even great monarch.
As writers, we have to work with the time we have, today, and write things that will resonate with our readers today. Shakespeare did so brilliantly and wound up speaking to people of all time – but he wrote for his own time in a manner that was very entertaining.
That’s what I want to do when I grow up, as I grow up. Be entertaining; touch a chord. These are among the things I’ve taken away from Willie S.
How many books and DVDs do you have on your Amazon wish list? How often do you remember to look at it? I always forget to check it, but I took a look at it today, and there are 100 items.
No, I am not soliciting here. My birthday isn’t for another six months, Chanukah and Christmas are too far off to think about, and I’m not your mother, so forget about Mother’s Day, which is this Sunday, btw – although there is Alix, whom I always alert to her mom’s new column. Big Hint, Alix!
I do have to delete some of the books and DVDs; I’ve ordered them without looking at my wish list because, well, I forget to check the damn thing, but there’s still a lot there. The oldest item was added on June 11, 2006; it’s Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Complete Third Season (DVD, not Blu-Ray. I don’t have a Blu-Ray player.) I have no idea why I’ve never ordered this, why it’s languished at the bottom – maybe because I watch BBC America’s repeats of TNG on Saturday late afternoons (which lead in to Doctor Who) – since that season of TNG, as Bob Greenberger so excellently reviewedon ComicMix, was the season where the show really found its legs, airing such classics as Sarak(a Vulcan disease comparable to Alzheimer’s is destroying Sarak’s mind), Yesterday’s Enterprise (in an alternate timeline, the Federation is losing a war with the Klingons and Tasha Yar is still alive), Sins of the Father (Worf accepts disgrace and discommendation to prevent a Klingon civil war – the start of an outstanding seasons-long exploration of Klingon culture that carried over to Deep Space Nine – and save the Empire), and of course the season finale, Best of Both Worlds: Part I (“Mr. Worf….fire!”) Also of note, at least to me, are Who Watches the Watchers, (a pre-warp, pre-industrial civilization discovers they are being watched by Federation anthropologists), The Enemy (Geordi and a Romulan are marooned on a harsh planet and must work together to survive), The Offspring (Data creates an android daughter), and Deja Q (Q becomes mortal and is still a pain in the ass).
Apparently I was busy browsing on June 11, 2006. I also added Fagin the Jew by Will Eisner. I know I picked this one because of my dual love for Eisner and for Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist. According to Amazon’s description, Eisner first envisioned the book as an introduction to a graphic adaption of Twist, but “as he learned more about the history of Dickens-era Jewish life in London, Eisner uncovered intriguing material that led him to create this new work. In the course of his research, Eisner came to believe that Dickens had not intended to defame Jews in his famous depiction. By referring to Fagin as “the Jew” throughout the book, however, he had perpetuated the common prejudice; his fictional creation imbedded itself in the public’s imagination as the classic profile of a Jew. In his award-winning style, Eisner recasts the notorious villain as a complex and troubled antihero and gives him the opportunity to tell his tale in his own words.”
On that same day I also added Drums Along the Mohawk, starring Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert (and directed by one of my all-time favorite directors, John Ford), When Worlds Collide, based on the book by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer, which I read years ago in my Introduction To Science Fiction class at Quinnipiac back when it was just a college and not a university – and talking about it now makes me want to reread it, so I’m going to add the book to my wish list, and Elizabeth I: The Virgin Queen, a 2005 Masterpiece Theatre mini-series, because of my passion for all things Tudor ( and yes, I already have The Tudors boxed set).
Moving forward, I kept up with my Tudor passion in 2011, adding a shitload of novels and non-fiction about that dynasty, including The King’s Pleasure, a novel about Katherine of Aragon (Henry’s first wife, she whom he dumped for Anne Boleyn) by the late and great British author Norah Lofts, and two histories by another Brit, famed historian and author Allison Weir: The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn and Henry VII: The King and His Court. I also listed Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated by Alison Armgrin, Prairie Tales: A Memoir by Melissa Gilbert, and The Way I See It: A Look Back at My Life on Little House by Melissa Sue Anderson just because I always loved Little House on the Prairie. C’mon, who didn’t?
In November 2011 I added William Shatner’s Up Till Now: The Autobiography. Bill, I love ya!
2012 additions include Among Others, by Jo Walton. The Hugo and Nebula Award winner for that year is a brilliant coming-of-age story that mixes young adult literature, magic, and science fiction into a read for all ages. I also found Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas, by John Scalzi (which was reviewed by ComicMix’s John Ostrander), a spin on the classic Star Trek’s law that new ensigns, i.e., red shirts, always get killed on away missions.
Being a fan of Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow and its sequel Children of God, I also added Doc, Russell’s take on Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, and the events that occurred at the O.K. Corral. And I really must move up to the top of the list Alice Hoffman’s The Dovekeepers, the story of four women who are among the 900 Jews holding out against the superior Roman army at the siege of Masada, the mountaintop fortress in the Judean desert.
Just a few months ago I added Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, which the New York Times Sunday Book Review just, well, reviewed, and which has garnered much press and praise. It’s the timey-whiney story of Ursula Todd, who is born, dies, and lives again, is born, dies, and lives again, is born, dies, and lives again…each time taking making choices that affect not only Ursula, but her family, friends, and even the world. It’s a story that especially relevant to me these days.
It’s been a tough time for me since last Christmas, when my father first became ill, and watching my mother slowly slipping into elderly dementia. My life has become a cacophony personal and professional turmoil, a symphony of wishes and “if onlies”; I lie in bed at night unable to sleep, with all the different “roads less travelled” in my life teasing me with alternate possibilities, alternate lives. I am adrift at sea, questioning my choices and wondering, no, all too often, fearing the future.
Well, this weekend Iron Man 3 opens here in the States after having conquered the world. (BTW, when did this become the norm? It used to be a film opened here in the US of A and then around the globe. Is the American market now the secondary market?) What started in one medium – comics – has become big in another.
There certainly are lots of reasons behind it, a principle one being less risk. Comics make great fodder for movies because they are relatively a cheap way of testing and ironing out concepts and stories compared to movies. The risk is lessened and if the product (as with John Carter) bombs, at least the executive who approved it can show it was not an unreasonable risk – in theory. Something new? From scratch? Not with our hundred million, buddy! So having a proven commodity in some form makes it a safer, surer, bet. In theory.
There’s lots of different sources – books, games, amusement park rides, television, even the theater. Joss Whedon’s follow up to The Avengers last year? Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Why? Because he’s Joss Goddam Whedon and The Avengers made bazillions of dollars which means that for his next movie he gets to do whatever the hell he wants… at least until the box office receipts on that comes in.
The problem is – not everything translates well. I recently finally saw the movie version of the musical Les Miserables which in itself is an adaptation of the novel by Victor Hugo. I’m a fan of the musical, having seen it several times on stage, so I looked forward to the movie.
I was… whelmed. I enjoyed it and I have a DVD of it (yes, I need to move up to Blu-Ray or whatever else is coming) and I’m sure I’ll watch it again several times. Hugh Jackman was fine in the lead and, in a year that didn’t have Daniel Day Lewis owning the Oscar for his performance in Lincoln (adapted in part from Doris Kearns Goodwin biography, Team of Rivals) would have gotten him the Oscar as Best Actor. Anne Hathaway did score a Supporting Actress Oscar for her work as Fantine. However, there were several miscastings. Javert – the antagonist- should be intense, driven, formidable and ultimately tragic and Russell Crowe was none of those things. He was doughy. He was there.
Crowe was Oscar material compared to Sacha Baron Cohen who played Thénardier, the innkeeper. The character is a louse, a con man, a parasite but in every production I’ve seen, he (along with his wife, played in the film by Helena Bonham Carter, also badly cast) brings down the house in his songs. The character should be charming, a rogue, and funny and Cohen was none of that.
What really unsold the movie to me was the direction by Tom Hooper. Prosaic, uninspired, functional – it served its purpose, it got the basic job done, but I found no “wow” in it and the theater always gave me “wow.” The stage productions always swept me along; the movie version plodded.
That brings me to my central argument – maybe it couldn’t. Movies are often very literal. Les Mis on stage works because of its theatricality. Stage makes great use of suggestion, illusion, metaphor. It engages the imagination, makes you see what may not be there, makes you a partner in the production whereas movies have to show you and you become an observer. What was magical becomes pedestrian.
I’m not sure that something that begins as a stage musical ever translates well into film. Yes, Chicago was an exception but it found cinema versions to create a heightened reality that mimicked the stage production. It wasn’t a translation; it was a re-invention for the cinema – which Les Mis was not. Musicals that are created for movies fare far better, Wizard of Oz being a superb example.
Comics also work like musicals. The imagination must be engaged to fill in what happens in the gutters, in between the panels. The movies made from comics succeed when they re-invent them for the movies. I don’t need them to adapt a specific storyline; they are most successful when they are true to the concepts but re-imagine them for the films.
That’s why Iron Man 3 succeeds and Les Mis just lies there. Apples into oranges, my friends.
Before you read this column today, go watch Spencer Tracy in Father of the Bride or A Guy Named Joe, or Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, or Bad Day At Black Rock, or Adam’s Rib, or Judgment At Nuremberg, or Inherit The Wind.
Katherine Hepburn said to Spencer Tracy “you were, really, the greatest movie actor. I say this because I believe it and I’ve heard so many people of standing in our business say it – from Olivier to Lee Strasberg, David Lean, name it. You could do it, and you could do it with that glorious simplicity, that directness.” Elizabeth Taylor said, “His acting seemed almost effortless, it seemed almost as if he wasn’t doing anything, and yet he was doing everything. It came so subtly out of his eyes, every muscle in his face…” Richard Widmark said “It’s what every actor tries to strive for – to make it so simple, so real that anybody in the audience can say, ‘Oh, I could do that.’”
And this is Tracy himself giving advice to young actors on how to achieve success. “Come to work on time, know your lines, and don’t bump into the other actors.”
It’s advice that has come to mean more and more to me as I’ve matured as a writer. Tracy’s acting was the epitome of simplicity, of naturalness, of easy reality, and that what I try to do in my writing.
I’m not Spencer Tracy, though. It’s not easy for me to find my mark and remember my lines. Mostly I sweat like Jake LaMotta in the 13th round, bobbing and weaving and dodging the weedy dialogue, the pusillanimous paragraphs, and the purple prose screaming for attention. I’m not that quick on my feet; they deliver their fair share of jabs, upper cuts, and low blows to my brain and end up on my computer screen. And yeah, sometimes I want to throw up my hands, cry uncle and give in to the exhaustion, just go down for the count and let the fight be over.
But I don’t. I delete, and delete, and delete, and write again, and struggle to find the right words, because words are important, and good stories are made up of words that don’t obfuscate or complicate the story, but reveal the truth of it.
There’s a story from the Talmud, the written scholarship of Jewish law. A Gentile went to the rabbis of his city, saying to each that he would become a Jew if the rabbi could teach the whole Torah while standing one foot. Every rabbi chased him away, saying that it took years of study; what he asked was impossible. Finally this Gentile met with Rabbi Hillel, and, standing one foot, repeated his request. “Teach me the whole Torah while I stand here like this and I will become a Jew.” Rabbi Hillel said “What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor. All the rest is commentary.”
Amen, Rabbi!
And I’ll try not to bump into the other actors, Spence!
Well, it’s been officially announced: I’m scripting issue 20 of Aquaman for Geoff Johns and Company. It brings me back to my old DC stomping grounds and I’m both happy for the opportunity and pleased with the result. I hope everyone out there will feel the same when the book appears next month.
It also gives me a chance to talk about the art of doing a fill-in which has its own special skill set whether you’re a writer or an artist. Usually it’s a single issue although it can be for two.
If you’re getting a call from an editor of a given book for a fill-in, it will usually be on short notice. I once got a call from an editor on a Friday morning. He needed the fill-in script by Monday. The way that scripting usually works is that I submit springboards (one paragraph plot ideas and I usually try to give a few) and the editor decides which he or she likes. I then do a plot overview and then finally write a full script. Collapsing the time stream, that’s about a week. I had maybe four days from a standing start.
By early afternoon, the editor had the springboards. We talked on the phone, he picked the one he liked, I wrote up the plot outline by late afternoon. The editor approved it with his comments before the end of the day and I was off and writing. The script was in by Monday.
The question is not how creative you are (although you have to be that) but how professional, how disciplined, you are. How well do you know your craft? This goes for the artist as well as the writer. You get the job done.
Here’s why: The publisher has lined up printing time and there are only so many presses that print comics. They’re generally booked pretty full so if you don’t get the book to the printer on time, you miss your slot, you have to wait until one opens up and you’ll probably pay a fee for it. If the books ships late as a result, unsold copies can be returned (not the case with an on-time book). That costs money and the offending editor will not be held in high regard.
Here’s some things to remember if you’re writing a fill-in issue. It has to fit into the current continuity but not move that continuity forward (that’s the main writer’s job/prerogative). You might be given a few things that current writer wants to advance but don’t presume. You must know what that current continuity is in order to write the character as s/he appears in the book. You probably won’t be able to play with the supporting cast unless they aren’t in the current storyline or you are asked to use them.
Don’t rewrite the origin. Don’t recreate or reinterpret the origin (again, that’s the regular writer’s domain). Don’t kill off characters. The story is complete in that issue; no dangling threads. Don’t play with the regular writer’s dangling threads (so to speak) without permission. Don’t correct any continuity flaws that you may have perceived. Don’t base it on any trivia points that you know.
Did I forget to mention that the story also has to be wonderful? The reader is not getting the usual team on the book; you don’t want then to feel ripped-off. The comic book market is volatile these days and the publisher doesn’t want to give the fans a reason to leave. That said – fill-ins are just about inevitable. The crush and stress of doing a monthly book is tough.
Aquaman 20 is not the first time I’ve done a fill-in issue for the character. The first time I was asked, my initial reaction was, “Oh great. Aquaman. The blonde geek who swims fast and talks to fishes.” You know – a lot of people’s reaction. Current writer Geoff Johns, who has done a brilliant job of making Aquaman very readable, has cunningly used that perception in some of his scripts. So I had to find something in the character that would interest me or the script would just lie there like a filleted flounder.
I used that reaction I had to Aquaman to fuel the story. I used what I call an “oblique angler” to create the story. The story, in this case, would be about Aquaman using peoples’ reactions to Aquaman. It was a story about stories. I created a news reporter who is assigned to do a write-up about Aquaman; he has the same “talks to fishies” reaction I had when getting the assignment. The reporter then investigates and finds some first person accounts about Aquaman, giving us a variety of interps. In the process, the reporter himself grows and changes. It remains one of my own personal favorite stories.
“Fill-in” does not or should not mean “generic.” All the rules of a good story apply; it’s just that you have a single issue with which to do it. And that should be true whether you have a GN, a miniseries, a long run or a fill-in. You tell a good story. That’s always the job.
Is it a dirty word, especially when it comes to writing? Well, it depends. Simply put, there must be no embellishment when writing for a professional journal. The truth must be told.
There is a big difference between writing for a professional journal and writing fiction, or even this column. Writing for a professional journal must follow a proscribed style set by peer-reviewed organizations whose rules on grammatical usage, word choice, elimination of bias in language, the proper citation of quotes and references and the inclusion of charts and tables have become the authoritative source for all intellectual writing. This means that for me, as an RN, BSN, CNOR, I must adhere to the styles and standards set by the Publication Manual Of The American Psychologoical Assocociation (APA), which is “consulted not only by psychologists but also by students and researchers in education, social work, nursing, business, and many other behavioral and social sciences” (VanderBros, 2010) if I submit a paper or article to the Journal of the Association of Operating Room Nurses (AORN) for publication.
Does this mean that when I write fiction, or this column, I am allowed to freely embellish my stories? Does it mean that I am allowed to not to tell the truth?
Fiction writers do not really have one easily referenced professional publication in which the governance of grammar and punctuation are laid out in indisputable terms, in which the standards of style are set – though this does not mean I can sit down in front of my computer screen and write just one continuous sentence that goes on and on for pages and pages – well, perhaps I could if I was James Joyce. But all writers do need to start somewhere, and for anyone who has ever taken a creative writing course, or even tried to stay awake in their English high school class, the classic Elements Of Style, first written in 1918 by Professor William Strunk, Jr., is a good place to start. Strunk said something in that first edition that, 95 years later, has withstood the test of time and which, I believe, every writer, aspiring or published must integrate into his or her understanding of the art of writing:
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”
Elements was first revised in 1957 by New Yorker writer E. B. White (the author of the children’s classic Charlotte’s Web), and by 1979s third edition, listed 11 rules for grammar, 11 principles of writing, 11 standards for form, and 21 recommendations for style. (A search on Amazon revealed that Chris Hong updated The Elements Of Style for Kindle readers in 2011.) But there’s a lot more advice out there. A little while ago I entered “standards for fiction writing” on Google, and got 15,400,000 hits in 0.23 seconds.
On my bookshelf I have not only Elements of Style, but also Zen in the Art of Writing – Essays on Creativity by Ray Bradbury, Write for Yourself – The Book About The Seminar and Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, both by Lawrence Block, Write in Style – Using Your Word Processor and Other Techniques to Improve Your Writing by Bobbie Christmas, How I Write – Secrets of a Bestselling Author by Janet Evanovich with Ina Yalof, Inventing the Truth – the Art and Craft of Memoir edited by William Zinsser and which includes essays by such notables as Russell Baker, Annie Dillard, Toni Morrison, and Frank McCourt, Is Life Like This? – A Guide to Writing Your First Novel in Six Months by John Dufresne, The Weekend Novelist Rewrites the Novel by Robert J. Ray, Writing Fiction from the Gotham Writers’ Workshop, and Writers on Comics Scriptwriting which includes interviews with such illustrious authors as Peter David, Kurt Busiek, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Jeph Loeb and Grant Morrison.
I also have Eisner/Miller – Interview Conducted by Charles Brownstein, which is wonderful not only for its historical perspective, but for a peep into two great creative minds, and “Casablanca – Script and Legend” by Howard Koch,” which is incredibly instructive in detailing how magic sometimes happens despite ornery studio heads, battling co-writers, and an inability to decide how the story ends. I also have Stephen King’s “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” on my to-buy list.
And to tell the truth, I sometimes think that all this advice is still not enough.
Reference: Vandehaus, Gary R. (2010). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. (6th ed., pp. xiii – xiv). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
My late wife Kim Yale had a very tender heart; if someone was critical of her or didn’t seem to like her, it would tear her up. She would take it very personally. I told her that not every opinion matters and sometimes it registered with her.
I think it was Steven Grant who I first heard say that opinions were like assholes; everyone has one. Opinions can also be a conduit for a whole lot of crap.
Not every opinion matters. Not to me. Do I listen to my fans? I should and I do but, as I’ve said to different people at different times, just because I’m not doing what you’re telling me doesn’t mean I’m not listening to you. Fans, as a rule, want the same thing again next time only different. If you try to give fans what you think they want, half of them will get angry because it wasn’t what they wanted. I once heard J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame say on a video interview (I’m paraphrasing but it’s close), “Should I listen to my readers? Absolutely. Should I allow what they say to change one word of what I do? Absolutely not.” QFT.
When I listen to readers, it’s because I’m looking to get an idea of what is effective in my work, what is not, what may be in it that I didn’t even realize, and – if they’re saying nice things – I like getting my ego stroked as well as the next narcissist. What I’m listening to is their impressions of what I’ve done. Often as not it will tell me more about the person giving that opinion than it will about the work itself.
If you’re a young writer or artist and you want someone to give you an opinion of what you’ve just done, be careful who you ask. Do you really want an opinion or do you just want them to tell you that the work is wonderful and so are you? Do they know anything about the work you’re doing? Is it an informed opinion or just a “gut feeling?” There are people that I trust, who I know, and their opinions matter to me. Others – not so much. I often have no context for the value of their opinions.
I was put in mind of all this by the recent death of Roger Ebert. Over the years, I read his reviews and I knew from experience that he could be a good guide for me. When it came down to Ebert and Siskel, I knew Roger Ebert’s opinion of a film would more likely be like mine than would Siskel’s. Ebert could alert me to films I might not have seen and warned me away from ones that would probably waste my money and my time.
The world is full of crap-filled opinions and the Internet overflows with them like the Deep Tunnel project in Chicago during this last week’s floods. A lot of times the opinions masquerade as “fact” but they really are just one person’s opinion and often a skewed one at that. Often, they are written by Anonymous or Pseudo-anonymous. How can I decide whether an individual’s opinion is worth anything to me if I know nothing about them?
It boils down to this – not everyone’s opinion matters whether be about work, about politics, about people, about art, about society – about anything. There’s wheat and there’s chaff out there – lots and lots of chaff. Discern which is which for yourself and you’ll be a happier person.
Friday was a miserable day in the New York City metropolitan area. Slashing rain, blustery winds, and c-c-c-cold. It was a day made for staying in your pajamas and just vegging out in front of the TV, watching The Dick Van Dyke Show and I Love Lucy on TVLand, popping in DVDs of the original Dallas (nobody has ever played the villain we hate to love – but do – better than the late, marvelous, wonderful Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing), and eating too much of stuff that is bad for you, potato chips being my particular poison.
So what was I doing, getting up at 6 AM so that by 8:30 I could be walking with Alixandra and Jeff to the PATH station to take the train into the city? Why was I fretting that Alix wasn’t dressed warmly enough and that her hair was wet? After all, the woman is 33, old enough to deal with inclement weather on her own. Why was I feeling sorry for Jeff, who was struggling with an umbrella that threatened to either lift him into the sky like Mary Poppins or poke his eyes out? After all, Jeff is a Ph.D and a college professor and certainly wise enough to know that an umbrella turning inside out is the last thing you need on a windy, rainy early April day.
We were on our way to Alixandra’s third sonogram appointment.
No, nothing is wrong with my daughter.
The complete opposite.
I’m going to be a grandma!!!!!
So nice to be able to tell you all some good news this week.
I’ve actually known since the beginning of February, when I sat on the first sonogram, which Alix and Jeff* had placed on the backseat of the car for me to find. (We were on the way down to see my parents.) I said, “Oh, I’m sitting on something,” and fished it out from underneath my ass, realized it was some kind of photo, and tried to hand to Alix in the front seat, saying “I don’t think I creased it,” while my daughter and her husband cracked up.
“You’re such a dodo,” said Alix. “Look at it.”
I did. And what was my reaction?
Frankly, it didn’t register for a moment.
Then I said…
“Holy cow! Is this what I think it is? Is it real?”
Which only made them laugh harder.
Me, too.
A little while ago, Jeff came by so that we could exchange sunglasses – I was at their house last night, and inadvertently went home with Alix’s pair of shades. We chatted, and then Jeff asked me about the column, and I said, “don’t talk to me about it, I don’t have a fucking clue what to write about.” Yeah, yeah, I know, nice way for a soon-to-be grandma to talk, but hey, the kid’s gonna have to get used to me. (Only kidding, I will be toning down my use of colorful language around the child, at least until he or she is three months.)
He said, “Write about the baby’s first footprints,” which is what I said at the hospital when Alix and Jeff were given a picture of the baby’s…well, first footprints. (So tiny, and, yes, all ten toes are there.)
“But it has to be comics-related.”
“Oh, well…”
“Unless you think of sonograms like a graphic novel.”
“There you go.”
And you ask where writers get their ideas.
John Ostrander has written in his column here at ComicMix several columns (and wonderful columns they are!) about the art of writing, of plot building and character development. Well, if you think about it, a sonogram is a story arc – complete with pictures! – that begins with a something that looks like a walnut – Alix’s words, not mine – and over a nine month period, follows the walnut’s journey, or metamorphosis, into full-fledged “babyhood.” You can even imagine the little walnut – I think I have stumbled upon a nickname for my grandchild, in the same way Pa Ingalls called Laura “half-pint” – quoting from Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces as he or she tries to put into words that will make sense to us who have forgotten what’s it’s like grow from a clump of cells into a sentient being…
“I had to climb a mountain. There were all kinds of obstacles in the way. I had now to jump over a ditch, now to get over a hedge…”
Or, to misquote Shakespeare…“All the world’s a page,And all the men and women merely characters…”
Alix and Jeff, you didn’t know you were authors, did you?
Just don’t call me Bubby.
*Alixandra Gould and Jeffrey Gonzalez are expecting their first child at the end of September. A Libra! He or she will need some balance with a bubby like me!
I was something of an odd kid growing up so it may have made sense that I liked odd comedians. My memory was that I was the only person in our household who liked Ernie Kovacs; I must have been about 7 or 8 when his TV show was on. I thought he was funny and just so damn strange.
The same must be said as well for Jonathan Winters who died Thursday at the age of 87. A remarkable improviser, he could become anyone or anything. Hand him a prop or a hat and he could do four or five characters one after the other, morphing from one to the next in a heartbeat. Famously, Jack Paar just gave him a stick and Winters turned in character after character , including a terrific imitation of Bing Crosby.
I have a memory of Winters on The Jack Parr Show simply taking it over. Parr couldn’t get him to shut up or get off the stage. Parr was one of many many comedians or entertainers who were huge Winters’ fans. Robin Williams really owes his career to him. He pops in on this interview that 60 Minutes did with Winters and it’s fun not only to see the two riffing together but also for some of the serious insights that Winters gave on comedy and being a comedian.
What may be interesting to ComicMix readers is that he studied cartooning at Dayton Art Institute, meeting Eileen Schauder who would become his wife. Makes sense to me; his act often had him becoming a living cartoon.
He was also upfront about his stays in a private psychiatric hospital for manic depression which was brave and may have cost him. You could dismiss his act as that of someone too wired and a bit crazy instead of as the comedic genius it was.
There’s so many ways you may have encountered Jonathan Winters. He was an actor as well as a comedian. One of my favorite films that he made was The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming playing as police deputy that may have been related to Barney Fife. More manic but not more competent. He was also one of the few things that was watchable in the comedic gang bang, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. He was the white suited garbage man on Heft commercials who had a refined accent and pronounced garbage as “gahrbaj” – which I still use myself on occasion.
Winters, being a cartoon himself, also voiced cartoons, voicing Grandpa Smurf. Among the others were Tiny Toons Adventures (where he once voiced Superman!) and Fish Police – based on the comic book – doing Mayor Cod.
One of the most surreal (and with Jonathan Winters, that’s saying a lot) series of appearances was on Mork and Mindy where Winters was the son to Robin William’s Mork. As you may recall, Mork was an alien and his race aged backwards. It gave Williams a chance to work with his idol. It must have been easy to script; just point the two of them in a general direction and turn them loose.
One of Winters’ best known characters was Maudie Frickert who looked a bit like Whistler’s Mother and talked like Mae West. Maudie appeared everywhere, on all the variety shows, on the Tonight Show (Johnny Carson’s Aunt Blabby was, shall we say, a “direct descendent” of Maudie), and any place on TV that you can think. She had a career of her own. Maudie was just one of several recurring characters that Winters created.
When Jonathan Winters died this last week, all those characters, all those voices, died with him. They still live on videos and I encourage you to check YouTube and other places on the webby-web for them. He was an original, an antic mind, and with his death the world is a little less funny at a time when we need a few more real laughs.
Plenty of individual panels have been freeze-framed in my head all afternoon, but none of them have led to any kind of sequential storytelling. This is the worst part of being a writer with a weekly column – watching the hands on the clock inexorably winding down to zero hour, the time by which I need to get the thing e-mailed to Mike and Glenn.
