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I’ve been watching a lot of Cinemax lately. No, not like that. In fact, I’ve been watching CInemax because the best hard-hitting action series are coming out of the Cinemax camp. Short of Starz’s Spartacus: War of the Damned, there isn’t anything coming out of the other  cable channels that comes close to what Cinemax has managed to put out. First there was the paramilitary drama Strike Back and now they give us Banshee.

Banshee is a delightful mixture of sex and violence; it is a raw journey into classic super-masculinity draped in the guise of a crime drama draped in the guise of a cop show. Every violent moment is punctuated with something tender and meaningful. The characters, feral and engaging, are also heavily layered with history.

Banshee is the story of a talented thief who stole from his boss and wound up in jail. Upon leaving prison he seeks out his partner and lover (who happens to be daughter to his boss and also on the run from her father for the theft). He finds her in a town called Banshee and, before he can get to her, winds up in bar fight where the incoming sheriff dies. The thief, in need of an identity and way to get close to his ex, takes on the identity of the sheriff. Chaos ensues.

It isn’t the sex or violence or any moderation of both but the ferocity of the plot that engages. This show moves fast–modern fast. By season’s end most of the major story points will have been resolved. We are not left to wonder about the big questions. Instead we are left to ask: What happens next.

I think that’s a great formula for an action story.

I thought about calling this post Eye of the Tiger because whenever I think about success I remember that song and the movie that goes with it. He lost the fight in that movie, but the story was really about the fight he went through to get there and go toe to toe with the best. In a real sense I am going toe to toe with some of the best authors in what I am calling the ‘shadowpunk’ genre. Basically, its shadowrun. It is an anthology. It is an opportunity to shine in a place where I don’t for a second have top billing, but have the opportunity to really expand the awareness of what I can do by throwing up some very good stories.

I haven’t had to fight for a whole lot professionally over the last few years and that success makes you lazy. What it takes to be successful is a hunger; a boot on your back trying to shove you into the ground. It also takes a strong core group around you (that or total independence and isolation) telling you that you can do it if you put in the effort and the hours. Becoming successful is a hard thing, but not nearly as difficult as staying there. I am hungry to get the passion and hunger back in my system.

All I gotta do now is sit down and write.

The beauty and difficulty of story writing isn’t placing your character in a terrible situation, but finding that terrible situation to place the character in. Finding that situation is tough, because the situation the character is in needs to be believable and it needs to be so desperate that it triggers the actions of the story while holding the readers attention. I’m looking for one of those right now, and I’m having limited success…

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Bit nervous for the game this weekend. I wasn’t expecting our team to face the Cowboys again, but when the Broncos backed out of the game (for reasons unknown) we were thrust into a rematch with the Cowboys. We have our full compliment of players now, but all I can see is those ‘boys keying on my running backs and blitzing like wild things. I superimpose that image on top of the last practice where the D did the exact same thing with the exact same results and I feel like there is a lot I need to figure out in a very short amount of time. I don’t know how to stop the rush defense short of an all out passing attack to back them off. Maybe that is what I need to do…

I am now certain that my mood is tied to my productivity–especially in regards to what I find to be the primary goal for that moment. If I’m making headway or at least fighting the good fight then I’m a happy camper. I’m less happy when stalled. Right now I’ve flipped into one of the better moods of the young year. As stated before, I’m back on track with my writing, and though I haven’t found a whole heck of a lot to blog about I am confident that I am putting together everything I need to in order to be successful, and finally doing it in a reasonable time frame.

Some Thoughts:

1. missing one of my best friends something awful. It sucks when people are too busy in their lives to reach outside of the daily circle in order to communicate with loved ones. I’m especially bad at that. 
2. Social Engineering is an awesome term that can be applied to spycraft. I’m enjoying reading about it as well as trying to learn more about spycraft itself. I’m interested in injecting that intelligence into a novel down the road.
3. Busy schedule these next few weeks. Still, gotta find time to put the important stuff in motion…

Maybe i should call this burning bridges, or biting off more than I can chew, or trying to be superman, or less than. Any title could fit the situation. The situation is self-awareness in the face of aging. Not complaining, of course, but just having a look under the hood and once again coming to grips with the now and trying to see if that realization can bring me forward to a happier place.

7.22. It isn’t a date. its my 40 yd dash time. Those 350 lb NFL linemen are expected to run 40 yds in 5.00 seconds. 19 yrs ago I ran sub 4.5–almost 3 seconds faster than I move now. I am not fast. Last FB game I couldn’t catch or make smart decisions. Heck, my coaching hasn’t been good in weeks. I am in a slump like none other and it is starting to chip away at my self-confidence.

I should be in the gym working hard and trying to course correct. Maybe, just maybe I’ll hop on the treadmill and put in a mile tomorrow. It is literally the least I can do to be healthy. Still, even that feels like talk-like something I have no intention to do because I have no desire to do it. I find myself falling into these particular conundrums when it comes to the work part of a lot of things.

At what point do I become little more than a good talker with nothing underneath. At what point does recognizing that make me change my ways and be the powerful productive person i once was. Fact is, we can never go backward, but I believe I am capable of being more moving forward.

It is true what they say: Comfortable artists are bad artists.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. My mind is full of spycraft and handlers and I want to rationalize that within a fantasy realm. It could make for a very interesting story idea. 

tough weekend for me. i dont have a whole heck of a lot to say about it short of a lot of sadness and dissapointment. hell, i cant even spell right at the moment. it is important to have these lows, because it makes the highs so much more worthwhile and vivid.

sadly, it is tough to think about that in the moment–especially when the moment includes you leaning on a sore shoulder and hacking away at the keys in a finger splint.

 

This is one of those nights where I don’t have a lot to say or even the psychological energy to scrape together a coherent and singular post. I don’t know that this is a real reflection as much as it is a ramble about semantics. I do want to say a few words about the portrayal of Chris Dorner in the media. Before I say how I feel about the portrayal, let me speak about the man:

I don’t know Dorner or hardly anything about him. I don’t condone his methods or actions. I don’t think he was innocent or a victim.

Here is what I do think. I think we have a consistent double standard in this country. The enemy that takes advantage of ambush and guerilla tactics is a coward. The ally that does the same is a hero. If we drop bombs from unmanned drones we are taking a tactical advantage. If we ambush a nest of terrorists we are again using tactical advantage. If a cop shoots a perp in the back before the perp can harm someone, they get to be called heroes. Dorner ambushed people and is called a coward.

Again, it isn’t about the man but about the double standard. We need to move away from this idea of exceptionalism before it gets us in all kind of social danger.

One of the things I wanted to do with this blog was to explore my process. It is important not only to recognize what your writing process is but to reflect on the process in hopes of understanding why you do things the way you do and if there are opportunities for improvement. I’m certain there are ways to improve my own process, so long as I am honest about how I work and don’t work at my craft.

The one issue I have discussed at length here is when I write. I get the majority of my work done after 10PM. My brain goes to sleep around 11, so there are hours of the night that I am operating way below capacity. I feel pretty fresh between 6-7 AM, so I do occasionally wake to throw down a few pages.

Another part of my process is the extremely long ramp up period to a project. If I were a car, I’d hit a comfortable cruising speed in about 6 weeks. This aspect of my process is baffling. When I finish one project it takes me a considerable amount of downtime to launch into the next. I am presently working to address that issue.

There are a couple of aspects to my process that are problematic and likely have contributed to a handful of failed novels and short stories. I need a stronger will to commit to the set time and schedule, because unless I can do just that, I’m going to completely flame out.

Approaching a three-day weekend I find myself in a conundrum. I planned to spend most of the weekend puzzling over a story, but I’m spending the pre-weekend trying to decide how to tell a story that has little action to an audience that craves such things. The trick, i suppose, will be in the telling. Specifically, I need to raise the stakes very high and tighten that tension throughout the piece without having to resort to bullets.

The fact is, there isn’t much to tell in the story so far as stuff happening. The whole piece is a cerebral thing, designed to show the movements of a person through a particular world as a way to move the world story along through the eyes of someone the readers would be marginally familiar with. In other words, a milieu piece. Sadly, that is difficult to accomplish in the amount of words I am tasked to work with.

And therein lies the fun.

Used to be that I took on these kind of challenges with a gleam in the eye. I didn’t think about consequences so much as opportunities. That way the telling was daring and genuine. It is a strange thing that the way you write ages with you. I recognize that there is no going back, but it would be nice to let go of some of these pretenses and write like I don’t have a care in the world.

After all, I’m doing this out of love.

Not a whole lot firing off in the mind tonight. My thoughts have been scattered as I watch many of my responsibilities come to a head. See, a lot of what I do needs to get done in  a specific time frame. That frame or window closes soon, and I am feeling the pinch. The other day one of my co-workers mentioned staging an intervention for me. He rightfully felt that I overwork myself to the point of madness and take on so many responsibilities that it seems like I don’t have time to give full attention to any one. That was certainly the case last semester. I’ve designed a fall semester that absolutely prevents that, but in the meanwhile I am out on a limb here trying to tie up every loose end in the city.

Then there’s this idea of down time. While I don’t get very much of it I do try to find an hour or two that I can veg out and absorb new media. Tonight’s hour was spent absorbing Chicago Fire. I don’t regret the time spent. Good drama most nights, though tonight there was less firefighter stuff than I am used to.

Look at me–rambling. Perhaps that is just the way it is when you have ten minutes to fill and not a whole lot going on in the mind to put down on paper. On the other hand, this is the discovery process. This is the path people take to find their voice in writing. I’ve been leading my students down this path as of late and trying to get them to understand the value of this creative process. That is not working with one class in particular. Maybe we’ll have a sit down tomorrow and work it out.

Yeah, just add that to the to-do list.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. At some point the numbering system is going to go away or merely start looking like star dates.