Trying to be a bit more productive
Read to the end for an ape in military attire astride a hog, jousting a baboon also in military attire astride a bear
August writing update
So, first, I sold a short story recently. It’s for an anthology that’ll be out in October. I mentioned the story on my social media feeds a while back, but not here. I don’t think it’s been announced yet so I don’t want to say anything more, except that I’m excited about it. I also have two more book reviews coming out, either end of the month or sometime in September.
One of my favourite comic writers used to put out a newsletter where he’d assign codenames to his various project so that he could talk about them without spoiling them, so that’s what I’m going to do so that I can tell you about a couple of things. This week I started two projects, which I’m going to call Project Lunatic and Project McRib. Both are works of fiction.
Project Lunatic is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, at least ten years, but it always felt so ambitious and so daunting that I kept talking myself out of trying. But recently I went back and looked at the material I’d gathered previously and it started to make sense to me in a way it never had before. I could see a sort of organizing principle in my notes that was previously absent, and I figured I had to try. So I am. I think I know how to chip away at it now. But still, it’s going to take a lot of work. Among other things, it involves research, which I dread. I like writing fiction because people can say it sucks shit or whatever but it’s hard for anyone to say that it’s wrong. But, y’know, if it involves research… But still, the last time I looked at the research material it barely made any sense to me. And I’m not really starting from scratch because I’ve been reading about this subject for a very long time now. I started compiling all my various notes and they add up to more than 200 pages, which is both helpful and not. It used to be that the more I’d read about this stuff, the more I realized I didn’t know. That’s still true to an extent, but I feel like now I have a handle on it. I know what I need to figure out, and I know how to figure it out. That’s something.
Project McRib is different. It’s more of an experiment, but something I think I have the skill for, something I think I can pull off. I don’t know, we’ll see. It’s all longshot stuff and entirely possible that neither of these projects will ever see the light of day, but I have to try. I decided back when I was longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize that I wanted to start trying some more ambitious stuff, so that’s what I’m gonna do.
I’m also working on some more book reviews. I have three reviews that I’ve committed to writing, and two venues have also said I should consider pitching them something in the autumn, but which aren’t going to be interested in the stuff I’m already working on.
So there’s a lot on my plate in terms of writing for the foreseeable future, all of the above plus this newsletter. If I’m going to stay disciplined about it, then something’s got to give. Luckily the answer is kind of obvious, and that’s social media. I’m going to try to log off at least for the month of August. This newsletter will be the only place you’ll find me online for the rest of the summer, hopefully.
I think it was probably time for me to take a social media break anyway. The American election is heating up and I can feel myself getting drawn into it more and more. I think it’s fine for Non-Americans like myself to take an interest in American politics, considering that the American Veto hovers over the life of everyone on the planet. [I’ve redacted two paragraphs here where I accidentally started opining on American politics.] Obviously I’ll still be paying attention to it on some level, but I don’t have a horse in this race and there’s no point in subjecting myself to the day-by-day, hour-by-hour brainrot of social media election “coverage.” At least not until September or October.
This one ran a bit short so I’m adding some more clippings from that kindle file I found:
We regarded as superheroes obscure Antarctic figures such as Rozo, the baker on one of the French expeditions who did nothing but wear slippers around the hut and bake croissants, or Anton the Russian Pony Boy, who entertained everyone with his national dances.
— Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica by Nicholas Johnson
Occasionally someone at one of these parties has Pole moonshine or some concoction of peppermint schnapps and JATO from one of the station’s many secreted barrels of pure grain alcohol, thought to have once fueled Jet-Assisted-Take-Offs when overloaded planes needed a boost on short runways. JATO tastes horrible, but since the community fate depends upon planes, there is a pleasure in drinking jet fuel, as an agrarian society eating dirt or a warrior culture drinking blood.
— Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica by Nicholas Johnson
It was in Dahomey that I came across a coup by sheer accident. As I was driving into Cotonou, which constitutes half the capital of Dahomey (the other half, called Port Novo, is thirty kilometres down the road), I passed a car being driven by the AFP correspondent, Jacques Lamoureux, who started shouting at me: ‘Stop! Pull over! There’s a revolution here!’ Lamoureux was visibly elated, because Cotonou is a pretty little town but a boring one and its sole real attraction is the revolution, which occurs only once every few months.
— The Soccer War by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Arresting collaborators is as much a part of cleaning up a town as is the maintenance of the sewage system and the street sweeping.
— The Face of War by Martha Gellhorn
The king and queen arrived in Paris on return from the land of Normandy, from where they brought a large quantity of monkeys, parrots, and small dogs purchased in Dieppe. Some of these parrots, the majority trained by the Huguenots, gave out all kinds of nonsense and railing against the mass, the pope, and the ceremonies of the Roman church; when some people who had been offended said this to the king, he replied that you don’t interfere with the conscience of parrots.
— A History of the Barricade by Eric Hazan
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Project McRib. I love it. For an upcoming really big project, you could pay homage to another defunct McDonald's item, the Arch Deluxe.