As a matter of fact, in a two week span I found and started a new job, found and bought a new car, found and moved into a new apartment, and my wife found and started a new job.  That was a two week period, even though most of it took place in the first week with carry over into the second.  Since then, we’ve been working, decorating, and driving around Denver; this town I’m not at all familiar with yet.  It’s been a lot to deal with, but that’s life, huh?

On the writing front, I’m now a copywriter at the American Humane Association.  Reading up on child and animal neglect and abuse and synthesizing it into a heart-wrenching and visceral thing.  Hopefully a heart-wrenching and visceral thing that will land us more donations, but that’s neither here nor there.

There have also been meetings with possible investors, advise-givers, and artists in hopes that one of the many projects I have floating around in my brain ether is produced.  At this point, it feels like a lot of impasses all at once, but it’s those difficult roadblocks that provide the fortitude to keep going.  So, that’s where I’m at.  Waiting for things to happen, nagging people to get things to happen, and continuing to write.  Seems to be the way of most, if not all, writers, so at least I feel like I’m getting somewhere.

Coinciding this all this is an unassailable feeling that we want to go back to Seoul.  We miss Korea, the people, the subway, and the bussle.  We miss our friends and the connections we made. But, at the same time, we recognize that we’re here, with a new car and 12-month lease that will anchor us at least for a little while.  There’s still that hope though, that in a year we’ll be back on Line 2 to Gangnam for dinner or the 730 bus on our way to the outskirts of Itaewon to visit Faysal and Misun or walking through the crowds at Dongdaemun to buy a new sweater or shirt.  It’s so odd to thing that people all around me equate owning a car to independence, while I feel that riding the subway gave me the most freedom.  I could write, listen to podcasts, and watch people’s interactions with each other without fear that I might drive off the road.  That’s liberation.  Not having to care.  And I guess that’s where I want to be professionally, too.  Focus on what I love even if I’m working on a project that doesn’t matter to me.  There’s freedom in the confirmation, there’s freedom in being swaddled by my laptop’s keyboard and wikipedia research and Final Draft.

Today, I’m a copywriter and learning a lot, but tomorrow I’ll be writing for me.  I live for those days.

Hope you’re all doing well.  Sorry again for the delay.  Hopefully I’ll write more now that I’m in front of a computer all day long (I just spit at my Acer monitor and IBM Thinkpad).  In the mean time, think about your path and ride it.  After all, if it weren’t for that positive thinking, I wouldn’t have written a book and I wouldn’t be able to hone my craft by writing copy all day long.

As it stands, some things have happened and others have not.  To be more obtuse, the world still turns.  Or to put it a different way, I’ve spent the last 8 months on a single project: ‘Han’.  Now, ‘Han’ began as a graphic novel concept and ended as a webcomic.  Most recently I’m pretty sure I mentioned that ‘Han’ was on a rather permanent hiatus and now I can’t get the damn thing out of my head.  That’s to say that while I should be branching off, considering and planning and skeletoning new stories or projects my mind comes right back to ‘Han’.

I started going at it from different angles.  Maybe I could create more this…  If this character were this then there would need to be other characters to counterbalance it an…  You get the idea.  The problem is that ‘Han’, right now, isn’t being worked on, with the exception of over-and-over in my brain.

Many of you are reading this saying, “no,” you’d say, “Don’t give up on ‘Han’.  There has to be a way,” and there might be. I’ve been trying to create something more accessible and perhaps more inclined toward solid, professional backing but it’s been slow moving.  Like the expanding universe, slow.  Or plate tectonics.  And that’s boring.  Also to say “it’s not allowing me to work on other ideas because my brain (the river that it is) delta’s right back to ‘Han’,” the bastard.  On the plus side, however, this new angle, this new way of looking at ‘Han’ is supremely exciting and might be much of what’s keeping my mind on it.  It’s a chance to do something really fun/awesome/more culturally significant than slap bracelets.  Damn, I broke my string of earth-based metaphors

To bring things back to earth and that’s how, in a hackneyed way, I bring it back, I’d like to mention that I have a box of Reading With Pictures books sitting in our apartment.  We’ve successfully sold/given way (mostly) around a third of them. We’ve sent emails out to friends and family about the many places the anthology has been mentioned/I have been mentioned (horn successfully tooted) including the super cool article in the Korea Herald about ‘Han’ titled U.S. graphic novelist explores han: experiences it in the process (this may not actually be the title).  There’s something rewarding about being mentioned as a graphic novelist even if my graphic novel never got off the ground.

Well, I guess that’s all the rambling madness I have in me for now.  Thank you for your continued love and patronage, your continued visits to this site as well as ‘Han’, and for purchasing the ‘Reading With Pictures Anthology’.  That is to say, if you haven’t bought the book you should be ashamed of yourself and be cast out amongst the reeds.

Nothing but love!  Bye for now.

Lately I’ve been reading American Lion by Jon Meacham and Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.  – this is after I finished Slaughterhouse V for the first time.  My immediate reactions so far are “brilliant” and “whoa” or even interrupting my wife to tell her something that I’ve just read.  These are the normal reactions when reading something that touches you, something that effects you either positively or not.  Their high points in your reading but they ironically lead to low points for me.

What I mean to say is that reading something great should be a motivation but it’s not always.  At times I’ll read something staggering and want nothing more then to write something in that same vein, hoping to stagger the population or something, Mark Twain might say, to shake people from their stupor; that’s not a quote, just an observation and suggestion of what Mark Twain might say.  But therein, as Admiral Ackbar in his infinite online video iterations, will tell you is a trap.  Because writing something with the soul purpose of knocking someone on their ass or shaking off the societal strains put on by the overbearing and misguided words of some megalomaniac man is a trap.  It really can’t be done.  Sure, creative writing teachers have been saying for years to “write with intention” but it doesn’t always work.  If you’re like me, all too often those intentions and purposes derail the story.  Making a well plotted piece a true “piece”.

But that’s not all!  This same derailment can come from  comments both positive or negative.  Hell, someone could shower praise upon you, fill your heart with such happiness that those tasks you were loathe for in the past turn  enjoyable.  It won’t stop there though!  You go home, a skip in your step as you ignore the intermittent rain that has annoyed you for the last week or the fact that you forgot your umbrella.  Then things start to get real.  You read over the review too many times.  You’ve sent it to everyone in your address book in hopes that they’ll share in your glowing moment until there’s a thought that “what if I can’t live up to it?”  What happens then?  I’ll tell you, everything stops.  You’re crippled by a moment that should have been glorious and provided you with enough boast-fuel for the next month has turned into a sprained brain.

To sum this up, there’s no way to tell whether you’re reading will effect you for better or worse.  You can portend that a novel, newspaper article, or trip to the market will actually bring positive results and help you plow through a particularly difficult section of your book, script, short story, whatever.  But that doesn’t mean you should fear those activities.  On the contrary.  I know I offered up some truly incredible points here but the fact is, they’ll only effect you for a short time.  At the top I mentioned that my current funk will probably only last a few hours or the rest of the day, perhaps someone reading this will have moments where they’re unable to hit the keys for months on end.  But think about it, you’re being effected by something.  You’re letting it control your mind, your thinking, your life instead of breast stroke you forward.  Doesn’t that boggle the mind?  Doesn’t it just make you angry at how your mind has decided to process that moment or nugget of information?  Stupid brain.  What the hell?!

The key is, I’ve found, to harness your stupid brain and use those lull-filled moments to get you further than you thought.  After all, what’s a better motivation than being annoyed with yourself?  I don’t think there is anything.

So, get out there and get some writing done.  Don’t let your brain win, let your brain win!  Also, read this awesome review of the ‘Reading With Pictures Anthology’, including some very nice things said about yours truly.

You can’t derail me brain, moment, or book!  Hancomic.com

Writing a book often becomes a full-time job. And not only just the writing, mind you. The research, interviews, and outlining process might be the most difficult of all as you attempt to create from the air something. Once you get all that down, the book probably isn’t as difficult. That is, unless you’re writing like a jerk (Jack Kerouac). The truth is, once you have your break through, once the story starts to run, you’re able to work on it in your spare time. And that’s what the next few months have in store for me. For, you see, I have acquired a day job.

And what a terrifying omen that may bring. Since we arrived here in Seoul, I was terrified at the prospect of having to teach or work in an office again because working in an office and teaching aren’t for everyone (especially not me). And even though I did try and apply and go in for interviews with schools here, things didn’t work to much great disappointment (WOOOOOOO!). In that time I was able to research, perform interviews, and create a solid outline for the book – as stated above – and focus on the creation process. The birth of an idea. But now, poppa needs a day job.

Why? Well, I’m married and we’re struggling. Living in a large city has massive advantages in its brilliant public transportation and equally massive disadvantages in the price of a box of cereal. But you pay anyway because, hell, living in Seoul is incredible. So, after floundering, without fault on my end, for seven months, I packed it in and focused again on finding work. And not just because we need the money. It has far more to do with being an adult and not being a “layabout”.

Of course, most people of my generation, Generation Meh, would love nothing more than to be inactive, video game playing, corrugated potato chip eating philistines, but that’s childish and, lets face it, not my MO. Having lifted myself out of my desk chair and detached my brain stem from my USB port (I’ll miss you data) it feels a lot like failure. Like I’ve given up on the book and wasted all that time and might not actually get the thing done, but that’s where a schedule, determination, and a loving kick in the ass by your wife comes in. Because no one wants you to have wasted time more than your wife…she’ll kill you for it…she knows you’re afraid.

The main books I was and will be focusing on are Batman by Grant Morrison and Captain America by Ed Brubaker.  First off, I would like to state, without question, Morrison and Brubaker are two of the best writers in the industry.  Morrison creates these expansive worlds and plots that refuse to maintain any kind of commonly thought structure and Brubaker embodies the new noir movement that permiates fiction right now.

With that said, the following ramble came about after I finished reading ‘Batman & Robin’ #10 and realized that both the Batman and Captain America story lines seemed parallel.  By this point, both Batman and Captain America were killed off, replacements found, and have now, I’m guessing for the reason that you can’t have Batman and Captain America without the identities we have all grown accustomed to (which I disagree with completely), either returned or are in the midst of being found and returned.

I’ll do my best not to provide too many spoilers as I’m not sure how many people are actually reading the books – I would highly suggest picking up both the ‘Batman: RIP’, ‘Death of Captain America’ and subsequent stories.  Carrying on…

I’m annoyed that the story, as it seems, of Bruce Wayne’s return as a more fleshed out version of Steve Roger’s. The death of Captain America was a huge deal and a fantastic story. Even the subsequent books: Bucky taking the reigns and trying to live up to Cap’s legacy/forge his own. That’s a wonderful story line that could have been sustained as a B-story and underlying theme for several years. To have Cap come back so quickly, around a year, seems too reactionary. I didn’t feel comfortable with Bucky as Cap yet, in spite that the characters of the Marvel universe seemed to believe so, and wanted to see him struggle more.

Just like any person in the real world, death takes a while to deal with.  Pain hits you in different intervals or situations and there is nearly no way to predict when you’ll be reminded of that loved one and mourn them again.  And those stories are interesting.  Seeing Bucky, in the middle of combat, be called Captain America for the first time by his enemy would bring about a viseral reaction, and that’s interesting to see.

Now with the return of Bruce Wayne, I have similar feelings. Grayson as Batman is far more interesting. It’s the classic son becomes the father instead of friend becomes the hero story line from Captain America with the added twist that Wayne’s son, Damien (too many characters named Damien in the Batman universe), has taken on the reigns as Robin and believes he has what it takes to solve Wayne Enterprise’s financial issues. Damien is dark and brooding, like Bruce, while Grayson is far more optimistic about life. He wasn’t effected as much by the negativity and pain that gravitated toward Bruce as Robin, but I feel as though, over time, that pain will happen. Grayson will become jaded, angry, and brooding having to deal with the mantle of Batman. Conversely, Damien could very easily take on more of Grayson’s optimistic air.

That’s a story line I want to see. Progress. I want to see new characters go through life changes. Bruce Wayne will always be dark and brooding, Captain American will always be a boy scout, but with Grayson and Bucky we have a chance to see new characters forging their own paths independently of their predecessors.  That, those changes in character and the dynamics of life, make stories great.  And that is life.

Lost has, since immediately after season 1, completely gone off the rails. I don’t mean that in the sense that story or suspense has become too much or purposefully attempted to jump any sharks. What I mean is that people’s obsession with the show has gone from any other show to obsession. People have decided that instead of remembering that it is entertainment to it becoming a very large part of their lives. This, I cannot understand.

I live for stories. I thrive when I hear them, I feel energized when I’m writing them, and Lost is a fantastic example of what great storytelling can become. But they’re just that: stories. They mean only as little or as much as we put into them.

At first, the show was simply a show. The show runners didn’t seem to think of it as anything more than that. That is, until the internet showed them what they were missing. Bloggers began aggregating hypothesis and considering establishing a conference for like minded Lost fans to talk and pontificate. This show became more about questions and thoughts than simply storytelling with questions and answers.

It’s at this moment, I surmise, that the writers and producers realized they could have a goliath on their hands. They jumped at the chance to feed those bloggers, to create a podcast that spawned other podcasts, and helped to create what was called the ‘Lost Experience’, an adjoining product that would provide depth to the Lost universe.

As a money making venture Lost became a powerhouse, but as a story it ebbed and flowed. There was a time during season 3 that the show lost much of it’s fanbase and viewership. Viewers claimed the show, the storyline and not any adjoining material, became watered down, and opted for different programming. Me? I was one of those.

Mostly because I became restless and annoyed with how the story seemed to have taken a back seat to melodrama instead of the complaints that there were “too many questions, not enough answers”. In that exodus, I was with the first camp. But the show improved. I picked up where I left off, watching what I missed commercial-free, and the show became great again. How did it become great? It returned to the structure that producer J.J. Abrams so lauds: the Mystery Box Model.

Abrams believes that there’s something innately delicious in not knowing something and wanting to learn. He plays with our tendency toward discovery and fascination with the unknown and it paid off. Just as the show began with questions, the show continued with questions. However, as mentioned above, there was a large camp of people who loathed the massing questions. They cried out when new questions were unveiled and no answers were provided. Their impatience was understandable, after all, because the mystery box had begun encompassing and bleeding into all media.

Last season the show was able to pump out not only answers to questions but a sustained rise and fall structure that made viewing it like reading a mystery novel. I reveled in the questions, trying to piece things together, and the season finale was one of the most inventive cliffhangers every conceived; something the show is well known for.

I’m a fan of the questions, and sometimes I like to think about them while I watch the show and devise my own answers; knowing full well I’ll probably be wrong. This season, my viewing experience changed. I started watching it for what it was, recognizing that it’s just a television show, albeit a brilliantly choreographed one, and enjoying it simply for that. Mostly, my analytic brain was turned off and I thought about the storytelling that was being presented to me. And it was great. It picked off directly where it left off. Not only do I feel the intensity from the season finale, it’s been ratcheted up.

And now I’m left with the complaints that people have. Those vocal watchers who say “enough is enough” with the questions, and why do Jack, Kate, and Sawyer continue to follow blindly what the Others say based only on trust like the analogues people refuse to draw obvious connections to? To those things I say, calm down. Most of you complain as if your voice are the only ones heard by producers. Sure, there are plenty of you angry but there are just as many, if not more, that love the show and will continue watching because they value it as entertainment, entertainment that they can control. Because they remember that they have the ability to turn the tv off.

I’m in bed.  There are sleep noises all around me: hum of the laptop’s fan, sag of bed, churning of the heater, jangle as it turns off.  I want to write about inspiration, but I won’t.  I want to write about where an idea begins, but I won’t.  So, let’s go with train of thought.

Apparently, I’ve been told, the train that sits in the station in my head does not make all the stops a lot of other people’s does.  There are a few that try to tie that to this disability thing that I won’t get into but I doubt that’s it.  After all, could a disability shape one’s perspective?  Could it form the pattern?  Could it extrapolate the projected path from someone mentioning how beautiful the sunset is to me just stopping, completely shutting down?  Nah, that doesn’t make much sense.  My brain does that.  Sure, the route isn’t necessarily predetermined all the time but more often than not, it is.

I’m a staunch believer in thought nodes.  What I mean to say is that the phycological star I hitch my theory to is that there are these nodes, interconnected through synapses, of thoughts, memories, images that are spaced out throughout the brain.  Now, these nodes are just the generalized notions, the most basic, boiled down generality of things.  Hmm…let’s try this again.  Yellow, green, and blue are all colors.  They’re all defined within that umbrella, right?  Right.  So, there’s a node.  Colors: Yellow, green, blue, etc.  The problem is that green is comprised of both blue and yellow, so those branches are connected independently of the umbrella: color.  Following?  Awesome.

So, here’s the thing: these items in the brain, plus the nodes that they branch from are associated and organized specifically.  So, I’m saying, my brain associates things differently then most.  Why?  Because there’s one giant node, in my head, that all other nodes are threaded.  All other branches can be lead back to one, universal mega-node: God.

Wow, I just went all over the place.  Anyway, with God firmly established, with this “mega-node” as the backbone, the fundamental, purest, first creative point well established I can say that all inspiration and thought stems from that source: God.

Was that coherent at all?  I’m not sure.

I watched ADAPTATION tonight for the first time and my brain immediately went to the way it’s wired and why.  So, I guess that’s an explanation of who I am and how I think.  I guess.  Some train, huh?