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Baby's in black, and I'm feeling blue.
May. 12th, 2005 11:26 amI've been having bad dreams the past several nights. Nothing worth writing down, mostly old kludges of school anxiety dreams and travel anxiety dreams and a sort of general, low-grade unpleasantness. (I hate dreaming about menstruation.) Mostly it just means that I wake up tired and predisposed to defeat.
If I get my thousand words today, The Emperor of the Elflands will crack 50,000 words. I may also finish Part Two, depending on how much more stuff this scene thinks it needs.
And I know, roughly, the plot for Part Three. Although the book is disconcerting me by insisting it wants to switch viewpoint characters. After 50k of tight third on one protagonist, I'm not entirely sure I believe my backbrain when it tells me earnestly that switching to tight third on a new character is a good idea. But I'm also not sure there's any other way to accomplish what I want.
Burn that bridge when you get there, sunshine.
The Beatles have moved into my head, and they don't seem interested in moving out anytime soon.
Picked up Swamp Thing: Dark Genesis at the used bookstore on Tuesday (Wein and Wrightson [dunno what's up with the final "e" in "Bernie"--I've always seen it spelled "Berni," but the official-website-with-an-e is clearly for the same guy]: Swamp Thing's original appearance and the first ten issues of Swamp Thing). It's mostly interesting as a period piece, and to throw into sharp relief what an amazing writer Alan Moore is. The dialogue is dreadful: "Oh, look--a secret cave! We can hide there and the bad men will never find us!" (And they don't, either.) And the narration has that sort of Pericles Gower Show AND Tell vibe going on, where words and pictures are conveying exactly the same information. (Scott McCloud has things to say about this, iirc, in Understanding Comics.) Also? Overwritten. "The moss-encrusted man-brute" has a distinct kinship to Ursula K. Le Guin's favorite "saurian ooze from whence it sprung." Why use one adjective when you can use two? Or three? Or ten?
I turned immediately from Dark Genesis to Saga of the Swamp Thing (and Steve Bissette and John Totleben also deserve major kudos, as does Tatjana Wood, who was the colorist for both the Wein/Wrightson and the Moore/Bissette/Totleben Swamp Things), and it's like vodka after bad cherry liqueur chocolates. (Apologies to those of you for whom the simile does not work because you don't like vodka. What I mean is it's sharp and clear and cold and it cleans out the lingering over-sweet rottedness of what came before. [And, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shewhomust points out in the comments thread below, it has a hell of a kick.]) Moore knows what words are for in comic books. And he knows the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
If I get my thousand words today, The Emperor of the Elflands will crack 50,000 words. I may also finish Part Two, depending on how much more stuff this scene thinks it needs.
And I know, roughly, the plot for Part Three. Although the book is disconcerting me by insisting it wants to switch viewpoint characters. After 50k of tight third on one protagonist, I'm not entirely sure I believe my backbrain when it tells me earnestly that switching to tight third on a new character is a good idea. But I'm also not sure there's any other way to accomplish what I want.
Burn that bridge when you get there, sunshine.
The Beatles have moved into my head, and they don't seem interested in moving out anytime soon.
Picked up Swamp Thing: Dark Genesis at the used bookstore on Tuesday (Wein and Wrightson [dunno what's up with the final "e" in "Bernie"--I've always seen it spelled "Berni," but the official-website-with-an-e is clearly for the same guy]: Swamp Thing's original appearance and the first ten issues of Swamp Thing). It's mostly interesting as a period piece, and to throw into sharp relief what an amazing writer Alan Moore is. The dialogue is dreadful: "Oh, look--a secret cave! We can hide there and the bad men will never find us!" (And they don't, either.) And the narration has that sort of Pericles Gower Show AND Tell vibe going on, where words and pictures are conveying exactly the same information. (Scott McCloud has things to say about this, iirc, in Understanding Comics.) Also? Overwritten. "The moss-encrusted man-brute" has a distinct kinship to Ursula K. Le Guin's favorite "saurian ooze from whence it sprung." Why use one adjective when you can use two? Or three? Or ten?
I turned immediately from Dark Genesis to Saga of the Swamp Thing (and Steve Bissette and John Totleben also deserve major kudos, as does Tatjana Wood, who was the colorist for both the Wein/Wrightson and the Moore/Bissette/Totleben Swamp Things), and it's like vodka after bad cherry liqueur chocolates. (Apologies to those of you for whom the simile does not work because you don't like vodka. What I mean is it's sharp and clear and cold and it cleans out the lingering over-sweet rottedness of what came before. [And, as
shewhomust points out in the comments thread below, it has a hell of a kick.]) Moore knows what words are for in comic books. And he knows the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
