Category Archives: Writing

First draw

If you’ve been visiting this blog for the past month or so, you would have noticed a sharp upsurge in the number of comics being posted. It’s actually been a long time coming and was somewhat preceded by a frequent appearance of comics on Lablit.com (see the “Published Elsewhere” page). Bottom line, I’ve got a million of these bobbing around in my head and, given time, comics should become fairly regular.

That’s not to say that the other subjects will stop altogether. The blog is meant to be personal and thus reflect little old me as a person; and hopefully, there’s more I have to show for than stickmen with punchlines. Science, philosophy, theology and reviews have brought the blog so far, and I have absolutely no reason to take them out of the mix. But as I’m currently pouring my time into work stuff and my fourth novel (about which at least I am very excited), comics will increase and other stuff might decrease in appearance.

Another idea is to actually build a website dedicated to the comics, which might actually be a good idea for the long run. But that depends on a number of factors, the main one being that I know as much about website-making as my couch knows about salsa dancing. You have any ideas, I’m listening.

So – comics/cartoons/webcomics/strips. Whatever they’re called. I wanted to answer a couple of questions that have popped up.

Q. Are you worried that you’re treating science as a joke?
A. Let’s just say I’m returning the compliment.

Q. What do you use for drawing?
A. A really sophisticated, custom-built piece of software that is dedicated to high-quality design. It’s called PowerPoint. But the hope is that soon I’ll be able to switch to an actual drawing software like SmoothDraw. For this, I need to actually buy and learn how to use a PC drawing tablet-stylus thing, which should speed things up.

Q. Why don’t you just draw with your mouse? I mean, it’s only stickmen.
A. In response, I submit the following image:

I hope that answers your question.

Thanks for all the support everyone! If you like them, pass them on!

Comics

Solomon’s lament

~

And there we stood and watched the world go by
Silent and still, under the morning sky
Under the sun where all things naked pass
And vie to last against the hour glass.
Across the ages, and the lands, across the lives
of men.
But nothing new we saw in future, present, past
No more than passing shadows, struggling to last
We stood and watched and saw the seasons turn and change
And love and hate and toil from age to age
And longing deep and sighing end to end
And wisdom, slow to arrive, slower to thrive, and tardy to the mend
Of little comfort and giving to despair.
The traveller sighed and slowly turned from there
He took my hand, and led me down again
The mountain slope.
And at its foot we parted and each went on his way
“Everything dies” he cried, the last I heard him say.

Plotting

~
OpenOffice.org Writer 1

The Empty Page. Dream or nightmare?

Today I took some time to plot my fourth novel. Personally, I’m not a fan of plotting – I still hold to that romantic idea of just sitting at the keyboard and letting it all flow. Well, guess what: it don’t work that way. Or at least it don’t work for a full novel like that. Because you’re not writing postmodern poetry, you’re writing a novel, which, anyway you twist it, recounts events (fictional or not) in some orderly fashion. And it is that narrative that will affect the “quality” of the end product.

Now, having said all that, I did write my first two novels without plotting a single line. The first was a sci-fi/fantasy epic that took three years to complete. Just a progressive story. About 180,000 words in the first draft, around 167,000 in the second. Wouldn’t exactly show it to anyone until another couple of drafts.

The next one, I just did that whole “flow on the keyboard” thing. Late nights while working all day on my PhD, I was in the right zone to just unfold the story. 70,000 words, what a big literary agent described as a “near-future psychological thriller”. So far, this is novel has brought me as close to getting an agent as I’ve ever been. You can click on the Shark Badge on the sidebar and find out more about it.

Thrid novel, I plotted the whole thing. Came to a point where I just couldn’t trudge along. I spent two straight days writing an elaborate, 3,000-word plot. Then I returned to the actual novel, wrote one phrase – just one – and didn’t follow a single point of my precious plot. Result? Much better – in my opinion – story and message (yes, I fit those in too).

And that’s what I actually like about plotting my novels (I never do it for my short stories). I can stick to it, sure, but the real boon is that, as I write, new ideas unfurl in my mind. Kind of like a mental/creative explosion.

So, advice from an – as yet?- unpublished novelist? Plot it. Before you commit to writing your precious, well-constructed phrases and wordings that the whole world “just has to read” (come on, you know what I’m talking about – we’re all friends here), try plotting it out. Either way, it’ll make for a better novel.

Oh, and I’m still looking for an agent. Hint.

"Lazarus" abridged – and in graphic format!!!

~

After my previous post, I realised that most of you reading this have no idea of what my novel, “Lazarus”, is about. Well, I obviously can’t put the whole thing out here, but I thought that I could condense it for your benefit. And since a picture is a thousand words, I also thought that a graphic format (from my very own finely-hewned artistic dexterity) would be best.

NOTE: Those of you who have read “Lazarus” will find the sketch ridiculous and funny, or ridiculously funny. Those of you who haven’t read it, will find it just ridiculous. And also, you should totally read it.

Click on the image for a larger version.

LAZARUS ABRIDGED (WARNING – SPOILER AHEAD!!!):

Pause

~

Things have changed slightly since I last wrote something that didn’t include my nephew, “funny” answers or mutant ducklings.

Remember how I wrote about that excellent experiment on February 8th? Well, it is March 1st today, and we have been completely unable to repeat it. It looks like some technical issue that we can’t just put our collective lab finger on… so we’re doing what good researchers do in these cases: Buy new stuff.

In other news, I’m still waiting to hear from the agency. Not unexpected really, since the last two agencies that reviewed the novel took 6-8 weeks to come up with a decision, and it’s only been three weeks with this one. Every day I check my pigeonhole to see if there is a big brown envelope with my 216 pages in it (return and possible rejection), but I find nothing. So I wait, work and write; this is my current labour. Oh, and I got a haircut.

That’s it for now. I’ll let you know when things change.