The poetics of comic book narratives are indelibly bound to the page. Each issue of a 24 page comic will contain twenty-four pages of narrative, give or take a few spaces for advertising. Which means a smart comic book writer is always thinking about layout and using pages to generate effect–pitch this sequence across two […]
Interesting thing about putting a Now Page on the internet: you’ll put up things that are very much a work-in-progress line of half-baked thinking up there, and people in other timezones will will prod you for more information before you’ve had your morning coffee. At which point you will need an extra three shots of […]
Earlier this week I launched a Now Page, based on an idea put forward by Derek Sivers about including pages about what you’re focused on right now alongside the customary About and Contact pages. Most websites have a link that says “about”. It goes to a page that tells you something about the background of […]
I posted this to Facebook on Sunday, when I was still twitchy as fuck about everything that happened. Now I’m revisiting it, 48 hours later, because this shit has derailed things pretty badly on the writing front, given the way it spiked my anxiety.. The story begins like this: our local pharmacy was out of […]
LOCATION: Windsor, Brisbane, Australia. RIGHT NOW I’M FEELING Pent up and restless, generating ideas faster than my writing process can keep up. About 55% of optimal. Satisfied that I’ve had more good writing days than bad over the last week. CURRENT INBOX: 11 (plus 3 outstanding emails I need to send) WORKING ON Hacking together […]
Years ago, when I first discovered Tumblr, I’d intended to use it as a public dumping ground for research links and images I might want to use later. Resurrecting the idea here, since virtually nobody comes to blogs anymore, but the folks that do probably share my obsession with seeing how ideas manifest some five […]
It’s been about five years since I last did a serious scouring of my RSS feeds, which means a lot of the regular incoming information is largely focused on topics that were of interest to me from 2010 to 2015. Things have changed since then, and the signal to noise ratio is becoming a little […]
One question I keep coming back to right now is “what does it mean to approach the pandemic in a calm way, as an artist? How do we play it smart?” Because calm is going to be a valuable commodity for the next few months, as writers and artists of every stripe pivot and adapt. […]
A few years back I went through a bad time, psychologically speaking, and my doctor quietly pointed out my tendencies towards depression and anxiety, then suggested a series of treatments that might get me back on an even keel. We cycled through the usual suite of pharmaceutical treatments, discovered I had an adverse reaction to […]
Via the often excellent Grant Watson on Facebook: Honestly, this is the most interested I’ve ever been in Kubrick’s work.
Back in the old days, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and WiFi hadn’t yet migrated to phones, blogging used to feel like the first step of an interactive process. You’d post something, and other folks would respond on their blogs, setting up a slow moving conversation as other folks joined in on their blogs. Interactivity […]
Right, then. Tuesday. It is Tuesday, yes? The weirdness is setting in. I’m sitting in my flat pondering ways to break every rule I know about publishing, and marvelling at the fact I’m coaxing folks to come along for the ride. My inbox is filled with freshly signed contracts, my messenger services filled with chats […]
