What Readers Ought To Know About What Writers Ought To Know About Die Hard

Every December, around this time, my blog goes a little crazy as folks discover the What Writers Out To Know About Die Hard series of posts and start asking particularly sensible questions like, “wait, we’re only halfway through, were’s the rest of the series?” and “so you’re going to finish writing this, right?”

And much as I always nod and promise I’ll get back to it one day, the odds of it making it to the top of my to-do list have always been low for a couple of complex reasons, most of which I fell into the habit of not talking about in public. So, with that in mind, here’s the current state of play:

1. I wrote these back in 2013/2014, when I wasn’t in the best of physical or emotional health. They were powered by a clinging-on-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth energy that fueled all my writing at the time, trying to bang things out before my sleep condition left me falling asleep at the keyboard and filling the page with the same letter. I reacted a lot, rather than planning next steps, and dug holes without figuring out how to get out of them. It’s…hard…to touch upon that mindset again.
2. Writing an entry is a huge amount of work. Each post averages about five thousand words, and takes about two days to produce while I do the close reading of the film. I’ve spent more time engaging in close analysis of Die Hard than any book or series I’ve looked at for my PhD thesis, which is saying something. I’ve spent more time analysing Die Hard than I’ve spent editing short novels, and technically this writing thing is how I make my living. And while I was single and employed, back when I started this series, I now have a partner and a freelance career, neither of which affords me the space to spend two days futzing about with the DVD player logging time codes.
3. The internet moved on and blogging holds less appeal. I pulled back on blogging because it often involved working three times harder for half the readership I got back in 2013, which changes the math of how will I spend my limited writing and promotion time? Especially when you have less time to devote to maintaining an online presence, and more need to get paid for your writing because your job situation (and mortgage) is different.
4. My opinions on the film/theory have evolved over the last few years. The version of this series I’d write here in 2020 is different to the version I started in 2013. I’ve got another 7 years of thinking about writing and structure under my belt, and there are different aspects of the film that resonate with me. For example, I’ve got 3,000 words of Part Four written, and it covers about eight minutes of the film and it’s use of microstructure in a sequence, rather than the rest of the second act.

Add in a bunch of little things, like moving from the DVD player with easily accessed time-codes and fine-tuned pause-rewind-fast-forward controls to streaming services that don’t regard such things as necessary, and finishing the series is a shit-ton of work that starts with updating and re-writing parts one through three, then producing a word-count roughly equivalent to writing a new Keith Murphy book (or a time equivalent roughly equal to editing about 3 or 4 new books for Brain Jar Press). Given that writing and publishing are how I pay my bills, rather than collecting a steady paycheck as I did back in 2013, the math never works out in Die Hard‘s favour.

Every now and then I toss around the idea of just writing it as a book, because I suspect the only way of justifying the project is attaching a dollar value to it, but that would make the series a whole different beast. I’ve considered doing it as a Patreon project, but I’m always wary of Patreon’s tendency to silo content.

But I do like doing this analysis. I keep circling around the film and making notes and meaning to get back to it, and after seven years I’m rather open to the idea of crossing it off my to-do list.

So here’s my current thinking:

• Re-start the series in 2021, kicking off with a polish and revision of the first three posts. It’s not happening prior to that because, frankly, I’m watching it with my partner on Christmas day and I’d rather not do that with six prior viewings in my head 🙂
• I’ll chuck my PayPal tipjar at the bottom of every post. I won’t require people to donate to access content, but if there’s a chance the series will buy me a cup of coffee every now and then, it’ll give me some motivation to do it as my “free time” writing instead of producing pro-wrestling fanfic.
  • Heck, at this point, even just semi-regular comments would probably help push the series up the to-do list. I basically started thinking about this because Kelly Link nudged me on twitter 🙂
• Once it’s done, I’ll compile a free, downloadable zine version. Because, frankly, I’ve just kicked off a whole series of chapbooks for Brain Jar Press under theory that “blogs are horrible way to archive good content,” and trying to source all my old posts gave me a mild ulcer.

Anyway, if you’re keen to see the series continue, let me know your thoughts in the comments.