Things I have been getting from the comic book

This could end up being pretty hard to convey. It may not even be necessary—I mean, the writing is my journey, so these things are for me. At the same time, that doesn’t mean that they won’t be good for anyone else.

Remember, starting out I was recently in love with a band, obsessing over a music video, and feeling somewhat depressed about both the sorry state of the world and the persistence of my having to walk it alone. Put that way, it sounds pretty pathetic, but I started writing, as I do.

And I really needed it. I needed to work my way back into writing, and there is always a certain amount of fear with that for me, which I think is a big part of the procrastination. This was low risk, though. At the time, I was sure that I would never try and sell it to anyone or make a dime off of it, so there were no career or aspirational fears, and I was sure I would not put it online, though maybe if friends asked to read it I would let them. (Now I am pretty sure I will put it online, but I don’t know where, and I’ll worry about that when I’m done. And it will be scary, but I’ll do it anyway.)

The first issue that came up—besides some struggling with the action scenes, which I will cover later—was realizing how dark the material was. The odds were so insurmountable, and death was so much a factor, that it felt like the only way you could possibly have any kind of a happy ending was to go all Last Battle, Narnia-style. The problem is that the Narnia series has religious symbolism throughout, so when you have a mega-religious ending, it makes sense. In this case, it wouldn’t.

A lot of writers I like will stay fairly positive with their long fiction, but get really dark in short stories. I have been darker in short form, but this was turning long—much longer than I expected. I initially thought it would maybe be about 120 pages, because that would be a standard script. I’m at 309 now, and I’m guessing it will end up at around 360. I guess it’s a trilogy.

Okay, things were looking dark, but part of why I was drawn to the material was that the world is dark and it was hurting me, so it made sense to sort through that darkness and see what I could find.

The first thing I found was that there was a lot of love there. That includes romantic love, and that’s important, but there was so much more, with familial love, and friendship, and friendships that become family, so that no matter how many people you lose you are not alone, if you will let yourself not be alone.

In my Black History Month reading, I read Black Like Me, and I think I have already mentioned that he talks about the one thing that really gets you through all the hate and persecution and oppression is the small kindnesses that you show each other. It resonated because at some point in the writing a tradition of gift-giving had started, where they were always looking for ways to help each other. I haven’t actually written the scene where it’s explained yet, and I thought it was going to be Otis who says it, but maybe it will have to be Mitch or Jacob, but the point will be that it is a horrible life, and those remembrances are the things that make it better.

You do write things that are true, and you don’t necessarily know that you know them until you write them. I have three favorite things there.

One happens when Natalia is comforting Latron after another death, where the two people he has been the closest two have died within a few weeks of each other. He is a teenage boy, possibly with some anger issues, and certainly some tendencies to be macho, and she says she want’s to hug him, but she’s not sure if he would like that. He does want it, but what if he just gets attached to her, and then she dies too?

“That’s why you need to love as many people as you can.”

And then she and Deanna and Grace all hold him, but the moment does not become too maudling because the other guys are all standing around awkwardly. Then Deanna tells Latron that being male will make his life harder and stupider, which is equally true.

The other scene that kind of surprised me also comes out of comforting Latron. It’s the night before the big push, and he is looking at an old War Memorial and feeling that they will all be dead and forgotten, and Gerard gets the idea to take some spray paint and create their own memorial on an empty wall. Initially it is just them, but every one else joins in, until the wall is covered.

I think the idea actually came from “Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back”. There’s a line in there, “It’s not about all the friends you make, but the graffiti they write on your graves.” The song has a totally different tone from the scene, though there is a transition.

In the start there was a feeling that I had of these internal primal screams where you just want to yell out the name of the person you have lost, especially with Mikey and Ray. You feel like you can’t yell it, because once you unleash that pain who knows where it will go and what it will do, but keeping it in is no good either. Spraying the names becomes a release. It is based in mourning but it becomes celebration, and everyone feels kind of euphoric.

The after effect of that release is that everyone sits around talking and sharing memories. The barriers are down, and they can talk now, and it doesn’t hurt anymore, at least not the same way. It is art, and it is communal, and it is healing.

The other thing came fairly recently, and it has not spawned a scene, but it sort of covers the entire thing. I was thinking about first aid, actually, and emergency preparedness and what to do in certain situations, and the thought clearly came to me, you can’t fix death. The immediate follow up thought was, you don’t need to.

You know, just accomplishing something, and achieving a goal, would feel good anyway, but there’s been a lot more to it than that.