A good year

I was catching up with two of my favorite coworkers at our work get-together, and I was telling them about the writing things that I was doing. I hadn’t even started the music reviews yet, but I was blogging daily, with all three blogs active, and I was starting to post the comic book and working on the new script.

Part of what makes them favorites is that when I finished by saying, “I know it sounds lame, but I’m creatively fulfilled so there’s that,” they totally got it, and did not think I was lame.

That’s pretty much what the last year has been about. I didn’t recognize what was happening at the time, and I don’t have exact dates. Sure, now I know the exact release date of Kids in the Street, but I did not realize that’s what was going on when the main All-American Rejects account was tweeting questions about videos and promoting it. By the time I was at their concert, I understood that they were promoting a new album, but I caught on slowly. Still, it was writing about that concert that paved the way for me to review bands, and it was important. (And it was a good show!)

I also can’t give you the exact date that I got obsessed with My Chemical Romance. I know it was after Valentine’s Day, I believe I ordered the four CDs in March, and my records seem to indicate that I had 19 pages of the comic book written around April 8^th. However, I can tell you the exact date that the band broke up, and that four days later I posted the last chapter of the comic book. This is the first Wednesday that I haven’t had anything new up since December.

So, there are some elements of goodbye here, and I’m going to try and make sense of that.

The first thing that I need to express is a lot of gratitude. I started writing again, and I’m a better writer. I’m more diligent. I gave up the video games to do it, which I needed to do. The material took such a hold of me that I would work a full day, and come home and write 13-15 pages some days, and that was a level of productivity that was completely new to me. In the past, my record was almost 30 pages on one Saturday, and then I didn’t write for a week because I burned myself out. This was a change.

I am better at naming characters now. That may sound minor, but I would spend so much time agonizing over it, and now, you know, write something with over 50 characters in it, and you get a fair amount of practice. So, when I had new dreams, even though I am not doing anything with them yet, the crack shot girl in the Old West mining camp instantly became Kate, and the hard luck girl in Toronto who stepped in to stop the DA from getting kidnapped and found herself facing a gun became Holly. As they got names, their hair color and personalities and clothing and backgrounds all became more clear, so maybe I am just better at characters.

I am also better at physical descriptions, kind of. I still get distracted from them. I decided at one point to go through and figure out everyone’s look, including what they were wearing, and capture that. I kept writing about their background and personality instead, and then remembering and tacking on a physical description. Still, I can do it.

I understand better what needs to go in to make compelling reading for a screenplay, and probably what can be missed.

Also, it’s just a richer world. There is more music, and more friends, and more color. The Rejects are a big part of that, and Twitter is a big part of that, but a huge amount of thanks goes the MCR. So, how am I doing in light of their breakup? It’s the end of the band as we know it, and I feel fine.

There are some twinges. That hope that maybe I could see them in December is a bit of a long shot now. However, the music is still there. The people are still there. You know what happened when I realized I loved the Ramones and the Clash? Death! Lots and lots of death. A breakup is considerably better. A lot of the kids are really upset, but part of being older is gaining perspective (at least if you’re doing it right), and really, this is okay, and this isn’t about me.

Plus, I did just finish killing off everyone but Frank, though, of course, it wasn’t really them. Actually, that was one of the things that came out with all of the Twitter mourning. Someone was complaining about people calling Gerard “Gee” because no one really calls him that. Well, that was embarrassing, because I had seen it enough that it felt right, and so in the comic book everyone calls him Gee. After the initial shame, I decided I was good with that, though, because it was another differentiation. It’s like making him Gerard White instead of Gerard Way. I didn’t want it to feel too close, so I guess this helps.

For mourning there, well, when I was done writing it I started posting it, and now that is finished I will start drawing it, so there is no end yet, and next week I will write about comic books.

Otherwise, I have an important point here that I am going to have a hard time expressing right. A big part of writing it for me was dealing with the things that are awful that you can’t help, and relationships and pain. Writing it did help, and it culminated in a way that I can’t even tell you if the ending is happy or sad. It’s both, and it’s what it needed to be.

The poetry fragment I ended with may give the best way to feel about life, and death, and getting attached, and even your favorite band breaking up before you got to see them live.

“Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

          We will grieve not, rather find

          Strength in what remains behind;

          In the primal sympathy

          Which having been must ever be;”

From Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

             by William Wordsworth