Urbanmythic is alive!

Hi all,

As many of you know, I've been teaching a writing course lately in Hepburn Springs. It's called The Story Suite (more info at http://www.thestorysuite.com) and it'll all start again in term 1, 2015.

Further to that, there'll be a range of other classes on offer from Jen and myself.

Check back here for more info about what we're teaching and all the other events we're involved with (there's lots of them!)

The Wedding Present in Melbourne

Ah joy. We saw The Wedding Present in Melbourne two nights ago. They played their Hit Parade singles and a few more tracks besides. Here's their set list (wonderfully grasped from the stage by Mrs Seahawkeye):

The great man David Gedge himself:

We were right up the front. Rudely, gloriously front row. Here's my big head in the way, in a state of sublime joy as Mr Gedge waxed eloquent mere metres away:
Toward the end of the gig Dave stopped to pull some lyrics from his back pocket. Seems he just can't always remember all the words for No Christmas. Now this is a track I adore but I've never been able to understand all the words he sings in it so softly. He was extraordinarily obliging after the gig when I asked if I could have a look for myself ...

Thank god they've come to Australia so I can finally see them live. Been a fan for 24 years but after seeing them live the last 2 years I feel like I'm almost family.

Y’know what’s weird? Friends Who Become Successful.

Y’know what’s weird? When you and a bunch of your not-successful old friends get invited to a dinner party by an old friend who’s become famous, and the night is pleasant enough, but as some of your old non-famous friends leave you notice that your now-famous friend is listing their character failings the moment they’re out the door.

And you realise that this pattern is repeating, and the moment you go the remaining guests are going to discover exactly why you’re a failure too.

And you then understand that the dinner party was never about friendship, but rather a chance for your successful friend and the old friends she considers acceptable to define exactly how good they are, using everyone else as a measure of how bad they could be and how far they’ve come.

And you grit your teeth and back away, knowing that even a hint of discontent is going to be read as an inability to cope with the frustration of being around old friends who make it, and are thus perfect, unlike you.

So you wave goodbye and say thanks, thanks because you know you’ve learned something sadly and horribly valuable. You even say cheerio to the wannabes who you know are a whole different kettle of fucked to your famous friend, and being judged inferior by them is beyond anything you can cope with considering you didn’t drink that much cos you’re driving a long long way away.

And as you drive away you don’t look back and you find you can now wretch in a way that produces no bile but feels even worse than puking up your guts.

And you decide then and there to embrace your procrastination and your psychological problems, and you even decide to forgive your friend for telling you that of course she can’t follow you on twitter because people look at that stuff and there are standards to be maintained (srsly).

And it goes well for a couple of months until one day you decide to put this shit on the interwubs in the hope that by neatly pruning the past some new blooms might grow in the future (but you secretly fear you’re lobotomising the past and reducing the future to nothing but drooling obscurity and longwinded dissections of minutia you’re better off putting in a little box labled This Is Why I’m So Fucked).

And what's going to happen next? What do you want to happen next? You don't know, any more than you know how you got here to Nowheresville in the first place. But at least you know that you genuinely like the people you invite into your house, and hey, you can list character failings in loving, pseudo-affectionate terms too.

That's what I find weird anyway.

Testing, 1, 2, 1, 2

Right. Just looking around here again after a bit of a break. Carry on, nothing to see.

And then

I wrote that last piece less than 2 weeks before my mum died. It's from a different universe.

Right now I'm preparing for a long-awaited, long-destined trip to Seattle. Six more sleeps! Can't wait, and also can't quite believe it.

It's been a bizarre, horrible, wonderful, difficult year so far. Much of it's a blur, and yet I feel I'm only truly *here* for the first time in forever.

Now to the next bit.

Taking Ames

So it’s a Monday morning and I’m at work. For me, work is the office, the office is the bank, the bank is my desk, my desk is a ball and chain. If I had my shit together and was writing professionally I suspect my desk would still be a ball and chain. When I wrote for TV my computer didn’t magically transform into a tool of enthusiasm, support, hope, love and empowerment. It still teased and tormented me. So I can survive here at my bank-office-desk because I know all the problems are in my head.

I hope you skipped that paragraph. It was boring. It’s Monday morning!

Here’s a more interesting one. I just did a little tweet about Bored To Death, a clever, amusing but often-frustrating HBO comedy-thingie written by Jonathan Ames. My tweet was critical of the show’s portrayal of women. I wrote:

6 episodes into season 1 of #BoredToDeath and not one realistic, sympathetic woman yet. All clichés. Killing the fun, @JonathanAmes

And a few moments later @JonathanAmes replied:

sorry! i suck. i'll try to do better in the future.

Hmmm. @JonathanAmes is followed by 14,720 people. This is the man.

My first impulse was to feel bad. Writer to writer, nothing sucks like criticism (well, maybe stab wounds).

Now, you might be thinking ‘Even if this IS the real Jonathan Ames, he’s not really sorry! He’s jerking your chain!’ You know, you might be right. But you’re not, you’re wrong. It’s more complicated than that.

Now, of course he’s not really sorry. He’s virtually single-handedly writing a HBO series of his own design and style: HE IS LIVING THE DREAM! He’s not sorry. And the words ‘I suck’ are melodramatic, passive-aggressive and almost twee. He knows he doesn’t suck. He rocks and he knows it.

But he’s a writer - a sensitive human being - and if criticism stings him even 10% as much as it stings me there’s an element of pain in his reply.

As I said, my first impulse was to feel bad. I started to write something consoling, because real professional writers apparently need hugs from aspiring nobody writers when the going gets rough. We all need hugs, dammit.

Then I looked around my desk, my office, my life as a 42-year-old pseudo-writer and realised that *I* need the hug. ME! I need a hug, a huge hug from all the professional writers out there fulfilling themselves at their desks of wonder. And I need a slap, a hard slap. And a good talking-to. Same as him.

So I replied:

@JonathanAmes Yes, do better. You're a great writer. Just disappointing yr women lack the complexity, inner-turmoil & play of the men

Which is the truth. If you’re going to sting someone, you might as well do it as honestly and precisely as you possibly can.

And now the tables turn. I will finish this train of thought and return to office work, bank work, for the rest of the day.

It’s my slap. My daily talking-to. Slap slap slap. Bad writer!

And tonight I’ll watch the Oscars. Slap! Bad!

And tomorrow I’ll be back here. Slap slap!

But somehow I’ll do better in the future.

Found found found

Okay, we were talking about narrative and structure and shit. And then things happened in my personal life and now I suddenly find I’m midway through plotting a cracking yarn which frequently makes me giggle with glee. How did that happen?? Well, the first thing you should know is It Was A Miracle. Ok, no it wasn’t. But it feels like it.

Rummaging through my sick mother’s DVD collection (well she’s not watching ‘em) I found a film on a topic I like. Not a clever film, but relevant to my soul, and also free. So we watch the film and I get inspired, not with a new plot or anything, but inspired to take Christopher Vogler’s screenwriting book off the shelf. That’s a big step right now.

So I read a little Vogler and think “let’s brainstorm something”. It helps that I have a rough outline for a story in the same genre as the movie we watched, so it’s kinda fun to line up the story-beats with his 12 steps. I figure this is a good way to map out some brand new stories to the steps, but it takes so long to get the rough outline written up that there’s no time for anything else. That night. And that’s it for a while.

Then something magickal happens. Now, it’s worth you knowing that my ‘rough outline for a story’ is a true historical tale which I’d researched to death and just couldn’t sort out. So I have a character, this guy, living in my head somewhat but trapped in the sorry prison of his own post-destined life. Hanging out, bored, with about 100 other characters who do little more than punch me from the inside at regular momentary intervals.

Anyway, I’m driving along a highway and a different, younger version of this real historical figure wanders into a room and there’s someone in the room. And she says something - she says three quick sentences. And suddenly I know her like I’ve known her all my life. And he’s free from his history, reborn into a whole new life I see stretching out before us, all three of us. It’s so clear that I can’t unsee it, it’s simply happening everywhere around me.

I get where I’m going and quickly fill eight pages with dialogue, action, other characters and weird, open-ended references I don’t understand. At that point I’m just the scribe, the person nearby with a pen. I’m sure I speak for all writers when I say THIS IS WHY WE DO IT.

That was ten days ago. Since then I’ve recaptured the magick a few times, and also found really satisfying answers when I’ve slept on very precise questions. I didn’t write anything over the last three days – there was nothing new to add. But this morning a whole scene suddenly ended right and then other huge chunks started to make sense.

As you can tell I’m not rushing it. When I rummage around in my subconscious it’s still there, I can feel its pulse. I want to know what happens next but not so desperately I’m going to start just making shit up. I hope, for your sake, you know what I mean.

If not, it’s possibly as simple as this: I’m only writing down words I’ve heard in my head. I think it, then I write it. I don’t let my hand just jot down any old nonsense. I’ve got books full of unthoughtthrough halfideas. No more.

And that’s where I’m going to stop. Stop! Said enough for now. Glean from this what you may, and gather rosebuds, and do what you wilt, and whatever. Love.

Writing fever

Ok, the question of the day is How do you plot out a story? That’s the short version. The longer version is more like How do you plot out a story that contains multiple meaningful strands in such a way that it’ll keep you inspired and amused throughout the long process of actually writing it? But that’s a little messy.

Yesterday I briefly mentioned that finding a plot through the act of writing doesn’t really work. Well, for me anyway. I’ve started lots of stories that went nowhere, then spent days, weeks and months coercing them to go somewhere, anywhere. But those set-ups, no matter how personal and meaningful, simply never amount to anything. This really crushes me because the process is supposed to be quasi-magickal, a journey of narrative discovery. My magick doesn’t work that way. Bummer.

Worse still, the more time I’ve spent imagining ‘better’ plots, the deeper those plots have collapsed into a mire of mediocrity. In fact, as each new ‘improvement’ has popped into my head, I’ve found the original spark gets increasingly diluted to the point where the whole project is meaningless. And my initially-sparkling characters look at me from their initially-sparkling premise and shake their disappointed heads, trapped like General Zod & his gang in Superman II.

We don’t necessarily need to talk about characters now as we try to unravel plotting, but yes we do. In a perfect story, the actual story we all want, the characters and the plot are perfectly entwined. You know what I mean, it’s lesson #1. The events of the plot are there to push the characters’ buttons in ways they need to be pushed. Your characters have buttons, the plot pushes them and the audience (remember them, the point of all this) feels something intense and memorable.

Now, how those buttons get pushed is critical too. The audience is smart. The audience has seen it all before. The audience consists of human beings who know how things really are. Even worse, and this is the one I try to keep foremost in my mind, the audience is bored already. Already! They demand (and deserve) lots of great amazing things right now. There’s a million other things out there demanding your audiences’ attention, just as fervently as they demand yours. Your story needs to be good and different and familiar and astonishing all at once. Maybe that happens when you write totally honestly. Maybe not. I’ll leave that with you for now.

So even our most basic lame structure (Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Girl Is A Vampire) actually needs to be something like A Specific Kind of Guy Meets A Particular Girl in A Surprising and Resonant Incident, Boy Loses Girl Due To An Imaginative and Perfectly Appropriate Flaw, Girl Is Revealed To Be A Vampire In Such A Way That Boy and Audience Are Forever Changed. And that’s still keeping it simple.

So, how do we build one of those? And yes, that’s the original question, still unanswered. Hey, if it was easy I’d be off writing right now …

Writing burns

I am writing.

I’m not sure what I’m writing but writing anything at all, even this, seems worthwhile.

I have stories on the go. I have J---- S--- mid-flight and I have S-- B------ on the run. I have S------ and R---- somewhere in space and Christopher, Livia, Candy, Wolfgang et al everywhere at once. I have Westerns and comedies and love and hate and all get-out.

You know what I seem to lack? Actual stories. An actual story, like a joke, has three steps. Without the three steps, neither a story nor a joke is really worth a toss. You can’t be working on two steps of a joke. You can’t have a joke about two rabbis and an Irishman on the go. You’ve either got all three steps, and maybe you’re tightening it up, or you’ve got nothing whatsoever.

I seem to have dozens of started stories, which collectively add up to nothing. In this context, a story as simple as Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Girl Is A Vampire would be something – anything - a winner. Many writers discuss needing an actual story before you begin your writing. Others believe you can find your actual story through the process of writing it. My experience, being the lessons of those things I actually somehow finished, supports the former opinion and pounds the latter opinion into a bloody, pizza-shaped mess.

But I wish it were that simple. Having an actual story isn’t a free pass to a finished work of narrative art. On the contrary, on the fucking contrary, having an actual story also means having a new world of problems. An actual story needs to be done right. An actual story isn’t going to surprise you. An actual story is going to take work and effort and craft and courage and discipline to manifest. An actual story is a pain in the arse.

Say after me: being a writer is a pain in the arse. There’s no escaping that, unless you’re a writer who’s organised and functional and wouldn’t even be reading this in the first place. How do we embrace this pain? How, when the TV is just there and the webtube is just there and look, there’s a bird and that wall could do with some new art. Sure, we can consider the pain a short-term condition leading to long-term improvement in our condition. Good luck with that. I hate to tell you, there’s no guarantee these words are going to lead to anything other than new kinds of heartbreak and frustration you can’t even imagine yet. To live with the pain, you need to be having just a little, just a tiny little smidgeon of fun.

Now, if you know how to keep the fun in your writing process, word after word, time after gut-wrenching time, please share. You are amazing and I must eat your still-beating heart so I can absorb your mysteries. Here on Earth, fun wanes like yesterday’s erections and all that’s left are the one-dimensional characters and their seemed-good-at-the-time predicament, going nowhere just like me. Some parts of the process are fun, I’m sure I remember that, but creating little fun bridges over the chasms of despair between them is just as difficult as … as … damn, lost my concentration for a sec there.

So, in the absense of solving the impossible upfront, I’m going to consider this: if plotting your story’s three steps is a critical part of the process, what’s a good way to get that shit happening? I’m going to consider that as I go home now, then later while I eat my dinner, then again while I’m falling asleep. And hopefully, when I wake up tomorrow, you might have an answer for me.

If AFL Teams Were One Big Family

Mum on speed - Collingwood

Aggro dad - Carlton

Grandpa with pipe - Melbourne

Grandma with bow-legs - Geelong

Evil uncle with dark, locked shed - Essendon

Crazy aunty with skin condition - Richmond

Fun-loving uncle with tears of a clown - W. Bulldogs

Philosophical aunty with gun collection - St Kilda

Creepy girl cousin in black dress - North Melbourne

Obnoxious boy cousin in V8 Turbo ute - Hawthorn

Flighty girl cousin who married a drummer - Sydney

Perplexed boy cousin who can't find happiness - Brisbane

Dad's old girlfriend who thinks she's part of the family - Adelaide

Mum's old boyfriend who wears bling and wants to kiss everyone - West Coast

The senile old guy from up the street who keeps wandering in - Port Adelaide

The stoned kid hiding under the couch we can't convince to leave - Fremantle

The World Computed Thus

Just to clarify a recent comment on Facebook, I'm talking about a universe where everything that everyone does is completely voluntary and unpredetermined, and is simultaneously and instantly significant to everyone else. For this process to apply to two people is rather mind-bending - i.e. I tell you the dream I had last night at the exact moment when you gain the maximum value (meaningfulness) from hearing about it, and so on. Wouldn't that be astonishing for two people?

But imagine if that applied to everyone on the planet. Every life on Earth being instanteously and profoundly meaningful to every other life on Earth. Possible? No way. The calculations are too vast to comprehend, aren't they?

I reckon they're pretty light-weight calculations in the big scheme of things. I meet you because I have to meet you, even though we both got here freely. I heard that song in the shop because the sales assistant picked it at random, but it's the exact song to make me think of you - because it's the right moment to think about you, yet again. All random. All meaningful. Trillions of precise calculations per second interconnecting five billions freefalling lives.

I think this is my definition of magick.

Scriptin', driftin', cruisin', dreamin'

As you know, I'm no longer in the Neighbours story room. Very maturely, I've re-named a room in my home 'The Story Room'. So I can still say "Hmmm, I'm off to the story room!" and mean it. Such a little thing, but the difference it makes ...

What do I do in my story room? I write speculative scripts, which is truly the best fun in the universe (with clothes on)(note to self: try it without clothes on). One day this activity might even make me money - I CAN DREAM. For now I'm still trying to show Neighbours people that I have useful 'talent' (LOL) and shouldn't be forgotten like the 1,000,000 other trainees who strived for a TV career in the Erinsborough deus-sphere.

"I'm not dead yet!" I cry, despite being thrown on the cart.

In other news, I think Battlestar Galactica has just started screening season 4 in the USA. Damn you, Australian networks!

Facebook is interesting! Who'd a thunk it?

Buffy - The Long Way Home (aka season 8, episodes 1-5) is AWESOME! Are you a Buffy fan? And are you reading it? If not - good grief. Go to a comic store and buy it! This first story arc is written by Joss! This is the show! Profound.

Nothing But Red

Today is the day to remember Du'a Khalil. Please follow this link and hug a woman you love.

Lil' Trinkles

* Just found Amanda the Aspiring TV Writer thanks to Jane Espenson. As always, the net is full of yummy reading. I kinda imagined that this blog might cover my Neighbours experience the same way that Amanda dissects Hollywood, but ... it didn't. I couldn't be objective, therefore I couldn't really share anything useful. And as for the juicy ... maybe another day.
* Portsmouth FC are through to the FA Cup final, for the first time since 1939. I've almost completely forgotten about yesterday's Kangaroos/Hawks debacle.
* I've come across 2 references to Joan Crawford's real name being Lucille LeSueur in the last 24 hours. I never previously knew this. The third is gonna weird me out.

Sunk and countersunk

As you might've guessed, I finished my adventure in Erinsborough last week. I've now had seven days away from the heady world of network TV.

There's been tears. Sorrow. Tinges of despair. And, for a change, wailing.

I lie, I haven't cried once. It was all too weird this time around, and until I figure out an intellectual explanation the emotional disappointment isn't quite so cutting. It just remains a huge WTF hovering in my recent past.

The universe is being kind. Little lessons are appearing everywhere, providing an infrastructure of regrowth and evolution. I don't have a job yet, but I'm feeling better about the current abyss.

I'll try to write here more. The adventure gets good now.

No Joking

I'm now three weeks into my four-week reprise tenure as a trainee storyliner on Neighbours and ... good grief ... I'm awful. Worse than just being bad, I find I'm totally humourless. How does that happen to a person?

I used to be witty and sly and irreverent. Didn't I? Fuck, I hope I did. It seems so difficult to remember the jaunt in my step and the song in my heart. In so many ways my life is wonderfully, gloriously happy, and yet ... I'm just a big dour blob at work. I don't know what to do.

Imagining people naked is not good. I'm imagining some people there naked the whole time and it's not relaxing me.

Being happy there lasts me about ten minutes, 'til that thing (whatever it is) grinds me down again.

I can't really complain about the environment there either. Okay, I lie, of course I could complain. But there's nothing to be gained from that. The Neighbours story community has as many positives as negatives, so it's my fault if I get bogged down by the blues. Blaugh.

So I have one week left to lighten up and be brilliant. Tips welcome.

Found

How awesome is Lost right now? Season 4 is zooming along like a fine automobile after its first three episodes, and - bonus - we're getting them just a few days after the US. The best bit of that is the chance to theorise with world. Lost is all about idle speculation, and the wub is the perfect forum for that kind of fun.

I don't know how I lived before I found Lostpedia, but if you want to see the funny side you've gotta visit Ack. Her recaps are almost as good as the show itself. It's a nice world we've made for ourselves here.

Still here ...

Two weeks until I return to Neighbours. Hello weird other universe.

In this particular universe, I had the pleasure of witnessing the arrival of my daughter Drusilla Selene three weeks ago. Random adjectives both predictable and accurate: gorgeous, divine, sublime, profound.

Other things:
- glad the Writers Strike is over, although I hope the outcome is more in line with Howard Gould and less with Harlan Ellison.
- nice work, Giants, wish it could've been my Seahawks.
- new Malkmus album comes with great offer on-line.
- if you're white, middle-class and open-minded, was it enough to simply applaud Kevin Rudd's monumental apology, or did you actually need to cry too? And carry a supportive sign around town? The criers scare me a little more than the ... okay, no-one scares me as much as the Liberals. But still.
- welcome to a world where you get the pleasure of Freak Angels for free. Bask.
- I trust you're watching Skins (SBS, Monday 10pm), the best show out of the UK in ... oh ... forever.
- heard Prince's Purple Rain in a hardware store the other day and had tingles for the whole seven minutes. Yes, I'm a SAD OLD MAN.
- writing is good ... magickal ... critical. Please remind me when I start to question the point of it all.

Still breathing

I'm on a ten-week break from Neighbours for personal reasons, back in the first week of March. They're giving me one month to prove my worth ... the Ides of March, as it were.

As I won't have interesting TV-world updates until then, I probably won't be adding much here (as you might've noticed). If I think of anything I'll let you know. If you think of anything, pester me through Facebook (or email me ... wow, do I sound like a Luddite or what?!).

If you need something to obsess about, think GO SEAHAWKS!

Confessions on a dunce-floor

Traineeship week 9. This is the last week of the script year, and was looking like my last week too. I found out yesterday they want me back for another month next year, a last chance to prove what I’m capable of. This is a good thing. I’m well aware I haven’t found my voice, both in the story room and in terms of my writing, I can think of a dozen reasons why, and I can address them all over the break. This chance is all I need.

Things got tough in my weeks of no-blogging,. I trusted my abilities, but I knew I was becoming more shy and reserved than I’d ever imagined possible. Whatever energy I had to approach people back on day one had dissipated, and I could barely muster the odd hello. I was all introvert – helpful with some aspects of the writing process, but not a place that engenders confidence. I got heavier and slower, sliding deeper into a morass of fear and denial. Abandoning this blog was part of the descent.

So now I’m back. Block by block, piece by piece, rebuilding, restoring, reawakening. Please allow me to introduce myself ...