Hey guys, Ben here!
Some weeks aren’t fun and games. Some weeks punch you in the balls. This week, we lost a loved one and this one hit us hard. Thanks for bearing with us.
But we’re coming back hard(er)core this week with a full slate of items for you.
Monday the Beatdown hits (you're reading it) and we should have our technical difficulties taken care of so we’ll get back to the VLOG’ing that we’ve come to love. In this VLOG, I'm going to talk a little bit about our video plans (more below). All of this is in broad, generic terms, but it should be a fun video to watch. It should be up in the afternoon.
Tuesday you get more Blackjack Messiah. In the aftermath to the Point Nemo attack, Blackjack's mending from the nasty wound he got, and trying to put together a plan that will keep him off the shelf. This of course goes against the efforts of Superdynamic, one of his few supporters.
Wednesday I’ll write another crazy post and I might have the some Trevor scenes for the folks in the Insider's Club. If you read the near 200 pages of Trevor that we have so far, you know there's some holes. Well, guess what I'm going to be working on, starting Monday?
Thursday we get the next installment of Patriots and Tyrants. In this part, we finally get to meet the heroine of our story, Adrienne Simms. She's a former DIA JSOC adjunct who is no freelancing for an old commander on behalf of a DOJ investigation into former CIA officers gone black. This one in particular, Willie Marquez, is a bunch of laughs - especially with his plans to start wars all over the world. Willie makes Dick Cheney look like a bad tic-tac-toe player.
Friday the plan is to have another VLOG and maybe our first Unreliable Narrators podcast. Josh is coming back with a vengeance, so we might try to get it down on tape. Oh, and I might have some behind the scenes stuff in the VLOG of my first attempt to do video in 13 years. It should be pretty embarrassing.
There’s more, though, in the form of a not-so-big announcement.
All this playing around with lights and cameras and lenses has done something to me – the sleeper has awakened. I come from a production background – I quit the business about a decade ago to concentrate on my kid and my writing. But now I think I’m back.
Tech is cheaper, more mobile, and you don’t need a $5k computer to run Premiere or a $120k Avid to edit decent videos. My experiences of the past couple of weeks has given me a direction – that I’ll be talking about more in the coming days. Basically, I’m bringing back my old production studio and we’re going to start making short films (with the end goal of doing a series or something longform).
More info to come. Right now, my head is buzzing with ideas - and yes, a Blackjack series is what I'm talking about.
Where my progress on (INSERT BOOK TITLE HERE)?
Nothing. This week I wrote about 6k words, which is about half my pace, and most of that stuff was rewriting old junk that made no sense. I admit it, my first draft is sort of like a 0.5 draft sometimes. There’s days I’m not feeling it, but I push myself and do it anyway – and it’s basically crap that comes out. Not the usual crap, too, but crappy crap. The stuff that you just toss aside and rewrite from scratch. That was this week – the clean up.
I finished B4, with all that’s left is a list of changes and edits and it’s kind of a weird feeling. It’s like when we had our daughter: that first night everyone told us to give the kid to the nurses – so we could sleep. We did it, and I’ve always regretted it. My baby was done, now I wanted to spend time with her.
That’s not exactly like what I’m going through, but it’s a post-finished draft thing that is getting worse and worse with each book. After Pats, I spent a full month like a drunk, wandering the streets. It’s a fog, where all you’re thinking about is one thing, then that thing is gone. I’m trying to pivot hard, but all the other projects I have aren’t calling to me.
I still have my edit list, and I’m going through it methodically, but it’s not the same. Editing and writing are two different animals.
So what are you going to do?
I’m tempted to write a short work in the meantime. Maybe the first little bit of the next project. What I should do is pivot to Trevor. We have almost 200 pages of that, and it’s just the first act. Within those two pages are several gaps that I need to fill – so there’s stuff I can start writing now. To go on, I would need to start plotting the second act – which is the Hogwarts part – and I’m frankly a little intimidated by what’s to come. I have a bunch of characters in my head, and I have the essence of what happens, but I don’t have the basic plot. And the third act is kind of a blur. I’m scared to move into something unless I have a clear path forward.
The same with B5. I have the first scene in my head already – easy peasy. Then I know what happens after that, and I have a villain in my head (inspired by some of the ideas you guys shared with me in the blog) and an overall character arc and story, but it’s a shred of an idea. A wisp in the wind.
Maybe that’s it. Since I don’t have a project with a solid plot, I’m waffling a little. You know what that means, right? Time to ask you guys for help!
Looks like I’m going to hit some Trevor. I posted what I’ve got so far on Patreon in case you want to take a look. It’s 0.5 draft stuff, so beware. But yeah, maybe close the gaps and start on the school stuff. I can’t wait to introduce Aeryn Worley and Kemper Valerian...
What I watched on TV last week?
Finished Collateral with the wife and we’re up to date on The Alienist and Agents of Shield. Collateral is a pretty decent British series on Netflix that’s kind of on point with regards to the immigration issues they’re dealing with. It has problems that it kind of beats you over the head a little, but the acting is great and overall it’s good.
The Alienist is a sublime work that’s on TNT at the moment. I can’t suggest it more. Daniel Bruhl deserves some sort of award for it. In fact, we’ll give him one:
“And for best goddamn actor in the Blackjack Kickass Awards…DANIEL BRUHL!”
It’s no secret that I loved him in Civil War, and now he’s cemented himself as a top-notch actor in my book. Luke Evans is at his usual best as is Dakota Fanning, rounding out an excellent cast. If you’re into police procedural dramas, I highly recommend it.
Agents of Shield…gosh, if you’re not watching this then there’s something wrong with you.
What I’m watching on TV this week?
I need to finish Altered Carbon and if I ever expect to regain my daughter’s love, I have to hit up Gravity Falls and Steven Universe. I. WILL. NOT. FAIL!
Favorite Quote of the Week
"I’m back!” - Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first words after waking from an emergency open heart surgery.
Surprise Movie of the Week
Love, Simon. Wow, what a movie. It’s not terribly subtle, but it’s not supposed to be. It’s trying to be a Pretty in Pink for a new generation. Nick Robinson was excellent - and I thought nothing of him after Jurassic World. My kid dragged me, kicking and screaming to see it, and I walked out of it wiping away a bucket-full of tears.
Also, Tomb Raider. Yeah, it’s not Black Panther. It needed a serious rewrite/polish at the hands of my bud, Joshua, and some of the acting was a bit flat - I’m looking at you Goggins. Same with Dominic West. Seems like the senior Croft was written by someone that’s either never had a father or never been a father. PEOPLE DON’T TALK LIKE THAT, DUDE. But Alicia Vikander is just mesmerizing and I kept wanting to see more of Daniel Wu. Am I an idiot for discovering him only now? It was fun, and not Michael Bay/mindless fun. Really, really fun.
Ready, Player One. Man, I can’t wait. I know, I know - Spielberg’s got a few missteps of late, but the reviews are great so far. I’ll give you guys a full review with this post.
Okay, I’ll tell you...really good. A bit by the numbers, but it's fun from beginning to end and more like Jurassic Park than I care to admit.
Cyclops is pretty good, and he has his "stare into the near distance" thing going - a requirement for any Spielberg movie. Olivia Cooke is also pretty special in this. Someone to keep an eye on in the future. The rest of the cast is kind of forgettable - including Simon Pegg.
The effects and the action sequences are great, sure, but they suffer from something that's plaguing a lot of modern CGI movies - too much on screen at once. Too busy, too much crap to keep track of, and that's a particular failing of this movie. See, it's replete with pop culture references, to the point that sometimes you don't follow the narrative because you're geeking out about Iron Giant, or Tracer, or, or, or...
Someone needs to get the message to Hollywood to tone it down a bit - yeah, that's going to happen.
Also, there's a darker narrative that's not-so between the lines; it's a repudiation of all that pop culture that it seems to embrace. Spielberg's not terribly subtle here either - he makes the third act the antithesis of the first two. It's a good argument that needs to be made - are we letting our world fall apart while we spend all our time on Facebook and Twitter - but Spielberg uses a cudgel when he should have used a scalpel.
All in all, I really enjoyed it. It's worth every cent and it's the kind of movie that's best viewed in the big screen. "Spectacle Spielberg" is at his best here and if you've been alive the past 20 years (or 30 or 40), I doubt this will be a movie you won't have fun with.
Guy who I’d cast as Cool Hand Luke:
Sam Rockwell. Hell, I’d cast the guy as anything in anything. He can be Apogee if he really, really wants to. I mean, give the dude a push-up bra and a domino mask and he’d be good, right? I gotta break out the Photoshop...
Thing I’m only willing to admit because of Love, Simon
In the spirit of the movie, I’m going to come out with something. Something I haven’t admitted to anyone as of yet:
I love that Graham Norton show, Kitchen Nightmares. It’s more than love - it’s a fascination. And it’s a sick one, I admit. If you’ve ever seen it, then you’re as horrified as I am about how some of these places run their business, and how poor their health practices are. Everytime I go to a restaurant and feel sick afterwards, I know. That place is a Kitchen Nightmare.
Makes you want to cook at home...
The first draft is called the vomit draft for a reason. It’s supposed to suck. You don’t publish that, you barely even let people near it. One of the things I see often on Reddit and in all the blogs I visit is other writers suffering from the anxiety of getting something decent on paper. They’re so worried it’s going to suck that they never finish the page, re-writing and re-writing until they basically going in circles.
Well, that’s not how this thing works. You know how when you build a plane, first you have to draw the designs? Then you have revisions then you start making the parts and finally you can put them together. Well, writing is the same as making an airplane, or a building. You don’t put the flag on the top of the building on day one.
Writing is re-writing and you’re crazy if you expect your first draft to be killer. Faulkner re-wrote, Dostoevski re-wrote. Hell, Shakespeare re-wrote. And you think you’re better? No, of course not. Anxiety about the first stuff you put on the page is fine, overcome it, get past it. Keep going. When you’re done with the book, that’s when the real work starts.
Time will make you a better writer, and as you get more and more pages under your belt, your first draft will start getting better and better. Ask my editor, Josh - he'll tell you. The stuff he's working on now is closer to final draft than the stuff from Villain. But it's not perfect, final draft stuff. No one accomplishes that. Not Stephen King.
See, King's written countless books and screenplays and short stories...and and and...so his stuff comes out much closer to finalized. He prides himself that his first draft work is so good.
But how many books have you written? Yeah, not as many. So write and don't bother editing until you're done. Don't edit anything. Don't even fix your spelling errors.
Another thing, as you progress with the story you'll have natural changes that affect the earlier parts of your novel. DON'T GO BACK AND FIX IT. Write yourself notes, write a book of notes, but don't touch what you've written.
Not until the book/story is done.
About all the production talk above…
I’m 100% serious. I’ve already sent out feelers to some of my nearest friends, two of which are all hot for this idea. One of them, Jeff Oberg, is a chef and wants to start a cooking show. I’ve eaten his food, and had him help me while I was cooking something, and I can tell you that his show would be spectacular. Well, I’m going to assist him in whatever productorial capacity I can.
My plan is to start small. In the years since I’ve shot and edited anything, technology has taken leaps and bounds. Steven Soderberg’s latest movie was shot on an iPhone! So my idea is to return to my 12 year-old self and start from scratch. Back then I would shoot silly ninja movies with my cousins, editing in-camera. Likewise, I’ll start small and build from there. The end goal would look something like a YouTube series, or a full-length feature. And yeah, Blackjack...something Blackjack.
