Brand X

Writers will do damn near anything to avoid writing. Every group of professional and semi-pro writers I've ever known agrees that one vital professional skill must be learned: the knack of sitting down and actually writing instead of engaging in vigorous, busy, productive non-writing. It doesn't help that these days we all write on computers, and those computers are connected to the internet. To rephrase an old adage, writing provides a sense of self-satisfaction eventually, but smacking some guy around at length in a comment thread provides self-satisfaction now.

In the writer's conference on the WELL, we used to joke about "burly nurses", personal assistants we all wished we could afford who'd just hold us down in our chairs and stop us going around pretending to do other stuff. A joke, sure, but reread MISERY sometime. Paul Sheldon's trapped in an ungodly nightmare by a burly nurse who forces him to write, but he's also more productive than he's ever been and produces a novel that he genuinely loves and which makes him a ton of dough. Stephen King clearly understands the issue at hand.

Writers don't really know how writing works. We understand a lot of the craft, but there's always that step in the equation labeled "and then a miracle happens" and we hate thinking too much about that step. As I've said before, we're a superstitious and cowardly lot. One of the things we do, being superstitious and cowardly and needing to find a way to work anyway, is we build rituals. Little or big things we do to make that stupid miracle happen, to force our brains to acknowledge "This ain't clean-the-fridge time, this ain't catch-up-on-the-BBC time, this is writing time." Mine is smoking.

I have a small collection of decent but cheap pipes, some antiques, some just well broken in. I have a nice little antique pipe rack/humidor where my pipes are racked efficiently around a well-lined wooden box--I keep the box full of a special blend I get from the best tobacconist in Portland. It's a mix of two of their popular blends, my own special flavor that tastes a little different in each of five different pipes. I love the comforting physical ritual of filling and tamping the pipe, lighting a match or occasionally my Zippo pipe lighter, working the flame around the surface of the tobacco, retamping the layer of fine ash, and keeping the whole affair lit and gently burning (not too hot, but never quite going out) until I knock it clean at the end of a long, relaxing smoke.

Thing is, I only ever do that when I write. I don't smoke on breaks at day jobs, I don't smoke after meals or after sex or watching videos. If I've got my pipe lit, it means I'm writing. The relaxation helps me loosen up enough to let the words flow, but so does a shot of whisky, and I don't reserve whisky just for writing. A nice pipe of tobacco, however, is an unmistakable signal to my brain that we're not doing anything else right now, we're not reading humor columns or surfing for porn, we're not playing with the cats or following more than one Wikipedia link, we're writing. Stupid? Sure, but it works. Rather like a lot of human habits, really.

I know various creative types read this blog, writers and designers and artists and whatnot. I'm curious, what are your rituals? What do you do, if anything, that puts you in the zone when it comes to your creativity? Music, exercise, locale, tools, preambles, rewards, what do you use? Break your customary silence and comment; the results can only be interesting. Besides, writing a nice long comment's a good way to put off work.

Labels: writing

The world got a little crappier today. Rory Root died of complications from a hernia operation. For those who don't know, Rory ran Comic Relief, the best comics shop in the country. Nobody disputes that he was the heart and soul and brains of the store, built it from nothing and made it what it was.

I wandered into Comic Relief in 1989, at the age of twelve. I didn't leave for about six years. Like most adolescents, I didn't really have much money of my own, and in most comics shops I wouldn't have been able to enjoy much. Rory, however, insisted on a free-reading policy. New issues and trade paperbacks were out on the shelves to be enjoyed, and you could read all day without buying anything or having the staff give you so much as a cross look. That was my education.

I read Matt Wagner's Mage three or four times before I finally scraped together the money to buy it. I discovered Harvey Kurtzman because Betsy's Buddies had boobs on the cover. (That's a big deal when you're thirteen, okay?) It took me a long time to give manga a chance, but when I did it was because it was free to read and Rory recommended some.

I discovered Will Eisner in Comic Relief. I still remember reading The Building for the first time and being amazed that comics could do that.

I discovered EC Comics in Comic Relief. There were some really nice reprints coming out around that time, and I didn't even really know they were from the 50s, I just knew I'd never seen anything like them and I read them and reread them even when they gave me nightmares.

I discovered Alan Moore in Comic Relief. I read D.R. and Quinch and wondered what about the style seemed so similar to some of the other really cool stuff I'd read.

I actually met Jack Kirby in Comic Relief. First I just waited in line to shake his hand like everyone else, but then two hours later I came back and he was still there, chatting with Rory and a few diehard fans, telling stories from the 30s and answering geeky questions and refusing to say a bad word about anyone he'd ever worked with.

1989-1995 was a bad period in mainstream American comics, overhyped and underwritten superhero saturation fed by a hollow collector boom, in so many unopenable plastic bags that it's called the Mylar Age of Comics. If I'd been in any other comics store, I wouldn't have been able to read anything without paying for it, and if I did pay for something it would likely as not have been written by Rob fucking Liefeld or somebody. There'd have been nobody to push the good stuff from the small publishers, nobody to nurture an interest in comics as an artform rather than an investment, nobody to let a kid loose to explore all the worlds on all the pages.

Rory's dead and I should be writing about him, and I know this post is mostly about me. That's because I'm not qualified to write about Rory's life. He touched too many people, changed too many lives and fortunes, did too much for too long for an artform that everyone used to dismiss as irrelevant trash. All I can do is tell a little about how he touched my life, what his work and his store meant to me.

Without Rory Root, I wouldn't be anything like the man I am today. I wouldn't have the life I do, I wouldn't be the person I am. For good or ill, he changed my life irrevocably, just by running the best comic book store there ever was. And I'm far, far from unique in that, but it's what I have to remember him by.

Labels: comics

Because this is awesome and deserves the hits.


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo

Full update later. Much been going on. But it's officially the 8th now.