After writing my last post, I got to thinking, "how many people really worry and fret about worst case scenarios? Does everyone do that as much as me?" For most of the people I know, I would guess they have more of a "take it as it comes" mentality without worrying too much about what will happen in the next 5 or 10 years. It might have something to do with the place in life that most of my friends are at. Most of them don't know who they'll be spending the rest of their life with. Most don't have housing plans past a year or two. Most don't even know what they want, let alone what they'll be doing. So of course they take it as it comes. That's what I did for a while. But even when I was thinking more of the present day and less of the future, I still had a tendency to fret. Like if someone tells me they'll call and they don't, I think, "maybe they're dead. or there was a horrible accident." That's a little less grim than it sounds because even when I think that, I'm still aware that that is unlikely. The probability is very low, but slightly higher than usual. Though sometimes when it isn't higher than usual, I still think about it. Sometimes I just think, one of my friends could have died a few days ago and no one would have thought to contact me. One of my mom's closest friends died some years ago and she didn't find out for months because they didn't talk to each other that often. It's weird knowing you could be going through your normal routine as if nothing had changed when there has been an enormously huge change that you don't know about.
I know when I have kids one day my tendency towards fretting is going to get even worse. I always thought my mom was crazy for getting so worried when she wouldn't hear from Tony or me for even a short time, but I think I've got the fretting tendency just like she does.
Steven is a little like me, but not about the same things. he frets about the possibility of getting laid off. You never know how the stock market will turn and jobs that look secure one year could be slashed and burned the next. It's tough knowing how uncertain the future (and even the present) is. I think I'm feeling it even more now that I can begin to see a little of what the future might look like. I've got this glimmer of where I want to be and what I want to be doing and I really want all of that to go through. I guess it comes from having a lot. In all honesty, I have a lot. I have a wonderful husband, enough money that I don't need to sweat making rent, a job lined up for next year, a preapproved loan for a house, caring family and a great support network, and frankly the list goes on. I have a lot to be grateful for in life. i guess when that happens, sometimes you worry about losing some of it. I suppose that's why rich people sometimes get freakishly paranoid and install outrageous security systems. If you've got a lot, you've got a lot to lose. I know it's unlikely, but the thought of loss does plague me from time to time. But if that's one of the consequences of having something to lose, then I guess it's not that bad.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
House hunting
Steven and I went to look at our first few listings today. It was our first time visiting a home that wasn't a new constructed home. We've looked at some models and the home we'd have built for ourselves would look similar, but nothing that we would actually buy. Today we got our first look at some short sales and bank owned homes with our real estate agent, Ulli.
The first thing Ulli did was clarify what the difference is between short sales, bank owned homes, and normal sales. Short sales are the worst from a buyer's perspective. They have the best deals, but apparently they are an immense amount of paperwork for the listing agent, so sometimes the listing agent doesn't bother with them. We went to one house where many people (perhaps 15 to 20) had already viewed it. We could tell because their real estate agents had left their calling cards on the counter. But no one had been by to pick them up or follow through with the interested buyers. Ulli guessed that the listing agent hadn't been by in weeks.
Short sales, in addition to being a lot of work for the listing agent, have some other problems as well. Ulli said only 1 out of 4 of them ever go through. A place may get an offer, but you could wait for weeks hearing back on your offer, even up to 6 months. And after months of waiting, it still might not even go through. It's heart wrenching, slow, and it keeps you from looking at places you might actually have a chance to purchase.
Another big hurdle is the previous owners. If it's a short sale, the previous residents still live in the house. They know they're being forced out and they don't always go along with the program. Some of them trash the house because they're so unhappy. Some refuse to let anyone see the house in hopes of keeping it from getting sold in short sale. It's pointless to try. They'll just be foreclosed on and then evicted in time, but I can understand not wanting to let strangers come into your home to buy what's yours because you can't afford it. It was hard for us to go into homes with families still in it. In one, they were in the midst of packing and everything was strewn everywhere. I hated invading their privacy and I hated the thought of those people being forced out of their homes. The bad stuff had already happened though. Now is just dealing with the fallout. I'm not saying it isn't still painful. It was probably pretty miserable in fact. But the damage was already done and I wasn't about to change or stop that, whether I visited or not. If no one looked, they'd be kicked out all the same, but with a lousy credit rating. I still feel bad because my presence was a sour reminder to them of the loss they already had suffered, a loss only made worse by their continued presence in the house. I know some of them probably saw us as usurpers benefiting off of their misfortune, and in some respects that's probably true. But truthfully no one really benefits. The banks certainly don't. The buyers have to go through a million hoops for an often messed up home that rarely gets sold. Yeah the homes are cheaper, but it's for a reason. Compared to the previously constructed homes with the pristine carpets and the carefully chosen interior decoration, the short sales didn't measure up.
So we're thinking of adjusting our sights a little higher. Tomorrow we'll have another look at some pricier homes. We're going to try to avoid short sales, primarily for their impracticality. Admittedly, I did not enjoy the short sale shopping experience, if only for the guilt of seeing someone else's misery and in some way attempting to take advantage of their lost opportunities. I don't believe purchasing a short sale is wrong, but it was still depressing to see first hand the people who have suffered the most from the recession. The recession hasn't really touched me in any serious way. Yes, my net worth is a lot less, but it doesn't significantly affect the way I live. For these people it drastically impacted the way they live in an extremely emotional way. It also cautions me against spreading ourselves too thin. We've been very conservative with our price range and very cautious to save what we can, and seeing how home buying can turn south really reinforces that principle to me. Steven's dad really wants us to stretch ourselves since a home can be a really good investment, but I would rather make less money off of our investment and not risk getting thrown out forcibly. We never know what the future will hold. Steven could get laid off or need to quit to take care of his health. There could be a fire or an earthquake that leaves us penniless. Any number of tragedies would leave us a whole lot poorer and I wouldn't want to face the loss of a house in addition to whatever else we might have to deal with. It really says to me how important security is. I don't need money to buy things (though I do buy a fair number of things when I've a mind), but I feel much more comfortable living my life with the piece of mind that comes from knowing a have a cushion in case of emergency.
The first thing Ulli did was clarify what the difference is between short sales, bank owned homes, and normal sales. Short sales are the worst from a buyer's perspective. They have the best deals, but apparently they are an immense amount of paperwork for the listing agent, so sometimes the listing agent doesn't bother with them. We went to one house where many people (perhaps 15 to 20) had already viewed it. We could tell because their real estate agents had left their calling cards on the counter. But no one had been by to pick them up or follow through with the interested buyers. Ulli guessed that the listing agent hadn't been by in weeks.
Short sales, in addition to being a lot of work for the listing agent, have some other problems as well. Ulli said only 1 out of 4 of them ever go through. A place may get an offer, but you could wait for weeks hearing back on your offer, even up to 6 months. And after months of waiting, it still might not even go through. It's heart wrenching, slow, and it keeps you from looking at places you might actually have a chance to purchase.
Another big hurdle is the previous owners. If it's a short sale, the previous residents still live in the house. They know they're being forced out and they don't always go along with the program. Some of them trash the house because they're so unhappy. Some refuse to let anyone see the house in hopes of keeping it from getting sold in short sale. It's pointless to try. They'll just be foreclosed on and then evicted in time, but I can understand not wanting to let strangers come into your home to buy what's yours because you can't afford it. It was hard for us to go into homes with families still in it. In one, they were in the midst of packing and everything was strewn everywhere. I hated invading their privacy and I hated the thought of those people being forced out of their homes. The bad stuff had already happened though. Now is just dealing with the fallout. I'm not saying it isn't still painful. It was probably pretty miserable in fact. But the damage was already done and I wasn't about to change or stop that, whether I visited or not. If no one looked, they'd be kicked out all the same, but with a lousy credit rating. I still feel bad because my presence was a sour reminder to them of the loss they already had suffered, a loss only made worse by their continued presence in the house. I know some of them probably saw us as usurpers benefiting off of their misfortune, and in some respects that's probably true. But truthfully no one really benefits. The banks certainly don't. The buyers have to go through a million hoops for an often messed up home that rarely gets sold. Yeah the homes are cheaper, but it's for a reason. Compared to the previously constructed homes with the pristine carpets and the carefully chosen interior decoration, the short sales didn't measure up.
So we're thinking of adjusting our sights a little higher. Tomorrow we'll have another look at some pricier homes. We're going to try to avoid short sales, primarily for their impracticality. Admittedly, I did not enjoy the short sale shopping experience, if only for the guilt of seeing someone else's misery and in some way attempting to take advantage of their lost opportunities. I don't believe purchasing a short sale is wrong, but it was still depressing to see first hand the people who have suffered the most from the recession. The recession hasn't really touched me in any serious way. Yes, my net worth is a lot less, but it doesn't significantly affect the way I live. For these people it drastically impacted the way they live in an extremely emotional way. It also cautions me against spreading ourselves too thin. We've been very conservative with our price range and very cautious to save what we can, and seeing how home buying can turn south really reinforces that principle to me. Steven's dad really wants us to stretch ourselves since a home can be a really good investment, but I would rather make less money off of our investment and not risk getting thrown out forcibly. We never know what the future will hold. Steven could get laid off or need to quit to take care of his health. There could be a fire or an earthquake that leaves us penniless. Any number of tragedies would leave us a whole lot poorer and I wouldn't want to face the loss of a house in addition to whatever else we might have to deal with. It really says to me how important security is. I don't need money to buy things (though I do buy a fair number of things when I've a mind), but I feel much more comfortable living my life with the piece of mind that comes from knowing a have a cushion in case of emergency.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Loot!
We got so much loot from Comic-Con! I saw on the news that Comic-Con generates 40 mil in revenue for San Diego, and we certainly did our part adding to that. Admittedly, most of that is in hotel fees, but we got a lot of sweet nerdy loot too.
Loot list:
Approximately $100 in comic books, all of which were half price or less. J. Michael Straczynski earned some royalties from us this weekend. We got 14 trade paperbacks by him alone. We also got dragonlance comic books and a sweet Star Trek comic among other things. You have no idea how much work it was finding every comic book Straczynski has ever written. I literally combed racks upon racks of comic books for hours. I estimate I spent around 4 hours pawing through comic books. It paid off though. I got all 10 volumes of Straczynski's Amazing Spiderman paperbacks. I'm most proud of finding Volume 2. There was seriously only one copy that I saw all weekend and I looked through hundreds upon hundreds of comic books. I now understand the rush that collectors get when hunting through a stack of unorganized books and finding the gem amongst the garbage.
Dice! We got some killer dice! At the Chessex booth, they had a giant bin of dice and for $9 you could scoop out a random mugful of dice ($13 for handpicked). The $9 deal was pretty good and I kind of liked the idea of going home and seeing what dice I got. It was a lot of fun, but let's just say I've got a lot more d10s than I used to. It's ok though. They can be placemarkers for minions or something. At another booth though, we got some really amazing dice. They were pretty costly- I know it was a total splurge, but I really wanted some beautiful dice. I get a huge kick out of dice. I just love to hold them and roll them, and these are pretty amazingly fun to roll. They're metal dice and they've got a really great heft to them. I could have gotten dice carved from stone, but most of the really nice minerals were already sold out. All that was left was blue and black cat's eye. The blue cat's eye was very pretty, but I really wanted soome nice heavy dice. I would have gone for stainless steel, but those were all sold out. They were truly beautiful though. But I'm happy with my dice also. They're hard and sturdy and they just feel so good in your hand. It's almost erotic. Oh who am I kidding. It's extremely erotic.
Nerdy art. well, we're getting a house pretty soon, so we're going to need to decorate it somehow, and I can think of no better way to do so than with a wooden dragon centerpiece. Our coffee table will proudly declare what total nerds we are. It's totally bitching. You have to see it to understand. We got a huge one too. I consider myself a generally frugal person, but there's something about comic-con that makes me want to throw all that to the wind. In fairness, the comic books were really cheap. The trade paperbacks I got were all either half off or $5 each. If I ever wanted to buy those regularly from a comic book store or off of amazon, I'd be paying a whole lot more. And since Steven and I do tend to read a lot of comics, it makes sense to buy a bundle when they're cheap. I really have a lot less of a justification for the beautiful dice and the bitchin dragon, but who cares! I love my loot!
Loot list:
Approximately $100 in comic books, all of which were half price or less. J. Michael Straczynski earned some royalties from us this weekend. We got 14 trade paperbacks by him alone. We also got dragonlance comic books and a sweet Star Trek comic among other things. You have no idea how much work it was finding every comic book Straczynski has ever written. I literally combed racks upon racks of comic books for hours. I estimate I spent around 4 hours pawing through comic books. It paid off though. I got all 10 volumes of Straczynski's Amazing Spiderman paperbacks. I'm most proud of finding Volume 2. There was seriously only one copy that I saw all weekend and I looked through hundreds upon hundreds of comic books. I now understand the rush that collectors get when hunting through a stack of unorganized books and finding the gem amongst the garbage.
Dice! We got some killer dice! At the Chessex booth, they had a giant bin of dice and for $9 you could scoop out a random mugful of dice ($13 for handpicked). The $9 deal was pretty good and I kind of liked the idea of going home and seeing what dice I got. It was a lot of fun, but let's just say I've got a lot more d10s than I used to. It's ok though. They can be placemarkers for minions or something. At another booth though, we got some really amazing dice. They were pretty costly- I know it was a total splurge, but I really wanted some beautiful dice. I get a huge kick out of dice. I just love to hold them and roll them, and these are pretty amazingly fun to roll. They're metal dice and they've got a really great heft to them. I could have gotten dice carved from stone, but most of the really nice minerals were already sold out. All that was left was blue and black cat's eye. The blue cat's eye was very pretty, but I really wanted soome nice heavy dice. I would have gone for stainless steel, but those were all sold out. They were truly beautiful though. But I'm happy with my dice also. They're hard and sturdy and they just feel so good in your hand. It's almost erotic. Oh who am I kidding. It's extremely erotic.
Nerdy art. well, we're getting a house pretty soon, so we're going to need to decorate it somehow, and I can think of no better way to do so than with a wooden dragon centerpiece. Our coffee table will proudly declare what total nerds we are. It's totally bitching. You have to see it to understand. We got a huge one too. I consider myself a generally frugal person, but there's something about comic-con that makes me want to throw all that to the wind. In fairness, the comic books were really cheap. The trade paperbacks I got were all either half off or $5 each. If I ever wanted to buy those regularly from a comic book store or off of amazon, I'd be paying a whole lot more. And since Steven and I do tend to read a lot of comics, it makes sense to buy a bundle when they're cheap. I really have a lot less of a justification for the beautiful dice and the bitchin dragon, but who cares! I love my loot!
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Sights from Comic-Con
The Roy Mustang Miniskirt army petition
A bottleneck of foot traffic
No fewer than 10 people with "free hugs" signs
One "expensive hugs" sign
And I've lost the game so many times I'm beginning to question my sanity, or at least the sanity of people who think that's a good use of their time.
A crowd of people lined up to see the hosts of Attack of the Show. I was unaware anyone could listen to them for more than 30 seconds without stabbing themselves in the eardrum. But it turns out they're popular. Who'd have thunk it.
Plus many many other things which are perhaps best expressed through photograph. Check facebook in the near future to see for yourself.
A bottleneck of foot traffic
No fewer than 10 people with "free hugs" signs
One "expensive hugs" sign
And I've lost the game so many times I'm beginning to question my sanity, or at least the sanity of people who think that's a good use of their time.
A crowd of people lined up to see the hosts of Attack of the Show. I was unaware anyone could listen to them for more than 30 seconds without stabbing themselves in the eardrum. But it turns out they're popular. Who'd have thunk it.
Plus many many other things which are perhaps best expressed through photograph. Check facebook in the near future to see for yourself.
Lessons I ought to learn
Next time I'm placed in a situation where I have no means of refrigeration, I will not ask for leftovers. If I fail to learn that lesson, I will not attempt to make a makeshift refrigerator using ice and a bucket. If I fail to learn that lesson, I will not assume that just because the leftovers are touching ice, they are being kept cold enough to maintain general health standards. Furthermore, if I return after 24 hours to find the ice melted, I will not stick my finger in the food, shrug and say "cold enough," and then eat the food anyway because it was tasty and expensive. I will especially avoid doing this with meats and seafood.
If I fail to learn these lessons, I will at least have the presence of mind to maintain close proximity to a bathroom for the next several hours following my idiotic surge of cheapness.
If I fail to learn these lessons, I will at least have the presence of mind to maintain close proximity to a bathroom for the next several hours following my idiotic surge of cheapness.
JMS
There are few people in this world famous and stylish enough to pull off the three letter acronym. NPH is one of the few examples I can think of. The only other example I can think of is not nearly as stylish or high profile as NPH, but he's definitely made a follower out of me this past Comic-Con. I went into a momentary frenzy over him actually. I'm trying to watch that whole frenzy thing, but it spills out every now and again. Glory be to the great JMS!
J. Michael Straczynski is AMAZING! I had actually read something of his before seeing him speak at comic con. It was fairly good, but nothing too special. It was a final goodbye to the Silver Surfer, a woefully whiny superhero. JMS handled it quite well and made even this annoying fellow palatable and marginally interesting. So after hearing him speak, I read one of his Spiderman comics. It turns out that when he starts with a character who is not fatally annoying, he can create magic. I've never been a hard core follower of Spiderman, though I know some small amount of the mythology. I know enough to pick out a few of the major villains and maybe give a one liner on them. What I do know, I've found pretty interesting. Spiderman has some fun villains and I like that Peter Parker is a total science nerd. So basically, I'm saying that I respected the series, though I wasn't (and still am not) familiar with its nuances.
So I picked up the JMS book that Steven bought for himself because it was cheap and was pretty surprised to find myself riveted from the first few pages. I had seen some of this from Spiderman's cameos in Astonishing X-Men, but Spiderman is really pretty funny. He's lighthearted and he jokes around a lot. He's go a whole mocking his enemies thing going on too. Well that's not too out of the ordinary, but he's actually funny. I found myself with full on belly laughs while reading this comic book. JMS is hilarious! Pair him with a character who isn't totally gloomy and you get some comedic gold! I was chuckling throughout, and I rarely laugh out loud when faced with written text. I can be amused and smile and appreciate the humor, but it's rare for me to give an all out guffaw. The book was an all around, amusing good time.
But when I wasn't laughing, I was dying to know what happened next in the plot. His story ideas are genius. It was a serious challenge just to put that thing down. I couldn't tear my eyes away. He completely reinvented Spiderman- turned him on his ear without changing any of the underlying mythology. It's akin to Alan Moore's treatment of Swamp Thing, except that he started with a well loved character with an invested fan following instead of a boring character who had been laid to rest without much mourning or remorse. In some senses, it is harder to revive a dull character and make them interesting (even JMS had to work pretty hard with Silver Surfer), but there are ways in which it can be harder to write about a beloved character with a fanatical fan following. I cannot speak as a fanatical fan of Spiderman, but speaking as someone who knew the vague history, I have to say even die hard fans would probably have been pleased with this reimagining. It stays true to everything that had happened before while taking an entirely different stance on it and making it fresh. It made even familiar old foes interesting and new by painting them in an entirely different light. And it sure gave Spiderman on hell of a headache, and really, who doesn't love hassling a protagonist now and again? I mean, that's what they're there for, right?
JMS can do comic books and he can do them well, but he's done a lot of other things as well that have had very critical acclaim. He was the driving force behind Babylon 5. Aside from creating the whole idea behind the show, he wrote 2/3 of the episodes. To put it in perspective, Joss Whedon is credited as the creative mind behind Buffy and Angel, but he didn't even come close to writing 2/3 of those episodes. I couldn't give an exact number, but I suspect it would be between 10 and 20 percent. JMS had enormous contributions to Babylon 5, which is a highly thought of Sci Fi series. It's won Emmys for best makeup and costuming, which is television's way of crediting good science fiction shows. For whatever reason, science fiction isn't considered compatible with good storylines or drama. Sci fi never wins those awards, even though they have some amazing ideas and social commentary (commentary that is often off limits to realistic shows- I remember hearing some of the writers for the original start trek talk about how lucky they felt to be able to put in commentary about the Vietnam War when other shows were being censored. Sure it had to actually be about aliens, but the anti-war messages were clear nonetheless. Let's see some CSI bullshit do something more meaningful or poignant). And at the risk of sounding like a fanatic who's lost touch with reality, I even think the acting on sci fi is fine. That's right. I said it. I can't tell the difference between the acting on Star Trek and the acting on some more trendy show that wins awards. Ok, so the actors generally can't do other things other than the characters they play, I'll admit to that. Patrick Stewart has never done a character who wasn't, in essence, Jean Luc Picard. But he does Picard so damn well! He deserves an Oscar! I know it's not a film and thus not eligible for that award! It doesn't matter! He deserves it!
There goes that frenzy again. I'll try to tone that down.
But I've wandered away from the glorious (bad frenzy! bad!) JMS again. I should stop lauding his accomplishments that I haven't even fully read or watched yet and say a few words about his talk that first piqued my interest and sowed the seeds of my fanaticism. It was a talk on how to write. There are a lot of how to panels at comic con that I have to admit I'm pretty interested in. I like to know how things are done and what some of the steps are to pursue certain job paths I'm unfamiliar with, but I have to admit that I also nurse secret hopes of somehow being involved in the creation of beautifully nerdy things. Last year, I went to panel on how to get started in voice acting. I found the panel to be interesting and informative. Besides, I've always nursed a small budding desire to voice pokemon. Just yelling the same word over and over again with various intonations... it may not sound like fun to everyone, but everyone so often when I'm thinking about it, I make bulbasaur sounds. Maybe a squirtle or two. Not pikachu. That prima donna's overdone.
The voice acting panel from last year was very informative, but it also convinced me that my pokemon dream really was just a pipe dream after all. The competition is rugged. If I wanted to voice act, it's not all about making delightfully cute pokemon sounds, but rather it's a full time job with irregular work and large demands on your creativity. With enough persistence you might be able to break in, but it would be a real serious commitment, not a matter of driving up to a studio, convincing an exec of my talent with a few touching renditions of "bulbasaur," recording a few soundbytes, and then being on my way.
Where the voice acting panel doused my dreams, JMS's writing how-to panel set them aflame. I've always liked to write (clearly), and a little part of me has always wanted to write something that might one day get published and actually read. It's not a strong enough desire for me to invest the time to sit down and write something. Also, I don't feel like I have something quite compelling to write about just yet. But after listening to JMS, I felt like that didn't matter so much and I just wanted to start writing and get something down. Hence this blog about him. Everything he said made me feel hopeful about writing and not constrained at all. One of the things he said was that when he was first starting out as a writer, he knew how to mimic incredibly well. He could write in the styles of many different writers. He thought that was what writing was. But then he realized that writing is about imparting your unique viewpoint and telling your stories the way you want to. When he started doing that, he was far more successful and the writing flowed much better.
*Hopeful thought number one: I'm clearly good at writing for myself. I know next to no one reads this and the paltry readership that I do have does not particularly affect what I write. Sorry fellas- I don't pander. But hey, if that was a problem, I don't think you'd have gotten this far, so no worries there.
Someone asked him what tricks he had to deal with writer's block, and he apologized and said that's he's never had it. Sure it sounds like a totally dick thing to say, but it sounded like he really hadn't had writer's block. He spoke a little bit about some of the more common reasons for writer's block, and they made a lot of sense. He said that sometimes writers have an idea of where they want their characters to go or where they want them to end up, but there's just no plausible way of getting the characters to do that. The characters won't let the writer bully them around. Once you've got an idea for a character, it's hard to get them to act out of character, and sometimes your overarching goals as a writer just don't mesh with who your character is. When that happens, you either have to rewrite the whole character (very daunting to change your whole conception or to go back changing what you had before) or change where you expected the story to go (which means coming up with a new, equally compelling direction - also not easy). You think your ideas have dried up, but really it's just that you've presented yourself with an unsolvable puzzle and the thought of changing the parameters is overwhelming. He suggested that a problem in the third act can usually be addressed in the second. A problem in the second act can usually be addressed in the first. And so on.
*Hopeful thought number 2: With this demystification of common writing problems, it really felt like I might be able to address problems I came across without getting too bogged down or worried.
Straczynski also said a lot about trying and not worrying about failure. He was saying that no piece of writing is ever wasted. Whatever I do, I can be learning from it. He encouraged different genres of writing to learn about different styles. He encouraged sending your work everywhere and trying to get published (there's a certain boost and validation that comes from seeing your name in print). He encouraged being exploratory and testing your own boundaries rather than focusing on rules or how thing "ought" to be. He was overall very encouraging. He was friendly, funny, and downright amazing. The whole talk was littered with jokes and interesting anecdotes. For example, he talked about one professor he had in college who had a real problem with women. They could never do anything right in his class. This one time the professor was really tearing in to this one girl, criticizing her loudly in front of the whole class. She was crying and he wasn't stopping when someone from the back yelled "Leave her to fuck alone!" JMS commented that he was as surprised as anyone when he realized he was the one who said it. Overnight he went from an A to a C student in the class. The professor was really vindictive about it too. He tried to get JMS suspended or even kicked out, but his aversion to women was too well known for the other faculty to side with him. He told JMS he'd never have a career in writing and he would never be able to have it as a career. After JMS had graduated, he sent his old professor a copy of everything he ever published. He said he did it for years. Then, after enough time, the professor passed away. JMS took one last publication, wrapped it around a pencil and shoved it in his grave. that last part I'm pretty sure was a joke, but I do think he sent that jerk a copy of all his novels, screenplays, and comics.
He's saucy, funny, and kind. I really liked him and all the encouragement he gave this room full of aspiring writers (me included!). He was a nice, interesting guy with practical advice that made my little dream of being published more tangible and possible. He's a real positive guy who seems to have a good grasp on the way things work. I find myself really looking forward to reading more of his works and getting to know his better as a writer. If I ever do publish something, I just might send a copy to him.
J. Michael Straczynski is AMAZING! I had actually read something of his before seeing him speak at comic con. It was fairly good, but nothing too special. It was a final goodbye to the Silver Surfer, a woefully whiny superhero. JMS handled it quite well and made even this annoying fellow palatable and marginally interesting. So after hearing him speak, I read one of his Spiderman comics. It turns out that when he starts with a character who is not fatally annoying, he can create magic. I've never been a hard core follower of Spiderman, though I know some small amount of the mythology. I know enough to pick out a few of the major villains and maybe give a one liner on them. What I do know, I've found pretty interesting. Spiderman has some fun villains and I like that Peter Parker is a total science nerd. So basically, I'm saying that I respected the series, though I wasn't (and still am not) familiar with its nuances.
So I picked up the JMS book that Steven bought for himself because it was cheap and was pretty surprised to find myself riveted from the first few pages. I had seen some of this from Spiderman's cameos in Astonishing X-Men, but Spiderman is really pretty funny. He's lighthearted and he jokes around a lot. He's go a whole mocking his enemies thing going on too. Well that's not too out of the ordinary, but he's actually funny. I found myself with full on belly laughs while reading this comic book. JMS is hilarious! Pair him with a character who isn't totally gloomy and you get some comedic gold! I was chuckling throughout, and I rarely laugh out loud when faced with written text. I can be amused and smile and appreciate the humor, but it's rare for me to give an all out guffaw. The book was an all around, amusing good time.
But when I wasn't laughing, I was dying to know what happened next in the plot. His story ideas are genius. It was a serious challenge just to put that thing down. I couldn't tear my eyes away. He completely reinvented Spiderman- turned him on his ear without changing any of the underlying mythology. It's akin to Alan Moore's treatment of Swamp Thing, except that he started with a well loved character with an invested fan following instead of a boring character who had been laid to rest without much mourning or remorse. In some senses, it is harder to revive a dull character and make them interesting (even JMS had to work pretty hard with Silver Surfer), but there are ways in which it can be harder to write about a beloved character with a fanatical fan following. I cannot speak as a fanatical fan of Spiderman, but speaking as someone who knew the vague history, I have to say even die hard fans would probably have been pleased with this reimagining. It stays true to everything that had happened before while taking an entirely different stance on it and making it fresh. It made even familiar old foes interesting and new by painting them in an entirely different light. And it sure gave Spiderman on hell of a headache, and really, who doesn't love hassling a protagonist now and again? I mean, that's what they're there for, right?
JMS can do comic books and he can do them well, but he's done a lot of other things as well that have had very critical acclaim. He was the driving force behind Babylon 5. Aside from creating the whole idea behind the show, he wrote 2/3 of the episodes. To put it in perspective, Joss Whedon is credited as the creative mind behind Buffy and Angel, but he didn't even come close to writing 2/3 of those episodes. I couldn't give an exact number, but I suspect it would be between 10 and 20 percent. JMS had enormous contributions to Babylon 5, which is a highly thought of Sci Fi series. It's won Emmys for best makeup and costuming, which is television's way of crediting good science fiction shows. For whatever reason, science fiction isn't considered compatible with good storylines or drama. Sci fi never wins those awards, even though they have some amazing ideas and social commentary (commentary that is often off limits to realistic shows- I remember hearing some of the writers for the original start trek talk about how lucky they felt to be able to put in commentary about the Vietnam War when other shows were being censored. Sure it had to actually be about aliens, but the anti-war messages were clear nonetheless. Let's see some CSI bullshit do something more meaningful or poignant). And at the risk of sounding like a fanatic who's lost touch with reality, I even think the acting on sci fi is fine. That's right. I said it. I can't tell the difference between the acting on Star Trek and the acting on some more trendy show that wins awards. Ok, so the actors generally can't do other things other than the characters they play, I'll admit to that. Patrick Stewart has never done a character who wasn't, in essence, Jean Luc Picard. But he does Picard so damn well! He deserves an Oscar! I know it's not a film and thus not eligible for that award! It doesn't matter! He deserves it!
There goes that frenzy again. I'll try to tone that down.
But I've wandered away from the glorious (bad frenzy! bad!) JMS again. I should stop lauding his accomplishments that I haven't even fully read or watched yet and say a few words about his talk that first piqued my interest and sowed the seeds of my fanaticism. It was a talk on how to write. There are a lot of how to panels at comic con that I have to admit I'm pretty interested in. I like to know how things are done and what some of the steps are to pursue certain job paths I'm unfamiliar with, but I have to admit that I also nurse secret hopes of somehow being involved in the creation of beautifully nerdy things. Last year, I went to panel on how to get started in voice acting. I found the panel to be interesting and informative. Besides, I've always nursed a small budding desire to voice pokemon. Just yelling the same word over and over again with various intonations... it may not sound like fun to everyone, but everyone so often when I'm thinking about it, I make bulbasaur sounds. Maybe a squirtle or two. Not pikachu. That prima donna's overdone.
The voice acting panel from last year was very informative, but it also convinced me that my pokemon dream really was just a pipe dream after all. The competition is rugged. If I wanted to voice act, it's not all about making delightfully cute pokemon sounds, but rather it's a full time job with irregular work and large demands on your creativity. With enough persistence you might be able to break in, but it would be a real serious commitment, not a matter of driving up to a studio, convincing an exec of my talent with a few touching renditions of "bulbasaur," recording a few soundbytes, and then being on my way.
Where the voice acting panel doused my dreams, JMS's writing how-to panel set them aflame. I've always liked to write (clearly), and a little part of me has always wanted to write something that might one day get published and actually read. It's not a strong enough desire for me to invest the time to sit down and write something. Also, I don't feel like I have something quite compelling to write about just yet. But after listening to JMS, I felt like that didn't matter so much and I just wanted to start writing and get something down. Hence this blog about him. Everything he said made me feel hopeful about writing and not constrained at all. One of the things he said was that when he was first starting out as a writer, he knew how to mimic incredibly well. He could write in the styles of many different writers. He thought that was what writing was. But then he realized that writing is about imparting your unique viewpoint and telling your stories the way you want to. When he started doing that, he was far more successful and the writing flowed much better.
*Hopeful thought number one: I'm clearly good at writing for myself. I know next to no one reads this and the paltry readership that I do have does not particularly affect what I write. Sorry fellas- I don't pander. But hey, if that was a problem, I don't think you'd have gotten this far, so no worries there.
Someone asked him what tricks he had to deal with writer's block, and he apologized and said that's he's never had it. Sure it sounds like a totally dick thing to say, but it sounded like he really hadn't had writer's block. He spoke a little bit about some of the more common reasons for writer's block, and they made a lot of sense. He said that sometimes writers have an idea of where they want their characters to go or where they want them to end up, but there's just no plausible way of getting the characters to do that. The characters won't let the writer bully them around. Once you've got an idea for a character, it's hard to get them to act out of character, and sometimes your overarching goals as a writer just don't mesh with who your character is. When that happens, you either have to rewrite the whole character (very daunting to change your whole conception or to go back changing what you had before) or change where you expected the story to go (which means coming up with a new, equally compelling direction - also not easy). You think your ideas have dried up, but really it's just that you've presented yourself with an unsolvable puzzle and the thought of changing the parameters is overwhelming. He suggested that a problem in the third act can usually be addressed in the second. A problem in the second act can usually be addressed in the first. And so on.
*Hopeful thought number 2: With this demystification of common writing problems, it really felt like I might be able to address problems I came across without getting too bogged down or worried.
Straczynski also said a lot about trying and not worrying about failure. He was saying that no piece of writing is ever wasted. Whatever I do, I can be learning from it. He encouraged different genres of writing to learn about different styles. He encouraged sending your work everywhere and trying to get published (there's a certain boost and validation that comes from seeing your name in print). He encouraged being exploratory and testing your own boundaries rather than focusing on rules or how thing "ought" to be. He was overall very encouraging. He was friendly, funny, and downright amazing. The whole talk was littered with jokes and interesting anecdotes. For example, he talked about one professor he had in college who had a real problem with women. They could never do anything right in his class. This one time the professor was really tearing in to this one girl, criticizing her loudly in front of the whole class. She was crying and he wasn't stopping when someone from the back yelled "Leave her to fuck alone!" JMS commented that he was as surprised as anyone when he realized he was the one who said it. Overnight he went from an A to a C student in the class. The professor was really vindictive about it too. He tried to get JMS suspended or even kicked out, but his aversion to women was too well known for the other faculty to side with him. He told JMS he'd never have a career in writing and he would never be able to have it as a career. After JMS had graduated, he sent his old professor a copy of everything he ever published. He said he did it for years. Then, after enough time, the professor passed away. JMS took one last publication, wrapped it around a pencil and shoved it in his grave. that last part I'm pretty sure was a joke, but I do think he sent that jerk a copy of all his novels, screenplays, and comics.
He's saucy, funny, and kind. I really liked him and all the encouragement he gave this room full of aspiring writers (me included!). He was a nice, interesting guy with practical advice that made my little dream of being published more tangible and possible. He's a real positive guy who seems to have a good grasp on the way things work. I find myself really looking forward to reading more of his works and getting to know his better as a writer. If I ever do publish something, I just might send a copy to him.
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