2003-03-04 8:48 p.m.
phototropic reaction

I have no idea if this is going to work, but for one of the few times in my life I'm gambling. Big time.

I'm not talking about my little obsession with the $2 Cashword scratch-offs that keep me amused at work. I'm talking about putting my money where my mouth is as a writer.

D'll be doing the same thing soon enough, but he's looking to make his book good enough that a publisher's going to publish it without him having to do it himself first. But then, he's an artist as well as a writer.

Not me. It's the one true handicap you can have in the comics industry. You can be an artist...everyone needs you, assuming you're good and dependable, especially if you've got a style no one's managed to bite yet.

But as a writer, you're in a much stickier territory. You have to prove yourself before they're going to let you play with their toys. You have to get your words in front of their eyes and pry their minds open long enough for some of it to sink in. And in most cases, that means self-publish or get published elsewhere.

I'm doing the latter. I don't have my artists locked down yet, all I've got is a hell of a lot of ideas and a vague outline, soon to be crystallized, and a lot of piss'n'vinegar and determination.

But I'm going to do it. We couldn't do it when the BG went to San Diego two years ago...hell, we didn't have an artist. But this time, I'm going to make it happen. Fund the artist, fund the printing, go out there with a run of 500 (more if I can get a deal) and see where this whole mess goes.

I got tired of telling people I was a writer and having them ask me, "so what have you done?" I didn't want to go to SD again with nothing but a handful of typed pages, pitches, ideas, a few half-scripts. I want to go out there this time with a bag full of my work. Spend the rest of winter and spring building my coffer until it overflows with work. Finish the play. Finish my ten columns for Intrepid. Cobble together another pitch or two, and finish one of two for the BG. Leave people with plenty to read when they get back to their offices in New York or elsewhere.

I can't say I owe the inspiration to her, but some of the goddamn gumption, the will, flashes of the fire I owe to L. Damn it, she's got it together. Charmed, charming, even if she isn't sure the path she's on is the right one, she glides on down the road, a twirl in her step, seeing what's there.

Weekends I would've spent camped out in my living room in my undies, writing in my journal and watching TV, are giving way to day-and-a-half marathon dates, cooking lavishly for each other (I made coq au vin and mashed sweet potatoes w/rosemary & garlic for her one night), soaking up movies, kissingkissingkissing and taking long drinks of each other...never emptying the vessel, not even taking it down halfway, but just enough to make one come up for air, the longest gulp before choking, subliminally pulling back at all the right moments.

No apologies for who we are. When I was with S and living with D&R, I didn't think that possible. When you have no basis for comparison, you have no way of knowing just how wrong the way you're living is.

And today, this moment, loving her...my head feels like clean warm socks, the badness of the last year, all the doubt of the past few years and the clumped-up self-hatred being Brillo'ed off my body.

The tail end of my last relationship was a stagnant pond; now, for now, I'm in growth medium.

Maybe that doesn't sound sexy to you, but for me, there's nothing more romantic.