I was on the phone with Fantagraphics an hour or so back and realized I sounded like I’d been released from an institution. Whoever answered the phone had to give me a couple of “All riiiiight”‘s or the equivalent. I mean the sort of thing you say when the other person in the conversation just won’t track.
I’ve been up for a while trying to finish a TCJ column and just sent it off. The thing went thru drafts and got bigger and smaller, just heaved around in different directions. I always do this, and most of the time I wind up the way I am now, feeling like I’ve been run over. What a lousy approach. How can I go thru the rest of my life thrashing about whenever I try to write an article? Also, it feels a bit shabby to keep people guessing about lengths and when you’re going to deliver.
A bright spot is that I just cut 1,400 words. I sent what I thought was the final draft on Monday, and then Michael Dean said space was tight and he gave me a couple of days to cut the article back from 5,000. For me that was like getting an extension, because the “final draft” needed a lot of focusing. Now it’s down to 3,600 and the points I really want to make have been spelled out more.
The article is about the Watchmen movie and how it’s not so different from what I see as the dumber aspects of Alan Moore’s own post-’89 comics career.
Favorite phrase that I dropped:
He was just catching a ride on the collective unconscious’ public transit system of shared tropes and icons.
That’s me being snotty about Moore’s use of Alice, Wendy and Dorothy in Lost Girls.