Writing by the numbers - March

I spent the vast majority of March feeling like I'd been kicked right in the brain by a donkey.  No rain + incredibly high pollen counts = about three goddamned weeks of dropping just about every ball I had access to.  We're talking extreme difficulty walking and chewing gum at the same time, letting things get really out of hand due to lack of emotional and cognitive bandwidth to keep anything tacked down, that sort of thing. 

I didn't even break 8,500 words, and most of that was correspondence and various other writerly housekeeping stuff.

In spite of which, I did manage to complete one project, to finish the revisions a publisher had asked for, and to absolutely fucking nail an author interview I nabbed with a featured fiction slot.  I even managed to post the fic from last month on AO3, though coming up with the title, tags, description, etc. was the fucking worst--just pulling teeth the whole damn way.  So kind of really shitty, but not a total waste as far as things go.

I racked up 4 rejections for one incredibly enthusiastic acceptance, 1 completed revision request and zero new ones, 1 completed new project, and news that my chapbook sold out its first run and will be reprinted.

Could have been better, but all things considered, it was still pretty good.

New fic up on AO3!

"Overclocked"

Bruce Wayne/Hal Jordan enemies-to-lovers fic; 14k & rated M.

There were worse things in the world than spending three days working through the lingering effects of Scarecrow’s latest rampage, Hal was sure. For instance, having to ask Bruce for help. Also on the list? Having to deal with his feelings.

---

Hal looked at the contraption in his hand. It reminded him of nothing so much as an epi-pen, which he also had no idea how to use. “So you just… have this. On hand. Ready to go.”

“One doesn’t earn the coveted title of Mr. Contingency Plan by being unprepared,” Bruce told him, and Hal winced. He hadn’t meant for Bruce to overhear that, had he? Then again, he’d said it loud enough that any Martians left kicking it in their ruins had probably heard him, over Barry’s strenuous and utterly futile attempts to get him to pipe down, so he hadn’t exactly not meant for Bruce to hear it, either. “Instructions are on the package, and there’s a bathroom just down the hall to your left if you’d prefer to administer it in private.”

If Hal wanted someplace to get his shit together for a few seconds, Bruce meant.

Us

So, Us was... muddled.  Gorgeous, great, a shitload of fun, fucking terrifying, etc.  Gorgeously acted.  Winston Duke playing Jordan goddamned Peele for an entire movie was just great.  Lupita Nyong'o was amazing.  But muddled.

I've spent a couple of days since seeing it gnawing on what was bugging me about it, and I think one of the primary problems is that horror is, at its core, a reactionary genre.  When you're making progressive horror, you're fighting an uphill battle against the genre's base tendencies.  It can be done, obviously, and it can be done very well, but it means that the messaging and conceit have to be much more focused.  Get Out* and Assassination Nation were two good examples of that in action.  Us was a lot farther out there than Get Out, and a lot more ambitious.  There's a lot more going on there, and it asks the audience to follow it a lot farther down the rabbit hole.  I don't know that it necessarily works.  I'm also not sure where the twist leaves the main characters.

( Spoilers behind the cut )

It's muddled.  It's a small price to pay for a significantly more ambitious film, but it blunts some of its bite.

*I feel like Get Out is one of those films where you almost can't compare it to anything else, because it's... It's a literal perfect film.  I mean, there are literally no missed steps, sour notes, self-indulgent flourishes, or untaken opportunities.  It hits every mark it addresses.  Especially for a first-time feature director, that pretty much does not happen.