THE JOB MR. RICH DONE

To-Do List For the Week of 5/11/2009

* English adaptation of Cynical Orange vol. 9; prepare to start next manhwa

* Print and mail This World and Body to prospective publisher

* Continue researching that new project with an artist you've respected for a long time that fell in your lap last week

* Talk to another prospective editor about that and also maybe World and Body

* See what Mike Holmes is up to

* Give full viewing priority to Pigs, Pimps, & Prostitutes for review

* Write that four-page comics story you need to write

* Get back on that other comic book script you started the week before last

* Get back on 5 1/2

Current Soundtrack: Dexys Midnight Runners, The Projected Passion Revue



e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Criterion Confessions * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2009 Jamie S. Rich

I HEAR THE DRIZZLE OF THE RAIN, LIKE A MEMORY IT FALLS

As promised, my writing list for BP & MJ, the tracks that helped get me in the mood.

1. Garbage - "You Look So Fine"
2. The Housemartins - "Johannesburg"
3. The Starlight Mints - "Valerie Flames"
4. Rihanna - "Question Existing"*
5. Spice Girls - "Too Much"
6. Echo & the Bunnymen - "Everything Kills You"
7. Amy Winehouse - "Love is a Losing Game (Original Demo)"
8. Rihanna - "Good Girl Gone Bad"
9. Camera Obscura - "I Love How You Love Me"
10. Emilie Simon - "Flowers"
11. Simon & Garfunkel - "America"
12. Simon & Garfunkel - "Kathy's Song"**
13. Bernard Butler - "Everyone I Know is Falling Apart"
14. Pulp - "Like a Friend"
15. Candie Payne - "No Other"
16. Bob Dylan - "Death is Not the End"
17. St. Famous - "We are All Broken"
18. The Paris Sisters - "I Love How You Love Me"
19. Spice Girls - "Viva Forever"
20. Garbage - "You Look So Fine (Fun Lovin' Criminals Mix)"
21. Lavender Diamond - "Oh No"***

* I love that title. It's like, the question exists and you question existence both.
** Yes, this makes just about every mix of mine, doesn't it?
*** This was added at the very end. Almost like typing "The End."

Divine from that what you will. I think you might notice some thematic parallels, if not musical ones, in the list for This World and Body. Fair indicators of where things are going for me.

Current Soundtrack: shuffle-up on Prince, Charlie Parker, Kylie Minogue, George Michael

YOUR JAMIE ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH

As mentioned last week, it was time for me to read over and finalize what constitutes the first complete draft of This World and Body, previously referred to as Jamie S. Rich/Joëlle Jones Book 3. It's a 170-page graphic novel that I guess takes us back to relationship territory, but more mature, darker, and a little bit racier.

The writing was kind of rough-going. Though this is the first complete draft, it actually is labeled Version 3 on the file. The first version got about halfway there before I had to reexamine what I was doing and try a different tactic. I still like that early stuff, it's compact and visually moves quite effortlessly, but it's also overly ambiguous and maybe too aloof. The second version ended up being the near-complete story, but with some holes and a lack of thorough formatting. Version 3 firms all of that up.

I actually read over the second version last Wednesday in lieu of going to the Platform Festival that day, but didn't really get to come back to the manuscript until yesterday. It took two days, but I have now printed out a copy to give to Joëlle and get her feedback.

Honestly, I was kind of surprised by how it turned out, and I ended up liking the script quite a bit. If I had to classify it, I'd say This World and Body is like an elegy for what has come before. Naturally, I didn't think in those terms as I wrote it. I'm not one to plan that meticulously when it comes to theme and sartorial intent. I prefer to let that sort of stuff grow naturally from the story, which to me is the most important. It's only later that the work contextualizes itself for me, and then it's only a matter of understanding what I did both to evaluate what to do with it and look ahead toward what is next. In terms of my bibliography, it's probably the most cynical book I've written, but it also has the kind of ending that I like, where whether someone is suffering a punishment or has found a kind of happiness (or both) is really up to debate.

I don't know. We'll see what happens with it. Joëlle has several things on her docket before this will come up on the schedule, so there will be plenty of time to ruminate.

As a bit of insight into where I am at with this, here is my writing soundtrack:
1. Marion - "Let's All Go Together"
2. Depeche Mode - "When the Body Speaks (Acoustic Version)"
3. The Concretes - "Sugar"
4. Camera Obscura - "Country Mile"
5. Madonna - "Frozen (edit)"
6. Brett Anderson - "Love Is Dead"
7. Manic Street Preachers/Nina Persson - "You Love Alone is Not Enough"
8. Martina Topley-Bird - "Anything"
9. The Bluetones - "Pretty Ballerina"
10. Amy Winehouse - "Love is a Losing Game"
11. Travis - "Closer"
12. Suede - "Untitled [Stanbridge Demo]"
13. Camera Obscura - "If Looks Could Kill"
14. Depeche Mode - "The Darkest Star"
15. Marion - "Your Body Lies"
16. The Cowboy Junkies - "You Will Be Loved Again"

On an odd side note, this morning I watched Cover Girl with Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth. It's been years since I have seen it, though it was one of those movies I had taped off of cable in high school and watched as often as I could. I have always had a huge crush on Hayworth, and Cover Girl always fit well alongside the more noirish films like Gilda and The Lady From Shanghai that had made me a fan. I've only since become a fan of Gene Kelly in the last couple of years, learning to better appreciate his approach to dance and his overall artistic vision, and that could be why I actually feel like I understand Cover Girl now better than I ever did.

I'm always fascinated how the things we see and experience influence us in life and art, and watching this movie now, it's clear to me that it was a much bigger inspiration for me than I had ever realized. So many elements of this seemingly light story of two nightclub entertainers torn apart by the sudden fame one of them (Hayworth) acquires reflect pretty standard tropes that have shown up in my fiction. The way Gene Kelly battles his own subconscious in a dance of wills, and then leaves everything behind when he decides it's hopeless--a kind of Old Yeller approach to love, forcing someone to leave you by insisting you're no good for them--is obviously familiar. Of course, there is also the totemic symbol of searching for a pearl as an omen of happiness and togetherness, not unlike the fortune cookies that bound Tristan and Isobel in Love the Way You Love. I was barely in my teens when I first gravitated to this musical, and yet Cover Girl reveals that the basic foundation of who I am as a writer (and as a person) was already in place.

From the most unlikely sources...

And I still do love Rita Haywoth. Joëlle once asked me one of those fun psychological riddles that everyone uses to suss out another person's personality. She asked if I could form my perfect woman from three classical Hollywood actresses, who would they be. The choice of Audrey Hepburn would surprise no one, I'm sure, and Lauren Bacall is also fairly obvious I would think. The third was Rita Hayworth.

People should post their three in the comments section. Pick your gender as appropriate. Cut-off for classic Hollywood is probably the mid-'60s, when the ratings system started changing and the new auteurs were breaking down the old studio approach. Some classic pictures were still being made, though, so there is some leeway. I would say the ultimate cut-off would be someone whose first film was made after 1975. My blog, my rules. Use your best judgment.

Current Soundtrack: Graham Coxon, The Golden D (it's as bad as I remember); "Lara's Theme" from Dr. Zhivago

Current Mood: thoughtful

"I AM NOT AFRAID TO KEEP ON LIVING,
I AM NOT AFRAID TO WALK THIS WORLD ALONE..."

And now we are three...

I'm not feeling compelled to do the same sort of long inventory for my third-year birthday as a full-time writer that I did in the previous years. Not that I am not proud as hell of myself, but it feels a little redundant this year. The last twelve months are kind of when it all happened. I mean, like, for reals.

Since last June 1st, all the books that had been in the oven were finally taken out and unleashed on the public. When you consider that The Everlasting, 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, and the first four volumes of Love the Way You Love were all published since June 1 of 2006, it sort of makes other statistics seem moot. That's really it right there, that's everything that the first twenty-four were building up to. And as I type this, You Have Killed Me and Love the Way You Love vol. 5 are both half drawn, and Love the Way six is written, and perhaps most significant, Have You Seen the Horizon Lately? is in production, set for release hopefully in the next six weeks for Comic Con, in shops come August. Not to diminish the other two things, particularly as You Have Killed Me represents perhaps a whole new level of what I've turned out to be capable of, but Horizon being done is huge. We're talking the cherry on top of nearly twenty years of work, of planning and thinking and keeping the eye on one goal. Lance Scott is older than everybody (I was 11 when I first invented him), but Percival and Julia, the stars of the book, are as old as Mason. Cut My Hair was begun and what was once just called Julia and Mendelssohn was conceived immediately after, and thus this Romance Trilogy was born.

And now it's done.

Three years out of the Oni offices, I'm a junior graduating into being a senior, and here, too, another reason to maybe not crow in the same ways I have prior. This is the juncture where I have to figure out what my higher education will be. Where do I go, and how do I apply? For the most part, I've not just written everything I've had planned since I was 16 years old, but I've published it all, too. (Ignoring, of course, the still unwritten graphic novel for Christopher Mitten, This is the Way the World Ends.) You need to understand that in all this time, I never thought about what came next for me, particularly not in prose. I was too concerned with getting the other stuff done first. I didn't want to be derailed. So, here I sit, and if you ask me what my next project is, the answer is largely, I don't know.

I say largely because I have begun something else. Joëlle Jones and I are looking ahead to book #3 for us. She has other things in the pipeline, so I haven't had to rush, but I have started writing This World And Body (first all the "Love" titles, now all the "World" titles), and I'll admit, it hasn't been easy. As the first toe in the water of Jamie S. Rich MkII, there has been some performance anxiety, some birthing pains. While other books have come out kicking and screaming and ready to tear shit up, I'm having to work at it this time. I doubt the final product will suffer for it, I just have to suffer for the final product.

And that's okay. I'm ready to see what happens. I think part of the process is going to be just to do it, not to stress about it, let the stories suggest themselves to me like always. There is a part in The Everlasting where Lance talks about his musical heroes and how most of them got stuck in their adolescence. I think this is a very real complex a lot of artists get bogged down by. It's very easy to repeat yourself and not even realize it, to just keep writing the same stories over and over, thinking you're doing something different, when really any changes are probably only perceptible to you. When Morrissey wrote Maladjusted, he probably didn't realize that he was writing The Smiths all over again, nor did he have Ringleader of the Tormentors to show that there was more. Creating is kind of a pattern. It's kind of like being in bad relationships, where with each new paramour we tell ourselves we're choosing better and find little things about that person to tell us why he or she is an improvement over the last, but unless we're conscious of making a real change, when it's all said and done, it turns out we're dating the same person in different clothes.

So, what does 35-year-old Jamie have to say in fiction that sets him apart from 18, 28, or even 32-year-old Jamie? This is what I'll eventually figure out. If I don't force it. If I just work with it. The collaborations with Joëlle have great importance here. I'm already on the second script I'd never have written had we never worked together, and she's fiercely determined to never be pigeonholed, so as long as she'll stick with me, I'll never be bored (and the more she works with others, the more I'll be challenged to make my scripts for her even better than theirs). As for anything without her, all I can say is stay tuned, because this could get interesting...

(Emphasis on "could.")

By the by, if you really want to see what I was like twelve-months ago, read this pdf of an interview I did around this time last year. It was conducted by Ian "Bubba" Shaughnessy for a magazine that never came out. It was supposed to run alongside "Chevelu" and the drawing Joëlle did of me flipping the bird.

Current Soundtrack: the Have You Seen the Horizon Lately? playlist

Current Mood: forward

e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * ComicSpace * The Blog Roll * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2007 Jamie S. Rich