December 18, 2020
Turn And Face The Strange
Ive been writing for different places in the last few months, after losing my Wired gig and seeing my THR workload get smaller — something that, thankfully, gets reversed at the start of next year, I’ve recently been told. It’s been a move born of necessity, but not necessarily one that I regret; it’s good to reach out a bit, try new things. Even before the pandemic, I was thinking that I should probably be trying to be published elsewhere. It’s just that the way in which it happened wasn’t exactly an ideal situation. But, really, what was, this year…?
Some of the “different place” writing has been old haunts returned to to see if it worked out, others have been new venues I’d been eyeing for awhile. Not all of it, wonderfully, has even been published under my name — intrigue! — but it’s all been part of this experience of breaking out of the comfortable work rut I’d found myself in for the past few years, and looking at the way I do the work that I do.
(Just because I call it a rut doesn’t mean I’m bemoaning it, I should clarify; it was a situation I was very fortunate to be in, and one I miss being in now, and not just for monetary reasons. Having two ongoing gigs of the scale I did was a rare and wonderful thing, and I’m lucky I had the opportunity for as long as I did. Nonetheless, I was doing the same thing for a few years, and at some point, I became a little too comfortable with that.)
It’s been an experience, to say the least — relearning how to pitch stories, and even more importantly, how to deal with pitches being rejected; learning to deal with the demands and expectations of new editors; discovering the quirks of how I write and the affectations of others I’ve taken on, unconsciously — and it’s something that has improved what I’d call my craft, if such a term didn’t make me feel self-conscious.
That said, as I head into a new year and one that, I hope, is going to be less tumultuous for the world and my profession in particular, I find myself hoping to find recurring, regular berths again. I love writing, I love my job. It’s just that, if it’s possible, I’d like to be able to love and appreciate it with a little less worry for awhile.
December 17, 2020
It Echoes Round The World
We’re at that time of the year when Best Of lists are being put together, and everyone expects to see carefully curated, well-researched, numbered lists of the cream of whatever crop is being discussed: books, music, TV shows, music, whatever. In theory, it’s something that I’m currently doing for comics, for THR, but there’s just one problem: I can’t really remember what happened this year, as opposed to last, or even next year. My personal Best of 2020 feels more like a Best of Something Close To 2020 But Really, What Is Time If You Think About It, Anyway, No, Really Think About It?
This isn’t a new thing; the fact that I discover work months after its release — and am lucky enough to read other things far ahead of when it arrives in stores — means that I’m always struggling a little with the timeframes of my Best Of lists. (This is the first year in… at least the last three or four, where I only have to create one list instead of two, now that I’m not writing for Wired anymore. I think I’m grateful for that, but I’m not too sure.) But it’s a problem exacerbated by COVID making my sense of time particularly screwy this year, without doubt.
The pandemic has skewed my thinking along the Best Of lines in other, less obvious, ways, as well. It meant no comic conventions, which has left me unexposed to work that I would’ve discovered there, as well as robbed me of conversations that almost always sway my opinions and get me to try things I wouldn’t otherwise. The lack of any true 2020 “buzz book” is almost certainly down to the absence of comic conventions to help build consensus, I’m sure.
And so, here I am, passively — well, perhaps a little more active than that — trying to remember what came out when, and whether they deserve to be placed in the plastic pantheon that is a Best Of list, while also missing the shows I didn’t attend, and the conversations I didn’t have. It feels very 2020, if nothing else.
December 16, 2020
December 15, 2020
Not a Sports Page, Not a Magazine
A stray comment from a friend recently has been stuck inside my brain for the last few days, bouncing around as if it contains more weight and truth than initially appears. We were talking about his Thanksgiving break, and just how he filled five days off in a house by himself, and he said something along the lines of, “And I can’t even manage to read books anymore, my concentration is so shot.”
I used to read a lot. A lot. I’d get through books at breakneck speed, with a pile of comics to accompany them always at the ready, either literally or virtually. It was something that, if I didn’t exactly pride myself on, then I was at least proud of — not the number of books read, per se, but that I was constantly taking in new ideas, new information, and feeding my brain. Reading, as the slogan goes, is fundamental, and I was excited and happy to be someone who read a lot.
This year has wrecked that. Specifically, it’s wrecked my reading concentration — or, perhaps, my ability to concentrate for the extended periods necessary to read — to the point where I’ve only managed to complete a handful of books, and even those have felt more like a struggle than I’d like to admit.
It’s not that I don’t want to read. It’s that my brain likes to distract me when I do — reminding me of other things I should or could be doing, other things I should thinking or asking or or or — and so, reading becomes difficult. This is specifically related to the concept of reading for pleasure, I should add; I have likely read more for work, or read more news and analysis in the name of “feeling informed,” than usual across the last 12 months. My word count, such as it is, is likely the same, but it’s purpose is entirely different.
I’m sad about that; I miss reading for fun. I miss feeding those new ideas into my head, even if they were trashy, shitty ideas. (Especially then.) It’s oddly comforting to know that I’m seemingly not alone in having this problem, but still: I hope that I can learn to read more books again next year.
