Painting With Shotguns XLVI: The "Seven Madmen Have Been Chosen" Edition
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I Know, I Know, It Says “Shotguns”
An astute reader (who shall remain nameless cough cough Rob Spidle) said something along the lines of, “Hey, dipshit, that image you keep including with your image is from a revolver, not a shotgun. DURRRR.” Then he threw a cat at my head, which was rude to me, and rude to the cat.
Still, yes, Rob had a point.
That image:
…is not of a shotgun.
I am not a guntard, I just chose that image because, well, I thought it didn’t suck. I’ve tried taking good photos (closeup and/or macro) of shotguns, and it just hasn’t come out right. Going to keep on experimenting, but for now, the above picture is of a trigger guard…
Aaaaaand, no, it’s not of a shotgun, either. It’s actually a Pedersoli muzzleloader, so, y’know. But you wouldn’t really know that by looking at it, as opposed to, say, looking at the cylinder of a revolver.
Anyway.
Just thought I’d clear that up.
No, I’m not an idiot.
… wait, yes, I am, just not about that.
Justin Cronin’s The Passage
I’m just starting up The Passage.
I have to tell you, the opening of the book is not how I’d suggest starting a novel, but goddamnit if it doesn’t work. For a novel that’s about the horror and the end times and the vampire-monsters, the opening is very mundane, very character-based, and on a technical read, a little slow. But fuck it, it doesn’t matter, it’s a really nice clean open. It focuses right on the characters, and it moves right into the fast-moving waters of human tragedy without a hint of the supernatural horror that is sure to come. Further, the guy writes like, giant honking paragraphs and sentences that sort of… amble on.
Again, not things I recommend, and yet, things that work in his hands.
Proof positive that you have to find the rules that work for you, and discard the rest. I’ve long held the notion that writing advice is valuable, not because each piece is a critical component to be plugged into your repertoire, but rather that each piece is something you bring up for consideration — and, by thinking about these things, by making decisions about how you’ll handle things, you become a better writer.
Or, if not better, at least a self-aware writer. A writer who knows how to duplicate the good and steer clear of the bad — at least, in terms of grammar, spelling, characterization, story, and so forth. It won’t help you steer clear of that tequila bottle. Or that bottle of candy-coated Percocet. Or all that illicit puppet sex.
PUPPET SEX.
What were we talking about?
Right. Book.
So, the novel’s good so far. But I’m only 30-40 pages in. Which leads to…
Cold Molasses Drip
I’m a slow reader these days, which kills me — but my time to read is minimal. I carve out a little portion of the day to read, but that’s sandwiched between all the other stuff. I could read at night, but reading at night puts me to sleep in about, ohhh, 15 minutes, so 20 pages later I’m snoozing. I could read in the evening, but that’s time spent with the wife. And the one sad fact about books is, when you read a book you’re ultimately alone. Unless of course you read to your kids. I don’t have kids yet. I have dogs. And whenever I read to them they just look irritated. Then they poison the air with toxic gas and waddle off. What jerks..
Anybody else have this “slow reader” problem? Am I alone? I know some of you churn through books. How do you manage in your adult lives? Second, unrelated question: how do you manage in your adult diapers?
Uhhh. No reason.
*gently nudges box of Depends under the desk*
Burn Notice Is Fucking Awesome Shut Up No You Shut Up
This is not a robust update, but:
Burn Notice is pretty great.
I’ll have a rant about the release schedule later in the week, but for now I’ll simply say that we got through the 3rd season, and it’s a corker. Just ass-kicking all the way through. Big recommendation.
That is all.
New Inception Theories (Spoilers)
So, two new elements have come into play, re: deciphering the Inception narrative puzzle.
The first is, the Hans Zimmer score (the recognizable one: BRUMMMM) is actually just the Edith Piaf song slowed down, which is fucking awesome, because in the same way that rain in the real world affects the dream, the music in the real world affects the dream and the score which means it’s affecting us. The audience. Which is batshit. Total meta-weirdness. Oh, the video:
The second is this whole wedding ring theory, which shows that Cobb wears the ring when he’s in the dream but not in reality so, at the end he’s not wearing the ring, so…?
In a weird way, the Hans Zimmer score is the audience’s totem.
The ring is Cobb’s real totem, not the spinning top.
Fascinating shit.
For all my criticisms of the film’s story, I have to say: I can’t help but noodle it.
Well played, Nolan brothers, well played.
Wendighaus 2.0 Updates
Just as an FYI, I asked you questions, and you answered, and that was awesome.
Went ahead and made some choices.
Cookware, I settled on, well, not All-Clad. It was just too darn expensive. The set was in our price range, but the set also had pieces I didn’t really want. The individual pieces were super-pricey. Plus, then you have the complexity that buying online might net you a China-made All-Clad starter pan as opposed to the USA-made cookware. Which is not good eats.
So, instead went with the Marcus Samuelsson 10-piece set, which is a well-reviewed multi-clad stainless on par with the All-Clad but inexpensive because it’s discontinued. Even still: lifetime warranty and US-made.
For a grill, I waver between the Big Green Egg and a Weber Genesis E-320. Neither are cheap, which means I might waver myself right into a cheaper alternative, but time will tell.
The Keys To The Clubhouse
As noted yesterday, I could kindly use five bloggers to hop on board the terribleminds train and kick up some crazy word count for me while I move into the Wendighaus 2.0.
You threw your hats into the ring, and I picked names out of a hat. Maybe the same hat. I dunno. It was a Fez. With sequins. It was filled with monkey droppings. Is it yours? (I know it isn’t Doyce’s — his is velvety and dispenses both Skittles and Rogaine.)
Anyway, here are the five seven unlucky lucky folks!
Andrea Phillips!
Doyce Testerman!
Chris Simmons!
Maggie Carroll!
Dan O’Shea!
Matt McFarland!
Kate Horsley!
Wait — seven? Mmm, yeah. First, just in case anybody is unable to do it in the end, then I have backups, and further, it’s not impossible that I won’t have blog-ready ‘Net access until Monday, so seven posts means I’m covered either way. That work for you crazy kids?
If you need topics, I can supply ‘em, but feel free to do your own thing, too.
For the record, you peeps who did blog posts before, I took your names back out of the hat.
So, if you cats and kittens are down with it, I’ll need blog posts (of ~500-1000 words, but don’t feel married to that word count) by August 6th. Preferably early in the day so I can get ‘em lined up and plugged in.
You can send them to me at chuckwendig [at] terribleminds [dot] com.
Earlier guest posts can be found right here.
Any questions?
(Oh, and no links for today — too busy-busy.)
About The Author
ChuckWendig
Chuck Wendig is equal parts novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. He is the author of the novels DOUBLE DEAD, BLACKBIRDS, and MOCKINGBIRD. In addition, he's got a metric boatload of writing-related e-books available, including the popular 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER. He currently lives in the wilds of Pennsyltucky with wife, dog, and newborn progeny.
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Oh, cruel twist of fez-based fate! Best of luck to the winner/suckers and I guess I’ll have to wait for Chuck’s sexual reassignment surgery before I get another bite at the apple.
To be perfectly honest Dave, that will be any day now. I assume the only thing that stands in his way is his wife, and I am sure by now he’s whittled her down to the point where she will ok his new outlook on life.
I try so hard to read, but just like you said, I am out quick at night. I get a few pages in and I’m done. It’s made reading everything lately very, very slow.
@Dave:
No worries, I expect to do this again when I
reassign my gender to “questionable”go to San Fran and Kauai in October.– c.
Grats to everybody handed the keys of Chuck’s kingdom! Don’t fumble with them in front of the door and drop them for an opportunistic squirrel to pick up, kay?
I think your pictures kick ass, Chuck, shotguns or no.
And agreed on Burn Notice. Yes, yes, a thousand explosive times yes.
I go through cycles with reading. I’ll devour everything in my path in the course of a month or two, then the next six months are spent getting in barely 10-20 pages a day. I’ve got no real explanation why.
I also don’t have a real explanation why I can’t get into Burn Notice. I want to like it so badly (I mean, come on! Bruce fucking Campbell!). It might have to do with the fact that the chick is far to scrawny. From the few episodes I’ve watched it looks like her teeny tiny twig arms should snap from the recoil of most of the weapons she uses. Ah that’s it. I can’t suspend disbelief, and it’s not the writing but the casting of that chick.
Oh Mightiest of Weavers, please call off your hoary hounds! I brought it up in order to bask in some 12ga macro-lovin’!
A couple of random thoughts:
1) Burn Notice: The woman turned me on to this show and while it started as a guilty pleasure, the show quickly grabbed me the jigglies and I’m hopelessly it’s viewing-bitch. I was shocked that a tepid channel as USA would present such a phenomenally well-written and sexy show (as a side-note, Psyche has become my guilty pleasure).
2) I want to offer you heart-felt congratulations! The web filter at my work has officially found your web-site and blocked it as “Non-Business Entertainment.” I, of course, am the god of this shit-realm, and have routed myself around it’s nosy tentacles.
Well-played, Cat-Slinger.
I really love Psych, for the record. Another favored show these days. I wonder how the other USA shows are, actually.
And I am pleased to enter the realm of Non-Business Entertainment! I’ll get this place listed as “Escort Service” in no time.
– c.
@Kate:
Took me most of the first season to get over Fee — I didn’t like her at first.
Now, though, she’s a great character. Took a little while to find their feet with her, I think.
Also, we’re now getting a SAM AXE (Bruce Campbell) prequel movie on USA! Woooo!
– c.
Psych, I mean. Ahem. It’s early.
I had heard nothing of this Sam Axe movie? I shall be balls-deep in the velvety Google folds shortly for more details.
The crowning achievement is “Adult.” You can do it… just offer links to German chicken porn. That should do the trick.
And, finally, if you want to annoy your woman, say “Moi-amm-ee” randomly and often.
Ask my wife. I do that exact thing. Seriously. MOI AM EE.
No doubt. Mos def.
I’m going to have to ask for a topic, if only to see what you try and make me write.
I don’t need your banal list of milk-fed topics, sir.
I will be writing about libraries and the need to desanctify them.
You need theme music. Something like what they use for Squidbillies.
Nice round of writers you have there! I hope I can get in on the round in October.
Burn Notice is amazing, I just wish I could watch it from the beginning to end. I always seem to pick up random marathons on USA.
Dude, the velvet hat dispenser thing is yours. I was just borrowing it. Seriously. You don’t remember this thing? I set up a diversion so you could steal it from that Burmese pimp that kept a palawan bearcat on a leash.
Mitzy, that was her name.
The pimp, not the bearcat. I don’t know the bearcat’s name.
Don’t wanna know, either. Fucking thing bites.
Ah, thank you, good sir! Allow me to mull over what subversive propaganda would be serve best in this instance… (I have a couple of ideas, but if you have something in particular in mind, go on and poke me, I’m happy to oblige.)
I like your spunk, people.
@Doyce: Ahh. The good-old days. When you could keep a bearcat on a leash. Goddamn government restrictions. Stupid Myanmar drug lords.
@Maggie: Anger against libraries? Color me curious.
@Chris: You may choose one of three topics, then: pornography, the pitfalls of writing, or pornography.
@JtG: I do need theme music. Here and in my daily life.
@Andrea: Dig in, no need for me to give you a topic if you’re ready to run with something!
– c.
Did you really think the opening to The Passage was slow? Man, I thought it hit the pavement at 60mph, honestly. And while he writes massive paragraphs, they work (imo.) It’s not wasted, he says a lot with them and doesn’t amble, not an easy feat. Or fete. Or feet.
And I’m right there with you on being a slow reader lately. I just have no TIME, and I’m so easily distracted these days – I think The Passage is one of the first times in ages that I’ve been able to fall into the hole in the page.
And really? The Big Green Egg is still on the list? I’m telling you, it’s going to be a misery. All the clean up, having to rotate food in and out of it – surface area needs to be a high factor in the decision process. Says she of the ever working grill in my outdoor kitchen. Measure two racks of baby backs, then measure the surface of that grill. Can you also slip on some hot dogs for the weiners [hurr] that don’t know the awesomeness of baby back ribs?
Dammit, now I’m hungry. Good thing I have leftover venison tenderloin from last night’s grillin’ session! (In which I used the infrared searing mechanism. I LOVE THAT THING. Almost to the point of lewdness. The burns are… not pretty.)
And I wrote a 10 page dick joke yesterday, so top that, blog pinch hitters! (Hahaha. I’m the only one that cares about such things, I know this.)
Then I will patiently wait until October, “Charlie.”
@Stoney:
Well, the beginning of THE PASSAGE is technically slow — I don’t think it opens “fast” — but, again, to reiterate, it works here. I’m not suggesting anything but. It hooked me from word one despite not being a “hit the ground running” kind of book.
As for the Big Green Egg: it’s still on the list. I’ve read up on it and know ppl who have it, and nobody seems to have a troublesome time with the cleaning, the cooking, the etc.etc. Surface area is of value, yes, and it’s why the Weber is its opposition. But surface area isn’t everything. In terms of smoking ribs, you can easily stack them with the stacking tray — and, in terms of versatility, the clay oven has more of it than a standard grill. Grills don’t do “slow, low and moist” very well. So, if the BGE does grilling *and* smoking, it has some added value in terms of what I can get out of it. Plus, charcoal gives you further versatility there, too.
So, I’m not sold on the BGE, no — the Weber is looking mighty nicey. But I’m not cultish toward any one device over the other. The BGE isn’t better or worse, just different.
And I demand to read the 10-page dick joke.
– c.
@Dave –
“Charlie?”
Where’d that come from?
– c.
http://www.geekosystem.com/inception-memes/
Cause you deserve to laugh!
I read at a frustratingly slow pace. I used to read at a rate of two minutes per page. I reckon I’m closer to a minute a page now but probably only on easy reads.
RE: Charlie
I think Dave is telling you he’s actually Cameron Diaz.
It seems we are at an impasse re: grilling. I just approach it in a whole ‘nother way, so mazel tov with whatever you pick, and may your steaks be juicy!
It’s the chapter I’m reworking today (and until it’s done right) for my book, so I might take you up on it, with expectations for red ink of the kind of that makes souls curl up and die. That’s how I like my critique, like my men: bloody and beaten. Just me?
The secret to reading more is easy. Stop watching TV. TV is a massive time sink, is rarely good or useful to the writers mind. There are, I suppose, are social aspects to watching, hanging with family in front of the tube, something to talk about with friends, etc… but really if reading is important (and it is to a writer) you must make the time for it and the time has to come from other diversions. TV is the easiest one to break.
@TNT –
That strikes me as a little antiquated — yes, some of television isn’t very good, but the same goes for material you read, too. THE WIRE is as good as any book I’ve ever read. Stories are stories — we shouldn’t feel married to one format over the other. Plus, that also assumes “writers” only write books. Writers have to write TV. They have to write movies. I speak from experience on that.
– c.
I was speaking generally because most of the people I know that write are writing prose. I realize I sound like an elitist when drop the TV. I’m not on some NPR soapbox spitting liberal propaganda but I can say for certain that reading has helped me craft ideas and stoked my imagination far more than TV watching did. I was simply saying that time for reading comes at the expense of other things. For me, TV is disposable. I seem to be constantly in the minority on your blog, however, and I’ll refrain from commenting in the future.
@TNT:
I agree that the TV sometimes needs to be a thing that goes away — I won’t dispute that. Something needs to move for those who want to read more, and the TV is one solid option. I just didn’t agree that television is good or useful — because for me it can and has been.
The last thing I want to do is discourage you from commenting here. Hopefully you’ll continue to comment. But just as I don’t expect you to agree with me 100% of the time, you shouldn’t expect me to agree all the time, either.
– c.
I don’t watch much TV. It’s not a moral stance, and has a lot more to do with being the lowest man on the totem pole in terms of remote rights. If Backyardigans, iCarly, or football is on, it gets precedent. I watch a handful of shows intermittently on DVR.
You’d think this would free up a vasty expanse of time to read and write more, but that’s not actually true. I find other ways to fritter away the time, trust me. I become obsessed with relationship questions on AskMetaFilter, or polishing off the last levels in some Kongregate game, or diving into deep analysis of dialogue patterns on TVtropes.
You wanna read more on paper, step away from the network, my man.
But look at those things I waste time doing. All of them go into my head and feed my understanding of the world, and my understanding of play, right? So all of it is relevant to my career, and more so than finally finishing my read of ‘The Name of the Rose’ ever would.
Oh oh oh and. PUPPET. SEX. http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002360
@Andrea:
Damn, you found, and gave, the PUPPET SEX.
We are all…
Well, enlightened isn’t the word, but there’s a word. Somewhere. A word.
Anyway, yes, you’re definitely making my point more elegantly than I did — reading books is well and good and I enjoy it and will continue to enjoy it. But storytelling is storytelling, writing is writing, and novels do not own the nature of stories (nor the quality of them, either). Actually, I do read a lot of non-fiction work, and once upon a time I made a case that for many writers it’s actually *more* important to read non-fiction than it is fiction.
But that’s a whole different enchilada. Filled with puppet sex. And guac.
– c.