Right around midnight I crossed the finish line of 50,000 words for the third November in a row. I actually finished before midnight, but then it literally took me many minutes to find the verification tool that would allow me to take credit for winning in the eyes of NaNoWriMo. Either I was just too tired to find it quickly, or the site redesign still needs some tweaking over there. I’ll blame the site for now.

I’m excited, pleased, and invigorated to have done this three years in a row and my current hope is to keep the momentum going for the time being. My lovely wife has taken up a part-time evening job, so at least for the foreseeable future, it is possible that I might keep writing and get this years novel into something more like a finished product.

I also have two other big projects I’m working on. One, Vlad the Vegan Vampire has gone on hiatus for the first time in three years. This is, in a way, sad but also exciting. We are reworking some ideas from a gag strip earlier this year and will be coming back with a long form graphic novel (published digitally) in the New Year.  Two, I am working on a tongue-in-cheek take on the story of the Little Drummer Boy, which I hope to self publish within the next week or so via the Kindle publishing service. It’s a short story I wrote a few months back as a reaction to my toddler’s full year of addiction to the Christmas carol of the same name. Obviously any news related to self-publishing will be posted up here as it comes.

 As an artist, I tend to be a visual person, so much so that I have a tendency to take notes in doodle or sketch format. Sometimes though, this just veers off into plain old vanilla procrastination, end result? Croissant craving whales.

Obviously November is a busy month around here, but I did find the time to make a little illustration demonstrating my feelings about the whole OWS movement and what’s going on in the US right now.

I’ve been doing plot analysis on some of my favorite stories and movies in order to try to boil down what makes a great arc (at least subjectively in my mind). In so doing I’ve come to a disheartening realization: Indiana Jones is not the badass I grew up thinking he was.

I will admit that Temple of Doom may fall outside of these conclusions, because I’ve never finished watching it as an adult. In my head it fits in the same space as the Star Wars Prequels, ie – never happened. But for the three others, Raiders, Last Crusade, and Crystal Skull, it is not Indy that defeats the bad guys. Sure, along the way he gets some good licks in: shooting the sword dude in the market, beating the giant mechanic into the airplane propeller, etc. All of that is great fun, but by the end of it Indy doesn’t win. It’s just good old Deus Ex Machina (or Deus Ex Aliens in Crystal Skull) that wins the day. The Nazis are not out done by Indy’s lighting whip, gun, or brains – no they fall prey to hubris and look directly at the Ark. Similarly, they choose poorly when it comes time to drink from a grail. I think at this point you get the point.

I’ll admit, I’m kind of bummed. I grew up with this character, thinking of him as some sort of ultimate badass – but really when it comes down to it the stories are telling us that he’s just along for the ride. He’s just like the rest of us, surviving on the whim of something else…possibly luck, God, or inter-dimensional aliens.

Comparing Indy to the ‘whiny’ Luke Skywalker, a hero that Indy is connected to by far fewer than six degrees of separation, highlights the issue at hand. Luke’s ultimate triumph in his first movie comes when he pulls the trigger and blows up the baddies super weapon mcguffin. You can argue ‘the Force’ did it, but ultimately Luke pulled the trigger. When all the Nazis died Indiana was tied to a post.

NaNoWriMo is almost here and I’m getting excited, which is really quite nerdy. I’m trying something a little new, I’m actually making an outline for a plot arc. Will I actually stick to it and use it? Who knows. I tend to discovery write by habit, but I also tend to not finish things and have a really hard time figuring out endings, so change isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The current plan is for a six-gun and sorcery adventure story in a post-civil-war alternate history type of setting. There will be magic, revolvers, Commanche warriors, and people who say “ain’t”. Should be fun.