This week I punted on a story that just wasn’t going anywhere; I hate doing that, and I especially hate doing it when the editor for whom I was doing the story seemed so keen to have it, but it was frankly not my best work and I suspect he would have had to reject in the end anyway. Better in the long run at this stage to let it go so both he and I can devote the mental resources to something else.

This, combined with the gear-grinding on Arclight Adventures, has led me to reflect on just what it is I want to accomplish with my creative endeavors, why it is that I do them — and why I seem to have been having difficulty with them lately. And I think I’ve discovered at least one psychological factor that’s been holding me back, i.e., “fear of commitment.”

Y’see, Suburban Jungle and NeverNever consumed so much of my life for so long, that there is a part of me that’s frankly afraid to get that wrapped up in something again. I loved doing my comics, don’t get me wrong, but there were plenty of times when it could also be a draining, demoralizing, downright painful experience, and part of me is shying away from that.

Another issue has been my own underlying motivation for doing the work, and here I have not been pleased with what I saw in the mental mirror. Y’see, for both NN and SJ, my motivation was that I loved the work — I was making those comics because I wanted them to exist, I thought they were good and worthy things that would make the world a better place by being in it. This has been less true of my more recent projects. In fact, at the end of the day, what has been motivating me lately has been ego.

I don’t want the entirety of my creative output to be “ten years of webcomics and done.” I don’t want the history of pop culture to say of The Gneech: “Known, by those few who do, as the guy who did The Suburban Jungle.” I want to leave a bigger footprint.

A natural feeling, perhaps, but a terrible reason to be doing any major undertaking. Somebody recently described me in my LiveJournal as “dedicated to my own epicness” — said as a joke, yeah, but it still had the sting of truth to it. I should be thinking about the work itself, and the readers out there who will hopefully get something out it, not about what it will do for my prestige and/or fragile egg of a sense of self-worth.

So … what to do about it? Well, for starters, I’m blowing away all of my current “projects” (which have been more placeholders than actual work anyway), except for the Short Story Geeks Podcast, because I have made a commitment to my fellow podcasters on that one and I intend to honor that. But for everything else, as of this blog entry, I’m no longer “working on X” for a half-dozen half-formed ideas.

Second, I’m going to look at each of the things I have been working on with a critical eye and determine which, if any, are actually worth doing on their own merits, rather than because I think it’d be “good for my career,” so to speak. If a project can actually justify its own existence, then I will add it to my to-do list, even if the due date is “sometime after 2015,” but if not, it’s going into the proverbial sock drawer indefinitely.

I do know of at least one project which will move up in the priority list, a YA collaboration with Mrs. Gneech, actually, which we’ve been talking about on-and-off for several years now. We recently sat down and hashed out a lot of things about it, to the point where I think we have a pretty good vision for what it should be like. It’s not something that really builds on anything I’ve done before (except in the vague sense of having some fantasy elements), nor really is likely to have immediate appeal to my established audience, but it is something about which I can confidently say its existence would be a +1 for the world.

As for what other projects will be added back in, I couldn’t tell you at this stage. If you have one you’d like to advocate for, I’d love to hear it!

-The Gneech

So I live in the ‘burbs of Washington D.C., and its a very diverse, cosmopolitan place. Around here it’s common to encounter people from all over the world, who speak widely-varying levels of English. But even given the linguistic barrier, occasionally there are things that just make you go, “Buh?”

This morning, Mrs. Gneech and I were taking our usual 10:45 walk around outside the office when a scrappy young teenage guy carrying a backpack, looking bronzed from much walking in the sun, approached us and said in a vaguely-slavic way, “I am zorry, but can you tell me, vere is Target?”

This is Tyson’s Corner: there is nothing as pedestrian as a Target within 10 miles. If he wanted expensive designer clothes or possibly a diamond-encrusted wristwatch, he’d be all set. So Mrs. Gneech and I blinked at him and went, “Uhh…” as we tried to think of the best option for this wayward pedestrian.

“Oh, no, vait,” he said, and checked his crumpled sheet of scribbled notes. “I mean, vere is Perfect Pita?”

Well, I can certainly see how one might confuse “Target” with “Perfect Pita.” (Wait, what?) Fortunately, Perfect Pita was right in the same Coke-bottle-green skyscraper as our office, so all we had to do was point at it and say, “In the lobby, all the way back, on the right.” He thanked us and went his way, and we went ours.

Naturally, he went up to the side door that read “Lasik Procedure,” and wondered where the pitas were. Fortunately, from there it was easy for him to spot the main lobby doors and go on in. By the time we were finished with our walk and coming into the building, we met him coming out again, after having spent a grand total of maybe 30 seconds inside.

Worried that he might have just stepped into the lobby, not seen the Perfect Pita, and stepped out again, Mrs. Gneech asked, “Did you find it?”

“Uh, yes, zank you,” said the kid, smiled in vague embarrassment, and took off, leaving us to wonder what the story was.

“I’m geocaching,” suggested Mrs. Gneech.

“It’s on my ‘bucket list,’” was my response.

Hell of it is, we’ll never know. But life is like that, around here.

-The Gneech

So it’s a rainy day … tornado watch even. And we step out the door to run some errands only to be surprised by a frog on the patio. “Oh, neat! A frog! … Er … wait, there’s something wrong here…”

The frog, sitting in a fairly normal attentive-frog pose, was quite dead, with its mouth hanging open and a purple-black tongue lolling out. Yeeks. Ate some pesticide, perhaps? We don’t put any out ourselves, but who knows what the neighbors do. The frog has no visible wounds, so it’s not like some predator left a half-finished job on the porch. It looks for all intents and purposes that a frog just decided our porch was a good place to die.

Okay, creepy. We have a random dead frog on a cold and stormy day. But we also have errands to run, so random dead frog is left where he is.

Later, we’re back home and taking care of stuff and I happen to look out on the patio: random dead frog is still there, sitting attentively…

…facing the other way…

Time for the jibblies. O.o WTF, random dead frog? And why is it that you’re ten inches closer to the door?

Mrs. Gneech decides it’s time for the random dead frog to go. So we head out to the patio, to find that the random dead frog is now facing in a third direction. ¬.¬ But in short order it’s scooped up in a plastic bag and tossed into the trash. No getting in and laying a curse on the house for YOU, random dead frog!

Still.

WTF random dead frog.

-The Gneech

PS: I’m actually fairly sure that what happened is that the random heavy spurts of rain caused puddles which floated the dead frog around as they washed off the porch. But I didn’t see this with my own eyes, so it’s just as conceivable that we had a haunted frog on the porch. If it reappears after having been thrown away, we’ll know to call in the local exorcist.

Well! I’m home after what has been a … unique … Dragon*Con. You remember all that stuff that happened to Mrs Gneech and me? The pet hotel debacle? The fall on the escalator? There was also a fire at the hotel. What a weekend!

On the other hand, I met some cool new folks, completed my long-worked-on collection of MST3K signatures, got a ton of development work done on the new comic, and took part in a World Record attempt (for largest collection of steampunk costumes in a photo).

As you can probably tell, I spent a lot of time in the steampunk track, where apparently I fit in like the proverbial bug in a rug. Having hitherto not been much involved in the contemporary steampunk scene, I spent most of the time simply going to panels and soaking up what people had to say, but I was pleased to discover that a lot of the people in the fandom have similar opinions to mine in regards to such things as the preponderance of brown, the rather silly nature of goggles on a top hat, and the fact that “steampunk” is kind of a crap term. It was fun to sort of come into it as an outsider (Technomancer’s Toybox and similar things notwithstanding) and still feel like I had something to offer. One of the editors for Kerlak Publishing, when I mentioned that I’d be starting a steampunk(-ish) comic early next year, perked right up and was eager to be in the loop about it.

As for Dragon*Con itself … it’s suffering from growing pains in a major way. The ratio of costumers to non-costumers took a serious nosedive this time around (particularly as many members of the 501st Legion didn’t come this time around, I hear); and there were entirely too many panels that you simply couldn’t get in to see. I’m seriously worried that Dragon*Con will fall prey to the famous Yogi Berra quote, “Nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded.” If I wanted to go to a con where I couldn’t get into any panels, couldn’t navigate the dealer room for the crowd, and couldn’t see any costumes, I’d go to San Diego Comic-Con. There are also way too many non-geeks (who don’t buy badges and don’t support the con) crashing the party. One commenter I heard referred to it being like “Nerdy Gras” — partiers with nothing better to do are coming to get trashed and get free entertainment by looking at the geeks.

The good news is, people are starting to recognize the problem; what steps can reasonably be taken to deal with it, have yet to be seen. Personally, I think we should start a major advertising campaign talking about what a bunch of totally uncool nerds the people at Dragon*Con are and how unless you’re the kind of person who thinks math and historical romances make an interesting combination, you’ll be bored stiff there.

Anyway! I did have a very good time, down to sitting right among the MST3K cast members in the audience of the “Servo vs. Servo” panel and heckling Kevin Murphy and J. Elvis Weinstein with them. Got a lot of work done, met a lot of cool new people, and generally had a ball, so overall I’d say it was a smashing success.

-The Gneech

I thought about doing a spoof video of myself geekgasming as I opened the box a la Stephen Fry, I really did. But in the end, I was thwarted by the fact that Mrs. Gneech wasn’t here to operate the video camera, and that I was too bouncy to wait.

So, how is it really? Is it like a laptop? Or just an iPod? What’s the verdict?

Granted, I haven’t exactly been running the thing through its paces, but I did buy the limited 30 days of 3G access and took the thing with me on some errands, I played the first few minutes of “Sam and Max: The Penal Zone,” and now I’ve got it on the keyboard and I’m posting to my blog. So it’s not a bad little test. I haven’t tried the funkadelic “Periodic Table App” or keyboard toy — I’m looking for a gadget I will actually use, particularly when I’m at conventions. Really, that’s what I wanted it for, to replace my Old and Busted laptop with some New Hotness.

Overall, I like it. While it is heavier than it looks, it’s not so heavy as to be unmanageable. The interface takes a little getting used to, (although people with an iPod/iPhone/iWhatever already will have a much easier time) and the apps need a little more baking. On the other hand, sliding, swiping, and touching the screen quickly become second nature and it won’t be long before you’ll wonder how you managed so long struggling with a mouse.

Regarding the apps, most of the ones ready out of the gate are just iPhone apps with either a big black margin, or blown up to double size and fuzzy as all get out, so they will take some time to catch up. Stanza particularly suffers here, because if you double the size of the app, and then shrink the font down in order to get more words on the screen, they’re still fuzzy from being blown up. Guh. That would quickly give me a headache. The iBook and Kindle apps are much nicer in this regard. iPad native apps that make better use of the larger screen real estate are much better, and by this time next year there will be a lot of awesomeness in that department. (I haven’t tried out the native word processor yet; I’m not sure if I want to go that route or just write to the cloud with Google docs or something. I have yet to see how much writing on the road I’ll actually want to do.)

I will say, the shiny shiny screen can be a turnoff, especially once it’s covered in thumbprints. It’s not a deal breaker, but it is just a tad annoying.

Still, the iPad is exactly what I expected it to be — the first generation of a new and all together different type of computer. This is going to be the “pushbutton easy” machine that will start showing up everywhere — in the doctor’s office to call up patient records, in the waiting room at the doctor’s office in place of a magazine or portable game, in the kitchen looking up recipes, lying in bed and watching that episode of Doctor Who you missed last week, sitting on the tray in front of you on the plane and showing a movie you actually want to see. It’s the internet from your comfy chair. It’s your e-mail while you’re riding the bus. It’s gonna be big.

That said, I don’t necessarily recommend running out and buying one now, unless you particularly want one right now. For me, the iPad came at just about the perfect time, as I was looking to replace my laptop anyway and had the money allocated to spend. Certainly, the apps could use some time to cook, and no doubt next year’s model will have a camera and better multitasking (i.e., any at all).

But if you find yourself gazing longingly at one and you’ve got the money to spend, I say go for it. You won’t be disappointed.

-The Gneech

As you might expect, Mrs. Gneech and I frequent bookstores regularly, and one evening as we wandered into the nearest Barnes & Noble there was an author doing a reading of a humorous vignette from her new novel. So even though I’d never heard of her, I listened to the reading, then bought a copy and waited around the rest of the evening to get her to sign it.

The book was There’s a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble by Laurie Notaro, whom I found out later is known primarily for her humor column (and collections thereof, The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club). …Going to Hell was her first straight-up fiction piece, and as the vignette she read put it right into the same general vein as my Brigid and Greg stories, I figured that this was an author I should get to know.

Life being what it is, of course, I only now finally read it. Though not for lack of trying — I expect I must have picked it up and put it back down about ten times over the two years it spent sitting on the “to read” pile. But I’ll get to the reasons for that shortly.

The story, in a nutshell: Maye Roberts is a reporter from Arizona (Hmm…) whose husband is offered a post at a small college in the tiny little town of Spaulding, Washington. And while the town is picturesque and full to the brim of quaintness (having been built on the fortunes of the country’s largest sewer pipe factory, then turned into a haven for ’60s dropouts and/or draft dodgers returning from their Canadian exile), it is also insular and cliquish, which makes it close to impossible for Maye to make any friends. After several gruelingly-detailed (and heavy on the zany madcap-ness) false starts, Maye makes one last desperate stab: she enters the Sewer Pipe Queen Pageant. This causes her to lock horns with the college Dean’s wife, an Old Queen (as former winners are known) herself who essentially regards herself as the actual queen of the town, and has her own favored protégé in the running. And when Maye’s sponsor dies in a freak accident involving a bug in her hair and a vicious raccoon, Maye has to seek out the Queen of Queens, the mysterious Ruby Spicer, who was the most glamorous Sewer Pipe Queen ever but who vanished halfway through her reign.

The Good

Laurie Notaro is a funny writer. She has a deft hand at setting up a situation and then making an amusing comment on it. She’s also very good at picking out the significant detail that tells volumes with just a few words.

Maye tried to smile as she passed the biddy, but the combination of decades’ worth of cigarette smoke and the eau de doggie from the numerous boxers that were standing guard — even several who had come into the room since Maye’s arrival to evaluate the visitor — made smiling a difficult challenge indeed.

The crone, dressed in a yellow terrycloth sweat suit with several burn holes directly below the neckline, closed the door and motioned for Maye to sit on the couch. As she did, Maye looked up at the grungy yellow-stained walls, the stinky brown barkcloth curtains, and the mud-colored bald carpeting, all shellacked with a grimy, dull film of exhaled nicotine and exuding its coordinating smell. Christ, she thought, it’s like this woman is living inside of a diseased, shabby lung.

Also, once the plot gets going, it becomes a very engaging book. That, however, is a bit of a problem.

The Bad

As I said, I picked up this book several times, started to read it, and put it back down again. Forcing myself to soldier on through this time revealed why: the story doesn’t actually start until you’re literally halfway through the book — and then once it starts, it runs hell-for-leather toward the ending in the apparent realization that it only has 150 pages left to cover it all.

The first half of the book is a semi-picaresque series of episodes showing Maye’s failed attempts to win friends, nearly joining a coven when she thought it was a book club, falsely claiming to be a vegetarian to get into the local vegan society, and so on. Most of it has little bearing on the meat of the plot, and some of it, I regret to say, is just plain wasted space. You could (and probably should) delete the entire first chapter in Arizona, which other than giving a misleading first impression of the protagonist, serves no story value at all. It would have been much stronger to just open with Maye and family walking up the steps to their new house with boxes in hand.

The other problem with this first half, and this can be the kiss of death for humor, is that it feels forced. Spaulding, Washington is TV Land’s idea of a quirky small town, where the mailman kicks over your trash can because he refuses to walk around it, where the local vegetarian shrieks that you are a cow-murderer, and even the clerk at the bookstore gets plastered and shouts about her period. There are no funny observations about everyday life here, because everything and everybody is a caricature and nothing is everyday. Whenever somebody new shows up, the reader finds themselves thinking, “Okay, so what’s this person’s wild-and-crazy shtick?” Of course, Ms. Notaro is known for quirky anecdotes — that’s been the main basis of her career — so it may be that readers who already knew her work were coming to the book looking for just this sort of thing.

The Ugly

Nothing to say here. The prose is very clear and clean, and Ms. Notaro has a very engaging writing style. Really, if she had taken a ruthless editing pen to the first half of the book, and then more satisfyingly fleshed out the second half of the book, I’d have only good things to say.

The Bottom Line

There’s a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell is a good book from the mid-point onward; and even the funny vignettes at the beginning have their moments, I just wish they’d done more to earn their page count. For what it’s worth, her new book (Spooky Little Girl) looks quite interesting and I plan to pick it up this evening.

-The Gneech