Own The Door

And you alone may charge admission.

This is the twenty fifth edition of The Voice In Your Head Is Mine. The date is December 8th, 2020. If you're receiving this email and have no idea what's going on, well, fuck. I guess I blew it. Or maybe you blew it. Either way, you're here and this is Zac Thompson's weekly newsletter. 

It’s early Tuesday morning. Work for the year is winding down in a really lovely way, managed to get ahead and stay ahead on a few projects. Which means I’ll be able to take a Christmas break this December. Funny, it’s the one year where we can’t get together.

In any event, we’re at the end of 2020 and I somehow managed to get out twenty five of these since April. That feels like a feat in and of itself. I’ve got big plans for the newsletter in the new year. Which you’ll find out more about very soon. Right now, it’s about making this more of a destination for my writing than elsewhere on the internet. Stay tuned.

Writing Craft:

Trust Your Gut

This year, by my rough count, I’ve written about 400 pages of comics. Which is dizzying to even type out. A lot of this has yet to see the light of day, some of it won’t come out until late 2021, but I digress. Over these hundreds of pages, one thing has remained constant – the ever lingering presence of my gut.

I’m a process driven writer. I don’t script a page without a detailed outline. The outline isn’t complete until it has rough layouts for each page. And my scripts are heavily hyperlinked and filled with references to help communicate the scope of my vision. A lot of this is stuff that I compile beforehand. Which is why you see me dropping mood boards like these:

🍄 Zac Thompson 🍄 @ZacBeThompson

Today's writing mood board.

But, sometimes all this preparation means nothing in the moment when I’m scripting. After countless hours making sure I’ve got a carefully laid plan, it can take one pang in my stomach to blow it all up. Perhaps this seems like a strange impulse but I believe it’s key to making “good art”™.

Sometimes your gut will know something is off more than your brain. It’s important to listen to these impulses that something may be wrong with what you’re doing. Even if you don’t have the specific language to precisely pinpoint the problem – you owe it to yourself to investigate.

For all that prep work isn’t in vein. It brings you to the point where you’re comfortable enough to question and interrogate your narrative. Sometimes it’s just this lingering feeling that the character you outlined isn’t the one you’re writing anymore. Sometimes it’s simply being bored with what you originally set out to do, and your brain is trying to make it more interesting.

Sometimes your book will *just* speak to you.

Whatever it may be, you owe it to yourself to listen. Now, I wouldn’t say this is an opportunity to overthink and nitpick things into oblivion but rather an emphasis on listening to your own internal narrative as you work on something. Ask yourself:

• Are you satisfied with how this is turning out?

• Are your characters acting true to themselves?

• Are you doing everything you can to ensure this moment has the impact you want?

• Are you engaged/interested by what’s happening?

You owe it to yourself to interrogate your own work. If you feel an unconscious itch that something isn’t right – you’re feeling that for a reason. Your gut is often the first indication that you’re not fulfilling the potential of your narrative. And while it may not always be the most reliable indicator of the specific problem (which is to say, your gut may tell you the dialogue in a scene is off in some way, only for you to realize it was the setting/visuals within the scene) it will always steer you toward bettering your story.

LONELY RECEIVER

So it’s that time again! Lonely Receiver #4 is out this week. It’s my favorite issue of the series. It’s a tense descent into depravity, where sex is used to satisfy emotional vacancy. I think it’s easily the most horrifying thing I’ve ever written, which is saying something. I’m incredibly proud of this issue, it’s perhaps my favorite thing I’ve ever written.

It’s all rendered in these big beautiful moments of erotic horror by Jen Hickman, who completely outdoes themselves here. Jen’s been a dream collaborator on this book, where each and every page came with their insight and expertise on the story along with just stunning layouts and colors. Truly, my words don’t do their incredible art justice. But they’re made all the better by the incredible lettering of Simon Bowland, who manages to to offset the horror of this issue in really subtle and beautiful ways.

Things get weird.

This issue takes place over a year. It’s called A Fertilizing Destructive Event.

𝐑𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 /
/𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐯𝐞 / 𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐯𝐞
/𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐝 / 𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐞 / 𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬/
/ 𝐔𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐥 𝐈 𝐦𝐞𝐞𝐭 // 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐈 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞

Also, just need to take a moment and say thank you! I don’t know how, but Lonely Receiver is currently the best reviewed indie comic of 2020. I sincerely don’t have the words...

I BREATHED A BODY

Okay, shifting gears here. My new horror series I BREATHED A BODY hits on January 20th, 2021 and it’s time to bang the drum of promotion. Next week, I’ll send out a newsletter completely dedicated to the book and breaking down some of the influences on it, along with how we’re going to promote this bad boy. Needless to say, if you liked Lonely Receiver – you don’t want to miss this.

IBAB is a weird fungal nightmare set in the heart of Silicon Valley. It’s an indictment of the voyerism of violence on social media. It begins as a Cronenbergian tech thriller but quickly evolves into something VERY different.

Preview art and more coming next week. If you’d like to read an advance PDF of the first two issues, please do get in touch. I’d be happy to provide!

Here’s the Trevor Henderson cover to #1!

NOSTALGHIA

Over the weekend, I took in Andrei Tarkovsky’s NOSTALGHIA for the first time. It is about a Russian writer who travels to Italy to carry out research about an 18th century Russian composer but while there he becomes deeply homesick. The film is a musing on (obviously) nostalgia but also lures you into a dream-like trance.

Like most Tarkovsky films it uses long takes and a minimal story to communicate the sense that you’re wandering through a dream filled with noise. There are scenes within the film that beg endless rewatches. The spoken dialogue is pure poetry, to the point where I had to stop the film and take notes many times. The visuals are beyond gorgeous and speak volumes in tandem with the dialogue. It’s a strange depiction of memory, solitude, dreams, and our longing/separation from the world at large. It was the perfect film to watch at the end of 2020 and I can’t recommend it enough.

It flooded over me and lingers in my mind. Whole scenes have come back to me, begging me to revisit them a second time, projecting back into the idle spaces of my monotonous home life.

Consider it necessary viewing in a world where our memories have been dulled by our continual reliance on social media.

Tiny Scabs

• Working to compile some 2020 lists of things I loved. Stay tuned for that.

• This article on David Cronenberg’s Crash is a very good read on how to adapt a brilliant novel into something entirely different but utterly faithful to the source material.

• I also watched MANK on Netflix over the weekend. Can’t resist a new Fincher film. Still noodling on how I felt about it but my first impression is that I loved it. Oldman’s performance is worth your time alone. And hell, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ soundtrack is such a flex that I can’t help but marvel at it.

• Mushrooms on the mind. So why don’t you check out this fantastic short story by Seanan McGuire - SPORE.

• This week’s playlist:

Bye

Safe travels as we head into the new year, friends. The world is treacherous out there but we’re stronger together. Stay focused, stay sane, and remember to unwind - you don’t have to carry the entire burden of the world on your shoulders.

Z