Savage Boy in a Savage Land

On the future of this newsletter, keeping yourself organized, and Ka-Zar #1!

Welcome to The Voice In Your Head Is Mine. The date is September 7th, 2021 and this is Zac Thompson's newsletter.

Good morning from the rainy and windy shores of Prince Edward Island. We’re firmly in hurricane season and steadily marching toward Fall. While I’m not thrilled about the former I couldn’t be more pleased about the latter. Fall is my favorite season. Sweaters, crisp air, beautiful colours in nature, Halloween - there’s nothing better. It’s the perfect time to curl up under a blanket and watch horror movies. Which is likely how I’ll spend my next two months.

Me after watching horror movies for 36 hours straight.

Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how to use this space. Especially as it relates to being online elsewhere. I think for the most part this is where you’re going to find me in the coming year. This newsletter is a place where I can tell you how I really feel about things and connect with those reading my work without some asshole showing up to argue with me in bad faith. That means a lot to me.

Others have said it much more eloquently than me - but part of being a creator (or creative at all) is having the time and the space to think quietly. I believe this newsletter is the best of both worlds. A place to connect and a place to go off about the things I love. So the current goal is to basically reduce my Twitter to a steady drip - promoting my work when necessary and directing folks over here. 

Eventually, the goal is to push this thing to a paid subscription model (I know, I know) but I just spent a week figuring out how to make that valuable to folks on here with a collaborative storytelling initiative based around a comic I’ve got coming next September. There will be more as it develops. But we’re essentially going to build this big world and create all kind of different ways to experience it - the comic only being a small piece of that puzzle. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s get on with it.

Here’s what we’re diving into this week:

• Writing Craft: Keeping Yourself Organized

• Timothy Morton’s All Art is Ecological

• Ka-Zar #1 Launches!

• Zank on Cinema: Body Heat and Shang Chi

• Some reading material and a playlist to get through the week.

Writing Craft:

Keeping Yourself Organized

Right now I’m actively writing six different projects. Each is in different state of development. Each have a different list of demands on my time. For those who are curious about what I’m up to, here’s the running list:

PROJECT:

• MAZE -  A survival horror miniseries. Blending my love for things like Battle Royale and Funhouse into something fucking insane. Issue #1 is currently being drawn. No idea when this will release.

• TIAMAT - A giant science fiction horror maxiseries. Been talking about this one as a Cronebergian haunted house story. Currently in the outline stage.

• XII - A historical fiction/noir miniseries based on true events. About halfway through scripting this series. The artist should be starting in late October and I should be entirely done scripting before they ink a single page.

• BRUSH  - A new miniseries co-written with Lonnie Nadler. A sci-fi/horror story about making art and all the pain/pleasure that comes with it.

• SOIL - To early to even give any details about this one. :)

• MOLLUSC - An introspective horror story about a man discovering his past and (many) potential futures.

I’m not entirely sure if this is going to be helpful for folks reading this but I figured I’d give it a shot. With numerous demands on my time - I’ve had to find a way to carve up my day to ensure I’m staying productive and hitting deadlines. When I was first thrown into writing more than one series, I found the process to be overwhelming and I basically lost a year of my life just scrambling to keep up. Evenings and weekends were nonexistent. All I did was work. Now I’ve got some rhythm and I hope sharing it may help others keep themselves organized.

Don’t wanna look like a dingus? Keep yourself organized.

First thing’s first. I’d recommend making a timeline/spreadsheet of all the things you need to get done in the year. The key dates that are associated with that particular project and giving yourself some way to denote your progress on said project (I promise it’s super satisfying). Here’s a small snippet of what my workflow document looks like:

Once you have everything in one place. You can start prioritizing what needs to be done when. You’ve got everything at a glance and can make informed decisions about your time and workflow. The goal is to create a system that allows you to have conversations about new work on the fly (because I promise you, something cool will come along and destroy your meticulous schedule).

Because I’m constantly in the process of building out new stories at the same time as I’m supposed to be turning in pages, I’ve had to carve up my day. So here’s what a normal daily schedule looks like for me. I hope it helps:

• 8AM - 10AM - Read quietly without social media. A dedicated period where I’m not trying to be productive and just allowing myself to read at my own pace. Most of the time, the thing I’m reading is a book for research - so this inevitably gets ideas flowing. I give myself plenty of time to take notes and get inspired. The idea is just to get my mind into the flow for working.

• 10AM - 12PM - Outlining time. Basically I use this time to take everything that got me excited while reading and compile those notes into something workable and useful. The goal for these two hours is to allow myself full license to idea generate without the confines of seeing if it’ll work on a page/scene/whatever. Sometimes this is directly related to what I’ll be working on later in the day/other times it’s a completely unrelated project from what I need to write.

• 12PM - LUNCH BREAK. I’m pretty strict about this now. As I used to go hours without eating and wreck my body.

• 1PM - 6PM - Dedicated writing time. I find I’m most productive in the afternoon and get my best work done after I’ve been up for a few hours. The lunch break allows me to context switch so I’m able to sit down with a clear head and just get pages out. The goal here is to get at least 4 pages done a day or spend a dedicated chunk of time revising a script to get it ready to go out the door. Normally this is the point of the day where I close my office door, turn my phone on silent and go dark until the work is done.

Like I said, I don’t know if this is helpful but I’ve found carving my day into blocks really helps me stay productive. It’s also helpful to set goals for myself that keep me moving. Writing is a marathon, not a sprint, so it’s more important just to get some pages out and keep pushing forward. With this kinda schedule - I can’t afford to be too precious about anything. I’m not coveting a script for months at a time trying to fine-tune it into infinity (you’ll go insane if you go down that path).

The idea is create something that works for you and hold to it. You don’t have to be perfect every day but the idea is to create some structure to your workflow so you can kinda signal to your brain about what to think about when.

All Art Is Ecological

This past week, I devoured Timothy Morton’s new book All Art is Ecological. It’s essentially a collection of essays talking about humans relationship to art and how that relates to the environment around us. It’s also a deconstruction of how art lacks the means to talk about the environment/climate change in a meaningful way and highlights some of the techniques we can use to change our thinking about the natural world. Thanks to climate change, we exist the middle of an era that feels both incredibly surreal and all-encompassing. There are no easy solutions when it comes to that vague sense of discomfort but this book will give you the language to start processing it.

If you’re a longtime reader of this newsletter than you know I’ve got a passion for things that talk about climate change and how we can be more mindful of what’s happening to our planet. If you’re struggling with the blazing fires on the west coast, and the hurricanes pounding the east coast - I highly recommend this.

KA-ZAR: LORD OF THE SAVAGE LAND

Tomorrow marks my return to Marvel Comics in Ka-Zar: Lord of the Savage Land #1. Working with Germán García, Matheus Lopes, Joe Caramagna has been an absolute dream come true. We’ve tried to lay it all out on the table for y’all and do something completely different in the Marvel Universe. The book is absolutely gorgeous and is easily the most me thing I’ve ever done at the publisher.

I have to give huge props to my editors Sarah Brunstad and Kat Gregorowicz who absolutely empowered me to do something radically different here. I think I can say for certain that it’s most comic book writers dream to reimagine a legacy character like this. So I tried to swing for the fences and create something that would inspire generations to come.

This book is a blend of urgent eco-horror, a condemnation of colonialism, a channeling of climate anxiety and a big bombastic superhero book. It’s a love letter to everything I adore about the medium and my whole heart is on every page. The entire team went above and beyond and I can’t wait for folks to check it out tomorrow.

Marvel’s mighty jungle lord will never be the same.

Early reviews have been very kind. So, I do hope you’ll join us.

Zank on Cinema

Check this shit out, y’all.

BODY HEAT - Lawrence Kasden’s (Empire Strikes Back) 1981 neo-noir about a sleazy lawyer who gets wrapped up in a conspiracy knocked me on my ass. The film takes place during a particularly intense Florida heatwave, and follows inept South Florida lawyer Ned Racine (William Hurt) as he begins an affair with Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner). I know that sounds pretty run-of-the-mill but the film slowly mounts into something totally unexpected.

I don’t want to give anything away but it totally undermines all the tropes you’re expecting it to fall into while taking its time building a deliberate character study of a man who appears to be suave but lacks any real substance.

SHANG CHI - Look, I’m pretty burnt out on all things Marvel Cinematic Universe right now but I found this movie to be a blast. It feels like both a tribute to the Hong Kong action flicks of old while finding its own footing in the crowded world of superhero movies. The action is cleanly shot and features some incredibly kinetic fight scenes that are legitimately a joy to watch. There’s a lot of nods to Jackie Chan - which I adored.

The story is heartfelt and the characters have a lot of depth. Simu Liu is a fantastic lead and is probably the perfect Marvel hero. Like most of the MCU films - there’s a pretty jarring CGI set piece at the end that really loses marks for me. But that’s to be expected, I suppose.

Little Scabs

• I really loved this piece from NeoText. It’s a wonderful look into the work of Grant Morrison, Superman, and the distinctly American idea of “The bomb”.

• If you’re Canadian, this is your reminder that we’ve got a Federal election coming up. Please register to vote. Our country is in dire need of young voters actually turning up this time around.

• Channel 5 has a Chet Hanks documentary coming out and it looks like it’s going to be something really special. Here’s the trailer.

• This week’s playlist:

Peace

Hey, trust is rare.

Hold it close.

Z - 09/07/21