Solve Four Parallel Worlds
On rethinking success, finding community, and what I'm watching/reading lately...
Morning from the red sands of Prince Edward Island. In the time since we’ve last chatted - I feel like I’m finally home.
It’s taken weeks but we’re settling into a new normal here on the island and it’s honestly better than I could’ve imagined. For a long time now - the goal was to find a community of people dedicated to living intentionally with one another. The island is many things but at its heart - it’s a community. Since coming here we’ve been able to see live music with friends in a safe environment, picked Chanterelle mushrooms on a friend’s farm, and hiked countless trails.
We spent the weekend trying to get our groceries with as close to zero waste as we can imagine. Luckily, we’re connected to some incredible farmers here on the island, as well as local small businesses that make it (mostly) possible. So we ended our weekend with armfuls of local produce, bread, kombucha, tofu and other fun stuff. I know it may seem trivial but it’s really comforting to know where your money is going. Other than that, I spent most of my time in the yard. I didn’t really look at my computer once and honestly… it was incredible.
I have to take a minute and thank the folks who went out of their way to pick up and talk about Ka-Zar #1. It was easily the biggest launch of my career. Folks seemed incredibly pleased with the first issue and it’s honestly been a little overwhelming. So thank you for supporting our weird and wild reinvention of the character. We always knew it was going to be a little niche thing that existed as an anomaly in Marvel’s publishing line but the response has created a hunger for a few more like-minded stories. I’ve only really got the readers to thank for that - so THANK YOU. Doing this job never stops being surreal and I’m so grateful for the folks who continue to show up despite me releasing three books a year. 🙃 Get used to it, this is just the beginning.
Let’s get on with it. Here’s a handy table of contents:
Rethinking success in your craft.
Amal El-Mohtar’s excellent novella This is How You Lose the Time War.
Zank on Cinema: The Ruins, Pulse.
A playlist and some reading to get through the week.
Rethinking Success
Writing is a fickle art. It’s the type of thing that’s so incredibly internalized that often you’re sitting in front of a blank screen overwhelmed and under-motivated. You have to grind through the fog to get something on the page and sometimes that can lead to a feeling of dissatisfaction or frustration. Especially if you spend time looking at (or fixating) on what other’s have achieved. I can’t speak for other types of creatives but I suspect these feelings are rather universal when it comes to creating art.
It’s a hard mindset to get out of but I think it’s imperative to remember that success in your craft is defined entirely by you. You set the markers and only you know when you feel fulfilled.
I recommend everyone pull themselves away from measuring their idea of success on anyone’s terms but their own. Especially outside of social media. It’s hard and requires a lot of introspection but if you can find what success means to you - outside of an industry, sales numbers, accolades, etc - you’ll find more fulfillment in the day to day act of creation.
Which is to say, set the terms of success at something that’s achievable for you personally on a semi-regular basis. Set your goals low to start - so when you go over you feel great. Don’t set yourself up for failure. When I was just starting out my idea of success was simple: Finish a story on my own terms.
I had a vision of creating something that existed outside what I thought was marketable or saleable. I just had a story I was dying to tell and I wanted to finish it free from any input that could derail me or distract me from the merit I saw in the story. So you know, write the whole thing out, polish it, whatever just finish what you start. The mere act of completing what you set out to do is a huge success in its own right.
Set small daily goals that are within reach. Reward yourself when you hit those goals. Get up tomorrow and do it all over again. Success can be daily if you let it. Work on finding fulfillment from the mere act of creation because if you want to do something creative for a living - you have to create every day.
And if you don’t enjoy the doing, it’s going to be a rough time.
This is How You Lose the Time War
This past week I flew through Amal El-Mohtar’s This is How You Lose the Time War. The novella follows two warriors on opposing sides of a massive war (through time and space) starting an unlikely correspondence. What begins as a taunt builds into something that sweeps through all of time itself. It’s an epic science fiction story with incredible attention to detail, an expansive (and believable) rendering of parallel worlds, and a character piece. Imbued with the type of deep emotion that’s so often missing from stories like this - I can’t recommend it enough.
The prose is beautiful and at times reads like unrestrained poetry. Plus, one of the characters is part of an organic mass consciousness which means there are allusions and attention to the natural world everywhere within the story. I absolutely adored this book. At 190 pages it’s a speedy read and will linger with you long after you’ve finished the final chapter.
Zank on Cinema
Here’s what I’m putting in my eyeballs.
THE RUINS - A fairly typical group of teenagers thrown into a horrible situation horror movie that manages to expertly build in tension with a really tight script. This is something that has been on my watch list forever and I finally made the time for it last week. It’s by no means perfect but there’s enough incredible scares and gore in here that I really enjoyed it. The film is based on a novel by the same name by Scott Smith. He also wrote the screenplay and I believe most of the movie’s strength comes from his script. It’s a tight, effective little movie with a great eco-horror twist. Check it out!
PULSE - Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 horror movie about ghosts coming into our world via technology has largely been forgotten in the face of things like Ringu, The Grudge and their American remakes. What a travesty. This is the film that we should be revering. It’s an unnerving slow build that revels in the power of suggestion. A fantastic horror story about the loneliness and isolation wrought by using the internet. It manages to channel a profoundly modern fear despite being twenty years old. It has my highest possible recommendation.
Tiny Scabs
- I’ve been watching the third season of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story. This one’s subtitled: Impeachment. It’s a pretty fantastic look into the Monica Lewinsky scandal that helps fill in a lot of the blanks around what actually occurred. This was something that was going on in the periphery while I was growing up and I didn’t know much about it.
- The Worlds Oldest Known Forest was not like we imagined. A very interesting read. We’re still learning so much about Earth and the environments we share here.
- Why the US isn’t ready for clean energy by Vox. Check it out. Building a green future is more complicated than you think.
- This week’s playlist:
PEACE
Another two weeks down.
Remember, a good rule of thumb - leave things better than you found them.
- Z 09/21/21
Solve Four Parallel Worlds
Two warriors on opposing sides of a war through time and space... with that red and blue bird imagery on the cover... reminds me of Hickman's "The Red Wing!" Plus organic group consciousness? Mmm, two great themes that sound like they go great together. You've definitely got me interested.
Oh, and -- hooked on your Ka-Zar, also!
Just bought THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR. You sold me. Never heard of it but it sounds like an amazing book. Can't wait to get into it.
I'll have to read WHY THE US ISN'T READY FOR CLEAN ENERGY as well. Sounds like an interesting article because that is something that baffles me all the time. I don't see the downside. But then again maybe I'm just overlooking something.
Thanks for sharing. I always love these updates!