NaNoWriMo 2017 Damage Report & Year in Review

NaNoWriMo has always been kind of a disaster for me every time I've tried. This year went better than most.

The Space Opera I'm working on evolved a lot from a third-person perspective largely following one character to a first-person narration from a different character. So most of what I wrote this month was relegated to backstory. It happened to the characters, and its good that I know what it was, but it wasn't clicking in a way that was satisfying. It was merely stuff happening.

Changing the viewpoint opened a lot up, since the main character now is a 20^th century man who's been stuck in a stasis capsule for 500 years and wakes up in the far future. It gives the reader something more relatable to latch onto, and someone who can have stuff explained to him without coming off like a complete rube like the previous viewpoint character (who spent his whole life working in a domed city, so he's kind of a sheltered rube anyway). The side effect is that now the original viewpoint character is a lot more likable too. 

So the actual story will be better for it, there's just no way it would be finished for NaNoWriMo. The sad irony here is that if I had a rigid outline of events, I might not have come to that conclusion so fast and wasted more pages on backstory. So I guess minimalist outliner it is.

That's okay. This year's been kind of a sea change in my writing patterns anyway. I've been trying to unlearn the Capital L Literary tricks that were drummed into me in college and go back to having much more fun when I'm writing. This is all thanks to the Pulp Revolution that I've jumped aboard. I recommend it too, since Robert E. Howard is ten times the writer John Steinbeck ever was, and is infinitely more entertaining to read. Helps that he'd rather tell a story about killing monsters than shove an ideology down your throat that turns people into monsters like Steinbeck. The old Pulp masters wrote at incredible speeds because they were working authors and not some trust fund babies drinking it up in Paris after WWI.

What I'm saying is that the Modernists are lionized as great talents, but they really weren't. Some were technically very adept wordsmiths, like James Joyce, but most were pompous, self-important sad sacks like Virginia Woolf or pompous trainwrecks who brought misery wherever they went and compulsively destroyed their relationships like F. Scott Fitzgerald. Screw them. A few sentence in A. Merritt's The Moon Pool were more effective at explaining the existential horrors of World War I than vast swaths of the Lost Generation's musings.

“It doesn't scare me one little bit, old boy. The pretty devil lady's got the wrong slant. When you've had a pal standing beside you one moment—full of life, and joy, and power, and potentialities, telling what he's going to do to make the world hum when he gets through the slaughter, just running over with zip and pep of life, Doc—and the next instant, right in the middle of a laugh—a piece of damned shell takes off half his head and with it joy and power and all the rest of it”—his face twitched—“well, old man, in the face of that mystery a disappearing act such as the devil lady treated us to doesn't make much of a dent. Not on me.”

-A. Merritt, The Moon Pool (1919)

So screw the Modernists. If their bad habits have infected the entirety of Respectable Literature, I'd rather roll around in the dirt with Howard, Merritt, Moore, & Burroughs. The people who stirred the imagination and the heart with wild tales of high adventure in the deep places of the Earth and among the stars.

Which doesn't mean its been an easy transition from Fugitive Academic to Pulp Journeyman. While working on adjustments, I've tried fixups of some older stories and submitted them to a few outlets. Fortunately, they were rejected by outlets I'd proudly submit to again once I GIT GUD. Still kind of sucks to get the rejection email, but if it doesn't hurt, then you didn't care in the first place, right?

There's another story I wrote this year for a project that's been put on a backburner for the time being (not by me.) I think its a firecracker, and the best thing I've written all year. It WILL be published in some form or another soon.

This month's space opera? That'll be done when its done. There's good days and bad days working on it, work schedule permitting. A lot of scribbled notes of things that are supposed to happen in it, which is the closest it'll get to an outline.

That's secondary to December's real project. A final revision of an urban fantasy story that I wrote back in 2006-2008, edited several times, revised a couple times, and submitted to agents a couple times to no avail. That was around 2010-2012, so right as ebooks started to get a true marketshare while the Tradpub dinosaurs still maintained the public face of “One True Path to Publishing Success.” I bought into it at the time, and why not? THIS IS HOW THINGS ARE DONE is a convincing statement when said with enough authority. Now in 2017, that monolithic structure is decaying and all sorts of new talent gets to play in the ruins.

Its not a huge revision at this point. Just going through and fixing grammar and sentence economy. The plot is pretty much set. Once that's done, its time to recruit some hapless lucky beta readers and move from there.

I'm pulling for this story, because after the first three chapters, I wrote the rest of it in a single month in 2008, which is the closest I got to Pulp Speed, and is where I want to get back to in 2018. That, and my early beta readers said it was a real page-turner, so there's that going for it too.

Book reviews will continue as I finish reading them. Legends Never Die Expanded Universe stuff has been popular, and I can bitch about Star Wars all day long, so those will be more regular. Probably going to do more Pulp Revolution stuff as well when I figure out a consistent disclosure policy (still not sure how I feel about Amazon reviews for people that I'm internet friends with). Movie reviews might slow down as I try and figure out how I want to format those better.

So that's the year in review, I guess. A. Merritt is my spirit animal, John Steinbeck is literary cancer, writing has hit a bumpy period of transition but is now leveling out and increasing productivity. A lot of seed planting for next year's harvest. 

Appendix N Review: The Metal Monster

After jumping face-first into old pulp novels this year, my personal standout (and author I've been most angry about never hearing of before) is Abraham Merritt. His 1918-1919 debut The Moon Pool was mind-blowingly fun and 1924's The Ship of Ishtar is a bona fide fantasy masterpiece. Seriously. Read it. Read them both. They're great.

In 1920, Merritt wrote The Metal Monster as the sequel to The Moon Pool featuring the same narrator/protagonist, Dr. Walter T. Goodwin, off on another exotic adventure. Originally serialized in the Argosy All-Story Weekly, it was later edited into a full-length book and published in 1941.

In it, Goodwin is traipsing around Central Asia near the Himalayas where he meets Dick Drake, adventurer son of an old acquaintance of Goodwin's. Then, investigating a strange aurora, they discover Martin Ventnor and his sister Ruth. Then they're chased by a group descended from a lost city of Persians (who war full battle armor and use spears and bows). With their guides dead and most of the pack animals run off, things look bad until a strange but beautiful and very, very powerful redhead named Norhala rescues them. Human, but also something else, Norhala can command electrical and magnetic forces and is connected to a bizarre city made up millions of ever-shifting living metal Things.

It should work, and in many places it does, such as in Merritt's specific style of beautifully grotesque action sequences. The beginning sets a remote and bleak mood fitting for the setting and the ending is wonderfully apocalyptic.

Unfortunately, its all the stuff in the middle that doesn't quite click.

The Metal Things are suitably weird, and possibly an alien hive mind. Its difficult to tell, since they can't speak human languages. Their origins are vague, as are their motives, but they're capable of draining direct energy from the Sun and causing sunspots (in a fun scene that actually takes into account the speed of light). The Things themselves can move and combine and shape themselves into various forms, including flying cubes, lumbering giants, and the very structures of their city.

They're weird and wonderful and predate John von Neumann's 1948 theory by 28 years and John Bernal's 1929 lecture “The World, the flesh and the Devil” anticipating self-replicating machines by 9 years. (Suck on that, Commies!)

They also have a staggering visual and “sociological” similarity to D&D Modrons, 63 years before their first appearance. And a full 94 years before Knack!

Seriously, they form up and move around like Knack

The bad part is that Merritt spends a staggering amount of time trying to explain how wondrous this is. The characters spend four full chapters on a flying cube trying to wrap their heads around what's going on. That's...not great pacing for an ADVENTURE story. There are great ideas being played around with, but the closer it gets to Hard Sci-Fi, the more it bogs down and frankly, starts to get boring.

Pacing issues give way to a very clear demonstration that Merritt likes to use certain stock characters: There's two intellectuals, except Martin Ventnor spends most of the book either worrying about his sister or in a coma. There's the two-fisted, upright man of action, except Drake is a pale shadow of the quirky Larry O'Keefe from The Moon Pool. There's a hunched, ugly but surprisingly strong servant figure, only Yuruk is more treacherous than The Ship of Ishtar's Gigi.

Then there's the elephant in the room: This is the third Merritt book I've read that prominently features an exotic, beautiful, immensely powerful redhead. Lakla, Sharane, and now Norhala.

Merritt clearly likes what he likes, and I'm more than fine with that.

Unlike the other two, Norhala is destructively ferocious when roused (as the Persians eventually learn) and never fully becomes a hero or a love interest. There's the barest hint of a connection between her and Goodwin, but that's all.

Ruth is no slouch either, despite being off-camera taking care of her comatose brother for most of the book. When it comes to shooting, she's got the biggest body count out of the four protagonists.

I'm beginning to suspect Merritt didn't know how to write weak women.

Finally got the hair right on this cover

For me, the biggest problem with the book is that the main characters remain observers throughout. Goodwin and Drake set out to try and find a solution to the predicament, but merely end up going on a Scooby-Doo chase through the Metal Monster city as they try to figure out what the hell's going on.

The plot carries on whether they get involved or not, and the climax is spent on a hill watching the fireworks.

I can see how this would impress H. P. Lovecraft (who crowed about the story in a letter) with its unfathomable alien beings dwarfing human understanding, but the characters don't glue the whole thing together. Its difficult to care and Goodwin's dry personality works better in The Moon Pool where he has the hot-blooded O'Keefe to bounce off of. There's no real antagonist to speak of. The Persian leader shows up for one chapter near the end and he's dealt with handily by Norhala (in one of the best sequences in the entire book)

The Metal Monster isn't bad. The Metal Monster is a great concept and Norhala is a scene-stealer. It just grinds itself to a halt describing the Metal Monster's mechanics and Merritt does action/adventure/romance much better in other stories.

This one's optional. 

Dead Reckoning (1947)

This one's a real hidden gem of deceit and twists and Humphrey Bogart turning in a solid performance in a lesser-known noir from 1947. It's Dead Reckoning.

Bogey plays Rip Murdock, former army captain and war hero. He's in a place named Gulf City looking for his wartime pal Johnny, who mysteriously hopped off a train in Philadelphia rather than receive a Medal of Honor from Uncle Sam. The two are supposed to meet, but one fiery car crash later, that's not going to happen, and Murdock runs afoul of a local mobster named Martinelli (Morris Carnovsky) and the woman Johnny was involved with. And what a woman Coral “Dusty” Chandler (Lizabeth Scott) turns out to be. A husky-voiced blonde who was a former singer at Martinelli's nightclub and is central to everything.

Directed by John Cromwell, the movie with a very solid look. Some scenes really stand out, like the one near the beginning where Rip chases Johnny in vain around some train cars at night, the final showdown and a couple others. Its solid, but there’s not a whole lot there that really pops out in terms of camera tricks and so on.

So, story by Gerald Adams & Sidney Biddell, adaptation by Allen Rivkin & screenplay by Oliver H.P. Garrett & Steve Fisher. That’s quite a few names for a 100 minute picture. Character dialogue is actually really solid, especially between Bogart and Scott. The best scenes are the ones in cars where Rip & Dusty are talking. I’d say the downside is that the plot is fairly easy to figure out at a certain point, though the film doesn’t try and cop out on the ending at least.

one of the most interesting traits that Rip has in comparison to other characters I’ve seen him play is that there’s a surprising level of misogyny in our hero. Not just like a “typical for the times” way, but the character’s got some real bitterness buried in there. And then of course he ends up falling in love with the femme fatale of the film and the relationship goes to some REALLY interesting places.

Dead Reckoning might not bring a whole lot of innovation to the table, but it is great seeing Bogart and the severely underrated Scott (who made quite a few noirs in her day) really get into things. Its a hidden gem of the genre. Totally recommended.

Panic in the Streets (1950)

I'm unrolling something I've wanted to do for some time now: Noirvember. I've loved film noir ever since I discovered the Maltese Falcon (the book) in high school, and have wanted to do a month specifically dedicated to it for a while, especially as an excuse to discuss lesser-known noir. So here we are.

Does an outbreak of plague belong in film noir? Offhand, I'd say no, but Elia Kazan proved me wrong with 1950's Panic in the Streets.

Dockside New Orleans. A poker game turns sour when one of the players, a recently arrived illegal immigrant, starts acting sick and leaves suddenly. His cousin tries to calm him down, but Blackie (Jack Palance in his first movie role) and his toadie Raymond Fitch (Zero Mostel in his second movie role) take issue with that and try to get their money back. One dead john doe later, they do, and dump his body into the harbor, where it washes up the next day for the police to find.

Except the autopsy reveals he was carrying pneumonic plague (a real version of the plague that infects the lungs rather than the lymph nodes). With no identity, no leads and a big port city to incubate it, Lt. Commander Clint Reed of the US Public Health Service (Richard Widmark), has three days to prevent an outbreak that could ravage the country. Along the way he butts heads with Police Captain Tom Warren (Paul Douglas) and strains his relationship with his wife, Nancy (Barbara Bel Geddes).

This was Kazan's last film noir before moving onto bigger pictures (his next movie would be A Streetcar Named Desire) and it shows a confident, technically adept hand behind the camera. The action sequences are few, but the ones that are there are excellently executed in prime noir style.

The middle bogs down a little bit, but there's a constant tension as the stress takes its toll on Dr. Reed as he tries to convince both government officials and simple dockworkers of the seriousness of the threat.

Panic in the Streets is a good film well executed. I'm not sure I'd put it in my film noir top ten, but I definitely enjoyed it more than Streetcar.

Recommended.