News, Other Stuff

The other day I was asked by a fellow writer, “Do you find revising fun?”  I said yeah though I wondered what she meant by fun.

The first draft is fun—just go with it and see what happens on the page. It doesn’t matter if the character is bald in the first paragraph and then on page three he has curls protruding from his scalp like twisted phone cords. Or the story is told by one character and then turns into another character’s story by the end. The first draft is raw and it allows freedom to play because it’s just that—a first draft and it can and will always change in the revisions.

Revisions are where all the work happens. The many hours, all the questions: What if this happens? What if that happens? What if I move this over here? Or over there? And on occasion: What if this whole thing just sucks?

In that way, no revisions aren’t fun because they are work and I’ve never associated work with fun not even when I worked at the Warner Bros store surrounded by “fun” (the Batman-ear hat they made me wear, not so fun though store guests got several laughs).

But it’s during the second or third or even fourth revision that the story is finally being told in the way it wants and needs to be told. It’s being chiseled, discovered, uncovered, and in that sense it is fun.

It’s actually exhilarating. There is something about putting in all that work even with all the doubt and time that when the story is “done” (Da Vinci said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”) there’s this adrenaline rush followed by a Fuck Yeah! maybe a fist pump, and a snack that may or may not include beer.

However, my zone of accomplishment is short-lived because there’s always the next story, the next revision to get to.

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What happens when a psychic who can’t control her powers gets institutionalized?

Bryce Dekker is a young woman that has suddenly been given extraordinary power, a psychic link to her surroundings. In her desire to help others, she becomes entangled in a murder case where her knowledge of specifics has made her the #1 suspect.

Now mandated to undergo observation at Werthem Glen Sanitarium, Bryce is at the mercy of her fellow patients. Surrounded by madness and unable to control her power, she is having a hard time separating her thoughts from the insanity around her.

Bryce has found only one way to keep track of reality, and that’s by keeping a record of the visions and voices in her head. She has become the vessel for those around her, telling the stories of their illness. She is the biographer of their insanity. Their stories have become hers, and Bryce’s only hope is that by embracing the madness, she finds her sanity.

Asylum Doors is a serial comic we'll run every Wednesday.  See the previous installment here.  See next week's installment here.

Chris Prunckle is a graphic designer, illustrator and comic book artist banished to the suburbs of Chicago. Though an advertising industry minion by day, he slaves his nights away creating a mad little world.  He’s previously worked on the comics Fisted, Bonesetter, and The Scarab.  Follow him at @midjipress.

Zak Smith is known for his collection of illustrations inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (one illustration for every page), his series 100 Girls/100 Octopuses, and his memoir We Did Porn, about his time working in alt-porn. His art tends to be hysterically convoluted and intricate; he paints beautiful women (sometimes nudes, other times sexually explicit); his colors are bold and figures exist on a sliding scale between high-brow illustration and synthetic realism.

I met up with Zak Smith at a restaurant in downtown Chicago in the winter of 2012. He was having lunch with a small group of MFA students from School of Art Institute of Chicago, who had brought him to Chicago as a guest lecturer. Needless to say, it wasn’t difficult to find them among the typical Loop lunch crowd. They welcomed me to their table, bought me lunch, and let me eavesdrop on their conversations regarding Smith’s time as a graduate student at Yale, his work, and personal life. Smith seemed at home with them and responded to their questions with his unique blend of intelligence, self-effacing humor, and honesty. At a certain point, I jumped in and we had the following conversation. 

JS: How would you describe your subject matter and style?

ZS: I never like that question because you have the art right there. Presumably this interview will be published next to some pictures. I don’t like the process of describing things, which can be boring, but if I had to describe it, which I do once in a while, I would say that they’re dense, labor intensive, and intricate. They’re busy and they seem itchy—it’s like they’re trying to get off the page. It’s like there is this little vibrating thing in all my pictures. It’s not on purpose. It just happens. It’s got this this caffeinated look.

JS: It seems that you’re actively participating in two traditional painting genres: female nudes and still lifes. But you mash them together in an interesting way. There will be the female nude as the center of the canvas but she is surrounded by all this stuff.

ZS: I think part of it is that in other art and media, I hardly see anything that looks real. It doesn’t look like life. The people look off. Their apartments look empty.

Our new book, our most ambitious from a cost and size perspective:  a 10x10, 240 page glossy anthology of stories, comics, and interviews about beds and the things that happen there - THE WAY WE SLEEP is now available electronically for less than $5 at AMAZON.COM.  It's only the text, not as pretty, but the stories are just as great.  Dowload now here.

TWWS features stand-out pieces from acclaimed authors, graphic artists, and comedians including Etgar Keret, Ron Barrett, Jeffrey Brown, Steve Himmer, Billy Lombardo, Joe LoTruglio, Michael Showalter, The Residents, Mary Roach, David Wain, Brandi Wells, and Julia Wertz.  Edited by husband-wife duo C. James Bye and Jessa Bye.

"The Way We Sleep represents the very best of what a book can do that no other narrative medium can touch; it's part anthology, part art-book, part interview, part graphic novel, part confessional, part essay, part sociological study. The subject matter here ranges from sex to family to coming-of-age, all rendered with a delightful wit, brevity, and charm. From Mary Roach's study of insomnia to Tony Millionaire's depiction of epic torpor to the Resident's exploration of sleepwalking, The Way We Sleep is as intimate, poignant, and humorous as anything whispered beneath the sheets."

-- Joe Meno, author of best-selling novel Hairstyles of the Damned

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What happens when a psychic who can’t control her powers gets institutionalized?

Bryce Dekker is a young woman that has suddenly been given extraordinary power, a psychic link to her surroundings. In her desire to help others, she becomes entangled in a murder case where her knowledge of specifics has made her the #1 suspect.

Now mandated to undergo observation at Werthem Glen Sanitarium, Bryce is at the mercy of her fellow patients. Surrounded by madness and unable to control her power, she is having a hard time separating her thoughts from the insanity around her.

Bryce has found only one way to keep track of reality, and that’s by keeping a record of the visions and voices in her head. She has become the vessel for those around her, telling the stories of their illness. She is the biographer of their insanity. Their stories have become hers, and Bryce’s only hope is that by embracing the madness, she finds her sanity.

Asylum Doors is a serial comic we'll run every Wednesday.  See the previous installment here.  See next week's installment here.

Chris Prunckle is a graphic designer, illustrator and comic book artist banished to the suburbs of Chicago. Though an advertising industry minion by day, he slaves his nights away creating a mad little world.  He’s previously worked on the comics Fisted, Bonesetter, and The Scarab.  Follow him at @midjipress.