(And now you have an idea how long ago I attended.)

But then, after a while, I wouldn’t be able to stand hearing the fragments of conversation and laughter, and out into the hall I’d return.

Dear Internet friends, you are now the metaphorical equivalent of that hall.

So despite the fact that I’ve not yet finished revising the script for Bad Houses*, I’m returning to whatever passes for my regular blogging schedule. I’ve actually been making tiny notes about things to blog about, even: Graphic novel process nerdery. Ancestral artifacts. Various books I wish to extol. More excerpts from my dad’s sf fanzines. Why I like hot yoga. Why I like Scrivener. Inconvenient ideas. The search for the One True Bag. Etc.

For now, I’ll just point you toward a chance to win a signed copy of The Rules for Hearts from the excellent Books on the House. But stay tuned.

And if there’s something you want me to talk about here that’s not included in the above list, by all means, let me know in a comment!

*I’m far enough along that I feel okay about re-emerging. Really.

Nevertheless, this is the entry in which I am telling you that I am not going to write another entry until I am done revising Bad Houses. Because, despite the empathy I demonstrated toward myself for indulging in non-revision activities in my previous entry, seriously? I need to get this DONE.

In The Meanwhile, y’all are encouraged to:

• Listen to me read all of Empress of the World and a good chunk of The Rules for Hearts in a series of podcasts
• Read several short comics I have written
• Follow me on the Twitters, because I will probably have a thing or two to say of the 140 characters or less variety.

Wish me luck? Any revision protips to share?

That was the whole point of not going! God! Slacker.

Well, I did manage to get in four yoga classes, several miles of bicycling, a chunk of time with friends I don’t see nearly often enough, and a reread of one of my favorite books ever. Not to mention catching up on the laundry. And some of the time, while I was doing all those things, I was thinking about the graphic novel.

Oh right, “thinking.” Like that counts.

Um, would you rather we revise without thinking?

You’re missing the point. It’s important that we feel bad about not getting the work done!

Which work are you talking about?

The WORK! Dialog! Panel descriptions! Words in the damn Scrivener document! Geez!

Well, that definitely needs to happen, you’re right. But I dunno, there’s this Emerson quote:

We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered, that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us. All our days are so unprofitable while they pass, that ’tis wonderful where or when we ever got anything of this which we call wisdom, poetry, virtue. We never got it on any dated calendar day.

I think it might apply.

I realized earlier this summer that simply by tweaking one or more of those routines, I can feel like I’m on vacation. Hence the title of this post, which I prefer to the awkward neologism “staycation.”

Since it has so many distinctive pockets, Portland is especially conducive to tiny vacations. All you have to do is leave your own neighborhood and go somewhere you usually don’t. Doing something you don’t usually do also counts. This past weekend, we had two tiny vacations: breakfast at The Detour Cafe and a show at Mississippi Studios. Highlights of the first: ivy-covered patio, delicious food, and the local fauna, including various birds and a tan French bulldog. Highlights of the second: acoustics, company, and the surprisingly raw, ragged energy between the musicians, both of whom were apparently departing significantly from the playing styles for which they were known.

Gone on any tiny vacations lately?

Saw it on the street, snapped photo in homage to Gorey.

Ways in which it is like revising a prose novel:

– I spend a lot of time staring into the middle distance, trying to figure out if that character would actually do X, say Y, or react in Z fashion.

– I scrutinize my edit notes.

– Every so often when I am doing something that I think is entirely unrelated to revision, such as watching a movie or attempting to fall asleep, an idea will bubble up to the surface that I am immediately compelled to scribble down because it fixes a problem or provides an insight into an aspect of a character’s arc that was previously opaque.

– I print pages and cross things out, then scrawl the new text in the margins and on the back of the paper. There is something about the physicality of actual handwriting that seems to work better than endlessly deleting and retyping on the computer. I don’t know why.

– I waste time on the Internet, feel guilty, and eventually turn on MacFreedom so I can get some damn work done.

Ways in which it is different:

– I need to make more choices per scene. The process is not simply about determining what happens to which characters, and how to transition between different parts of the story. It’s about how the reader will see it all play out on the page. Close on the characters, for nuances of expressions and body language? Tiny silhouettes against a complex and crowded background? Characters entirely absent, replaced by images that function as counterpoint to narrative text? The details of these choices will, of course, be worked out by Ms. McNeil, but I am trying to teach myself to err on the side of providing maximum information in my panel descriptions about the mood I want to evoke.

– I draw (a few, incredibly poorly rendered) thumbnails, to help make sure I’m asking for something that makes sense visually. (I also bite my thumbnails, and the ones on my other fingers too. But that is a way in which revising a script is the same as revising prose.)

So how do you write a graphic novel script? I don’t know yet, I’m not done. I believe strongly in the axiom that you never learn how to write; you only learn to write the book you’re writing, by writing it.

That said, I can recommend a few informative sources:

Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creating a Graphic Novel by Nat Gertler and Steve Lieber.

Making Comics by Scott McCloud.

Drawing Words And Writing Pictures by Matt Madden and Jessica Abel.

Panel One and Panel Two, both edited by Nat Gertler. These are collections of comics scripts, including (full disclosure) one of mine in the second volume, along with commentary from the artists.

What else do you want to know, folks?

More of This World or Maybe Another, by Barb Johnson. Connected short stories set in and around New Orleans that make me wish she was writing for Treme. Her characters operate in sometimes stupefyingly difficult situations, and yet humor is never far off. And her prose is consistently clear and gorgeous, as in this paragraph from the title story: “Across the river a scatter of lights. The high school’s over there, and beyond that, Delia’s house, which, if she could see it, would be in a dark field, surrounded by other dark fields, lit only by the pale fruit of egrets sleeping in the trees along the bayou. Everything is so small and far away. If she went into her house right now, she imagines it would be like when she tried to put a regular-sized doll in the dollhouse her father made for her. If she went in her house right now, she couldn’t tuck her own long legs under the dinner table without flipping the thing over, the tiny plates spilling the food that will never be enough again. She imagines the clothes in her closet and sees doll clothes, her bed, a shoebox that would collapse beneath her.”

What have y’all been reading lately?

At that point my yoga teacher intervened, reminding the party guests that they were, in fact, talking about people, and that he felt these comments were unacceptable. He said (to us, the students warming up) that he was struck by how, in their smack-talking, the guests were really reflecting their own fears in the ways they condemned the nameless fatties. Another student piped up, “Well, I have a hard time. I mean, I see a fat person, and sometimes I feel sorry for them, but sometimes, like if a fat woman’s coming out of Starbucks with a big fat drink, I just think, ugh, that’s disgusting.”

Any pre-class calm I had managed to develop evaporated. “Do you think that when you see a thin woman with the same drink?” I asked. “Oh, I don’t think I’ve seen thin women do that,” she said. I suggested that she might be more likely to notice a fat woman with said beverage, since we are conditioned to look askance at fat people consuming anything. “Maybe I just want that big drink myself,” she conceded. Then: “And I mean, I need to lose thirty or forty pounds.”

What I didn’t say, as I touched my forehead to my knee (I tend to stretch more aggressively if pre-class conversation touches a nerve): You know you’re talking about me when you talk about fat people, right? I am a lady who has purchased multiple items from Torrid, not to mention our fabulous local stores, Savvy Plus and Fat Fancy. Did my fellow student realize? Or was I, to her, Stealth Fat?

I put it out of my mind, or tried to, and concentrated on the day’s series of poses. But I found myself wishing that I did carry parasites; parasites that would infect her brain with questions about why other people’s bodies inspired such pity and loathing.

First up: student testimonials!

An adorable critic, armed with pencil, cigarette, and star-shaped ashtray. “The good ones are pie.”

My favorite from the Questions and Answers below:

Q. How long does it take to succeed?
A. It depends on how quickly you start.

Dig Mr. Mathieu’s tie, also his shoes. “Sometimes the struggle gets you down, and you sweep the floor with your chin.”

So after all this advice, all these glowing testimonials and winning photographs, how does Writer’s Digest end its brochure? By plunging us into angst. Look at that photo! Tiny bleak man in gigantic, lonely city.

I like to think that this final page was written by someone with past-due rent who has just found out they weren’t invited to an important literary party. Picture them, lip quivering, writing the following:

“There are no advantages to living in New York City that are not outweighed by its disadvantages: getting tied up in cliques, being rebuffed by unthinking people who are very busy, hurting your chances by figuratively grabbing the lapel of an editor, and getting influenced by phonies. Most writers do not work in New York because they hate the place. A few hundred locate there and revel in it. It’s your cake.”

Yeah, it’s your cake, bucko! Just go and…revel in it, why don’t you?

This concludes the “Writing to sell” series. Whatever passes for regular posts around here will return shortly.

“Light, bright amusing, pretty and sometimes vague.”

“She looks cute, but she’s death on a trite phrase and happy as a lark with a piece of fine writing.”

“…depending on whether you belong to ‘the agonizing school of writers’ and sweat out every word, or whether you just sit down and beat the hell out of your typewriter.”

One more installment to come.