I've been working on a new book, a graphic novel about the last battle at the end of the world, and have reached the point where the shape of the story needs to start being stitched together, the pieces measured and aligned and ordered. And for the last few months, I've struggled with that. The book was begun in the deepest darkness after my mother's death, and the initial idea was sparked in the pandemic. If that initial story had a shape it would have been an arrow aimed directly down at the heart of a cold, dark, and seemingly uncaring world. A great unwieldy drill throwing off sparks as it ground its way through miles and miles of rock in the darkness, without a goal, only wanting to keep going down until the earth collapsed in upon it, to be buried, to be lost, to lose itself in nothingness.
My books have always been, for me, a transference of emotion, and often they become a purging in hindsight, a way to gain some sense of my life, of what has come before. I did not realize until after Notes from the Shadowed City was published that it was about my childhood, growing up in a military family, always moving, never feeling at home anywhere, always a stranger. Finding escape in a book, in daydreams, in drawing and writing. The Thousand Demon Tree was a way to take the thousand little cuts of daily life, the unseen pains, the things that no one knows you or your loved ones are going through, and give them a shape that could be attacked, possibly defeated. A way to find some hope.
Which is what was missing from this graphic novel. There was no hope, because I often didn't feel any. Millions dead, my country divided, democracy attacked - how do you have any hope when it seems that the world is ending? What do you do when the last battle at the end of the world arrives?
One of my favorite films is Children of Men, but I'd often wished that it had ended just a little earlier. With Kee and her baby in the boat, rocking in the waves next to the slowly flashing buoy in an otherwise empty sea. Theo slumped over, gone. Hold on that, let us feel that moment, wonder if anyone is coming to save the day, and then cut to titles. But I've changed my mind now. I know why we are shown The Human Project's boat arriving. And I know why it is called Tomorrow.
With hope,
j
-Speaking of story shape, something that helped me understand how to proceed with this graphic novel was J.R.R. Tolkien’s definition of fairy stories as being “indescribable, though not imperceptible” in his essay “On Fairy-Stories.” I’ve been reading a lot of novels, and writing/planning my own, and the tactics and structure of prose had seeped into my planning of this graphic novel, forgetting that my visual works are essentially myth/fairy-tale.
-When I discover a writer I like, I will buy every book they’ve ever written and start at the beginning. (Thank you eBay “complete lot.”) Recent writers I’ve started reading in their entirety - Jane Harper, Scott Phillips, and Charlie Huston. I really hope Charlie Huston is still writing novels.
Was so happy to see this in my email this morning :)
Great entry and I especially loved your thoughts at the end re: CHILDREN OF MEN. I too, hope Charlie Huston eventually writes more novels (and did the same binge on ALL his work when I first discovered him), but I think last time I looked him up he'd been doing TV writing work for a while, so who knows? But I also saw that he was working on developing the first Hank Thompson novel into a TV show, so that's promising.