Working Methods: CHANGE LOCATION

Here's a tip I hear a lot from other writers. Move. Take your laptop to the kitchen table, the local library or a café. Get away from your comfort zone, your cluttered desk and all your to-do lists, unpaid bills and other distractions. You'd be amazed how easily the mind is fooled into thinking new things, just being moved to another location.

When you open up your laptop in a new place, it's like opening up new possibilities. A friend of mine likes writing in cafés, says it's cheaper than having an office and the service is much better. I wrote big parts of my first novel in Paris and Berlin. Sounds excotic, but for me it was all about focus. No family tugging at my sleeve.

Also, work with a deadline. I edited the novel at my friend Merlin's office, a bare room with nothing but a desk and a chair and plenty of floorspace where I could lay out all my little colored index cards. Knowing I only had two weeks before I had to get back to my drawing board was a huge help. No time for procrastination, no slacking. Getting it right is one thing, getting it done is another. If I have to choose between the two, I'll go with getting it done.

And changing location can really help. Try it!

Recommended: WORDPLAYER.COM

Behind this rather dull web design is a virtual goldmine of articles and essays on writing. It's mostly advice on the differents aspects of screenwriting, but most of it applies to any creative professional.

Check out their column section for articles, like why treatments are stupid and irrelevant and why you have to write them anyway, inside dope on "The Warner Brothers Hallway Test" and how to make an impressive failure. And while the people behind Wordplay don't exactly encourage you to become a screenwriter, they do seem to be brutally honest about the pitfalls of the craft and specifically the movie industry.

Sharp, funny and insightful, Wordplay one of the best sites on writing I have stumbled upon.

The Devil's Concubine: JAQUES LaTOUR [spoiler warning]

Keeping up appearances

As crime bosses go, LaTour is more than a little incompetent. The problem is, he knows it, and being the head of a criminal organization is quite stressful. LaTour is infamous for his temper and unpredictable behaviour. LaTour’s crew are a rag-tag bunch of slacker dope fiends that LaTour tries to control. He wants to give the business a look of professionalism, obsessing about dress code and appearances, at the same time not living up to his own standards. Most of the time, he feels like a pilot in a crashing plane, desperately trying to give off an aura of control. LaTour does not take kindly to criticism or questions he does’t have the answers to. Usually his response is violent and irrational, but sometimes he just laughs or shrugs it off. He is a man both charming and dangerous – You never know what you’re gonna get.

LaTour fears the Rastafaris and want to settle every debt with one big trade-off; The mystery drug knows as “The Devil’s Concubine”. LaTour’s old buddy Ringo claims to be able to get the drug, but when he disappears, LaTour sets a desperate plan in motion, hiring a freelance hit man in order to keep himself out of it. As the bodies start to pile up around him, LaTour loses all control of the situation.

You can befriend Jaques on Facebook. Just tell him I sent you.

On the move: SHOOTING FROM THE HIP

The past week weeks have been crazy workwise. This week I’ve been booked for three different out-of-the-house live drawing gigs, no preliminary sketches, just head-on drawing. I’ve been trying on new stuff, like drawing on a whiteboard and being filmed, the result a speeded-up inspirational video for a corporate event. Yesterday I tried on a nifty gadget called Pencast, a ballpoint with a built-in microphone and tracing pad, so everything is recorded directly. In one take. You make a mistake, you have to start over.

And here I am at another corporate event, shooting from the hip, just getting drawings done. Fast. It’s draining, but rewarding. It pays reasonably well and it sharpens your speed-drawing skills tremendously. Here are some examples of what I’ve been doing this morning.

Next week I’ll hopefully get some time for my own projects and some posts here. Got a quick interview with Ben Templesmith coming up, some work-in-progress and some writing tips brewing. I am also working on some comics with US collaborators, so I’ll have some new artwork to show off soon.

Now, back to work.

Interviewed: TYLER G. CROOK

Tell us a little about yourself

I started as a working artist when I was 18. I got a job at a children's clothing company. I worked there for a few years before deciding that I needed to go to art college and learn how to make real art. Art school ended up being simultaneously awesome and awful. I learned a lot in a really short period of time but I was also disgusted by most of my fellow students who were unmotivated and uninterested in the topics being taught. So when I couldn't afford to go back after my first semester, I was pretty ok with that. From there I got a job doing graphic design which led to web design which lead to video games. For 12 years I worked on some really good and some really bad games, mostly sports games. This whole time I was playing around with making comics and I was getting better. I pitched a few things to different publishers from time to time but I never got any traction. Until 3 years ago when I showed my portfolio to Oni Press and they hooked me up with Phil Gelatt to make Petrograd.

What comics or art projects are you working on right now?
Right now I am working on B.P.R.D. Hell On Earth: Russia.

What other artists in your field inspire you?
I get inspiration from a lot of different artists. Probably too much inspiration. For me the Big guys are Milton Caniff, Harvey Kurtzman and Frank Robbins. All three of them used a brush to great effect. They all told stories in very different ways using different types of composition and pacing but they were all amazing. The people that I admire that are still working are Paul Pope, Nathan Fox, Moebius - guys like that. I find that I am more attracted to analog art than I am to digital art.

Do you work out of your home or do you have an office/studio space?
I have a studio in my house. I'm actually in the process of moving my studio to a different room where there is better light. I'm pretty excited about that. This is the first time I have worked out of the house for this long and I'm finding it very interesting. There are days when I love working with just me and the dogs in the house but there are also days when I go stir crazy from not having anyone else to talk to. There is a library a few blocks from my house and when I have a hard time keeping my focus, I sometimes go over there to work.

What upcoming projects are you most excited about and why?
Right now I am all about the B.P.R.D. It's a job that I hope to be doing for a long time. The thing that's been keeping me really excited about this job is working with guys like Mike Mignola, John Arcudi and Scott Allie. These are guys that have been making comics a LOT longer than I have and they are constantly dropping the science on me. Every issue I've worked on with them, I have learned something that I didn't expect to learn and something that I will probably use for years to come. It's awesome.

Where do you see comics heading in the next 5 years?
I don't know. The digital thing seems pretty obvious but there are still distribution problems keeping the books out of the hands of the non-comic book reader. One thing that I am pretty confident about is that comics are going to keep getting better. I think we are living in a great time for comics in America. I think the over saturation of super-heros is going to correct it's self eventually and then we'll start seeing more people reading comics that are more mature and complex and have a wider appeal than most of what gets made today.

For more of Tyler's awesome art go to http://www.mrcrook.com/

On the move: BLOGGING ON A BICYCLE

Top 10: SEVENTIES MOVIES

When I was a kid, I thought all movies made before 1980 were crap. Boy, was I wrong! To make amends, here are 10 great films from the Seventies in no particular order:

• "The Conversation"
• "Deliverance"
• "Straw Dogs"
• "Apocalypse Now"
• "The Godfather"
• "Papillon"
• "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
• "Taxi Driver"
• "Dog Day Afternoon"
• "Chinatown"

The Sixties had some really great movies too. Another post, maybe. I'll just say: "Point Blank", "The Chase", "The Graduate", "Midnight Cowboy"...

What are your favorites from the sideburn era?

HARD EVIDENCE REVIEWED

ComicsForge just put up a review of my hardboiled detective story "Hard Evidence".

"Palle Schmidt is a brilliant writer and perfectly creates the image of a crime riddled city filled with crooked cops, beyond the law wealthy, and straight up criminals and kingpins that will please any fans of a well done noir story"

Thank you, Comics Forge! Read the rest of the review here.

"Hard Evidence" is available as an online read from Graphicly at a reasonable price: 1$

The Devil's Concubine: MAYNARD [spoiler warning]

Just another day at the office

Although he has been parked in homicide, watching everyone else get promoted through the years, Maynard stands by Alphonse and get’s the job done. Where Alphonse is both younger, smarter and prettier, Maynard has the choice role of grumpy, world-weary and cynical sidekick. A family man, Maynard simply wants to put the case down so he can go home.

Maynard grows more and more tired of following the trail of dead. When the SWAT team is called upon to take care of things in the finale, Maynard and Alphonse stay behind to avoid the bloodshed, having a cup of coffee instead.

Maynard can soon be seen as a major character in Stiletto.

Working Methods: REWRITE..?

I was at a seminar at the Danish Film School recently. The speaker said: "People begin their education out here, and they think what they write is just perfect". The speaker smiled with glee: "Then we tell them they have to do not one or two, but FORTY rewrites!".

Forty re-writes? Hmm.

I don't know if I would reccomend that. I would never do forty rewrites. I know I don't have the TIME to do forty rewrites. Especially not, if I'm not getting paid. Sorry. And you know what? I don't think anybody else would either.

If I had to do forty rewrites, I would never write anything. I would start hating the material, and what I wrote would be utter crap. So even if my stories could use a little rewriting, I tend to stop when it's not productive anymore. You can paint over the same painting in forty layers, I guess. But why would you? I'd rather move on to the next painting. If that makes me a hack painter, so be it.

I'll go one further and say; If you have to rewrite something forty times, then it couldn't have been very good to begin with.

So, how many rewrites? I mean complete break-it-up-and-put-it-togther-again rewites, not editing and meddling. 2 to 5 would be my answer.

Not forty.