Story of my life…

I’d have to go back into the archives to remember when I posted last.

I get sick and/or distracted, and blogging is the first thing to go.

Can’t promise it’ll get better before it gets worse. Because of my involvement in my church’s Christmas show (henceforth known as LCT), any time that isn’t spent doing something else like–oh, I don’t know… WORK… or some other obligation, is spent focusing on LCT. And any time leftover from that is just spent recuperating.

As much as I love being a part of LCT, and honored to have such a prominent role in its creation, I really loathe a lot of the time I have to spend on it. It takes away time I’d rather spend writing–or, at the very least, pretending to write.

Nanowrimo is just a little over a week away. Can’t do it because of LCT. Got short storie brewing away up in the noggin. Can’t do them because I have no time for them.

Of course, if I were being truly honest, I’d admit that the above paragraphs are lies. It’s all in setting priorities. If writing were all that important to me, I’d be doing it anyway. I’d be using that act of creation to relax and unwind, instead of reading or watching TV (although there are some really interesting and fun new shows this fall).

And, of course, as of Sunday afternoon, I’ll only need to plan out the last few minutes of the last song, and that will only take a couple of hours. Realistically, I could start writing on a regular basis as early as Sunday or Monday.

We’ll see… we’ll see.

1,000 Words: The Coyotes of Silver Moon

Starting out with just a little under three hundred words to begin with, so there’s that. Don’t know if I’m going to hit my target for today regardless. I mean, I will, there’s no doubt about that, I’m just not sure any of it’s going to have anything to do with the story.

See, Mrs. Wesley and I had another chat tonight, about how I’ve shirked my responsibilities with LCT this year, because I haven’t listened to the music—which I haven’t—and haven’t gotten in touch with the others on the team I’m supposed to be leading—which I haven’t.

It wasn’t so much a discussion as her telling me what she thinks I need to do, and me understanding it, even if she sees it differently. Unfortunately nothing is ever easy. Instead of her saying her piece and letting it go—which, admittedly, she’s done several times in the past. But each time I was ready to leave, she would ask, “so what are you going to do about this… tomorrow?” That turned a five minute lecture into a 45 minute cold war. She asks questions that demand answers, and I just don’t have them in formats that I can express or that she can understand.

Even as I write this, I’ve had to stand up and pace around and vent at least three times, wasting maybe 15 minutes because I can’t concentrate.

Okay, four times now.

That’s part of the problem with how I write. I have to clear my head before I can get into the story. I’ve got to put everything in my head down on paper. And everything in my head right now is my frustration with the wife and how I feel about the whole LCT thing.

Here’s the fact of the matter. I don’t really want to do LCT anymore. It takes up too much of my energy year after year. I enjoy being a part of it… sometimes. But the truth is I don’t often enjoy being there. That’s not true. In the past, when I was a cast member, I had often thought about dropping out, and there were years I did bail out completely, or nearly so. I just wasn’t having fun in rehearsals or performances very often.

Now, I’m in charge of them. I think I can really bring something new to the process. Hopefully, at least. But now it takes up even more of my energy, and I’m not really up for it this year. I mean, I have a couple of ideas to take the burden off my shoulders. An internship program where I would pick a few people to follow me around and learn a little bit about what goes on in the making of these programs. And then I’m going to ask the high school seniors to take charge of the younger kids.

750 words and counting. I’m tired and frustrated and scared and upset.

How am I supposed to enjoy myself this weekend now? We might as well not go, because I’m not going to be able to concentrate on anything except LCT now, am I? Right now I’m thinking about how that CD with all the music on it for the program is sitting on top of my CPU, and I’m here writing about how I don’t have the time to do anything with it, because I need to get my thousand words in.

But here’s the thing: LCT doesn’t do me any good for my writing. If I’m supposed to be a writer, if I’m supposed to be writing, then any time I spend working on something other than my writing is not time spent efficiently. Therefore, any time I spend fussing about LCT is really just wasted writing time.

I’m thinking right now that I should just can this weekend and devote it to storyboarding for LCT. That would be the rational decision. I’m not going to have any fun this weekend now.

I don’t have time to read. I don’t have time to write. The only thing I’ve done for the past two nights is watch old episodes of LOST that aren’t even that good, when I should be doing something else.

…and that, dear reader, is how to finish my 1,000 words on a low, low note.

Where are all the Christian Superheroes?

While I know that Marvel actually published a couple of Christian specials back in the 80s or 90s, (“Lightbringer” or something like that), I seriously doubt that any of the larger companies would be willing to take on a Christian character for the same reasons that there are so few gay characters: Christians are too polarizing, and if there were a Christian character, then they’d have to deal with the issue, and nobody wants to be the first to do that.

To have Christian characters means at least one of the following three things: 1) The character will be a pushy blowhard who will be shown having worse morals than other characters; 2) The character will be thoughtful and truly spiritual, which means either 2a) eventually there will have to be a serious conversation about faith, which nobody wants or 2b) the character will be Ned Flanders, and the character will be a point of derision IN SPITE of his good faith; 3) something will happen that will cause the character to walk away from his faith.

The entire nature of superheroes is humanistic (“I will avenge this person’s death and bring the villain to justice!”). And the passivity preached in the New Testament doesn’t lend itself to action scenes.

Plus, it’d be difficult to write such a character accurately if you personally don’t have faith or don’t explicitly agree with your character’s faith, which would then be seen as proselytizing. And you’d have to get the characterization past your editor and publisher, either of which may disagree with your views or just be nervous about the can of worms you’re opening.

Now, having said that, there are a few out there by DC: The Spectre and Grant Morrison’s angel Zauriel are two characters who are explicitly tied to a Christian God. And I remember a scene in Infinite Crisis where several heroes gather in a church to pray before the final battle. But for the most part, it ain’t happening.