I kindly replied to her email that it’s always nice to read about the success of others.

Mom immediately took the tone of my email to be sarcastic. That my reply was me lashing out with cantankerous envy. And I can see how that’s a reaction that may arise. But it wasn’t, on my part. I thought it was genuinely great to hear about the success of others who share your pursuit.

There’s so much rejection; so much unrelenting defeat in this industry that hearing that someone else has actually hit the target for which they were aiming is - if nothing else - a comforting reminder. A reminder that what you’re after is not impossible. It’s also a nice reminder to take a look at your own accomplishments and remember that for every one of you there are a dozen more yous out there who are reading your story and thinking the same thing. That if a cantankerous jerk so sarcastic that even his mother assumes the worst can do this, so can they.

Apparently, while I was off(line) building a healthy career in traditional media, Flash became the scourge of the internet. Who knew? Not me. I just recently found out. Now it’s all HTML5 this and you’re-not-smart-enough-to-code-things-yourself-anymore that.

Anyway. I’m happy to say that tylergibb.com is now all spiffed up with the latest the web has to offer in streamlined efficiency… Until otherwise pointed out to me.

And it feels pretty good. It’s in keeping with my goal this year. To streamline. To operate with more precision than ever before.

Flash content has started to get a bad rap online because it causes your computer to lag. It’s too heavy. It bogs down your CPU so it can’t operate efficiently. Or so I’m told. Personally, I tend to work very efficiently myself. Or so I’m told. Perhaps as a result I find myself with a lot of projects that are starting to pile up. Not pile up in a bad way. Just pile up in an I’ve moved on to another opportunity without fully exploring this project’s possibilities way. As a result, I’m feeling a bit like Flash is running my work life. Things are starting to lag. Operate less efficiently. So this year will be about cleaning house. Tapping every project to its limit and if it fails to advance to a satisfactory level, to permanently retire it.

Streamlining.

By the end of the year, I’ll either have a dumpster full of stories or a few new irons on the fire that I can call my own.

And yes, Mankind #3 gets worked on in every spare moment I have. Gonna go work on it now, as a matter of fact. Because why should I get a Sunday night off? Huh? Why? God… You’re insatiable.

“Canada.”

“Oh…”

There was a sound on the line that I could only imagine was all the air being sucked out of his office.

Seriously?

We live in an age where Twitter feeds are being adapted into television shows and blogs are inspiring multi-million dollar films. Google can put me on a street in front of any building in the world and a Skype connection can put me inside. Not to mention anywhere is only an old school plane ride away. And if you need to be there right now, there’s always teleportation– No? Not yet? Alright well, the rest still begs the question: How on Earth is location even an issue anymore?

I don’t doubt that every once in a while a warm, fleshy hand shake or two is warranted. Hell, I’m all about the human connection. But there’s something suspicious about a person who’s position is immediately dismissive of anyone not a short drive away. Like they can’t actually screw you if you’re not there in person.

There’s a great speech in the movie Moneyball. It’s delivered by Arliss Howard as John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox. It may as well be addressed to the old guard of the entertainment industry. The gist of it is that if you’re too afraid of the new ways, then you’re boned. I keep seeing evidence of these dinosaur ways all the time. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Never heard back from that particular producer type fella. Maybe he’s following up by carrier pigeon. Did however take a phone meeting with another producer who couldn’t care less where the creative energy is coming from. Hm. Wonder who’s still going to be making movies five years from now…

Truth is, as thoroughly enjoyable as my holiday season was - how was yours by the way? - I kind of just got wrapped up in a new idea and spent every spare moment writing.

(Yes, I also hacked away at the next Mankind book as well so that’s still on the way.)

As a creator - for lack of a better word - you kind of rue the ruts when they come. They’re low points. That may be what some call writer’s block. I can’t say for sure. I don’t think I’ve ever had any blocks of the literary kind. I have had ruts however. I think of them as biologically strategic intervals of rest that the body accesses for dealing with things like eating or tending to personal hygiene.

They generally suck on a mental level. So I’m not sure why I’m kind of standing in the city bus of my mind, looking down the street and quietly hoping to see a rut in my future. Just so I can have a breather.

It’s a little disturbing. Not quite as disturbing as self-analyzing the fact that in my own fantasy the best vehicle for transporting my subconscious that my mind could dream up was a city bus…

What was I saying?

Right. It’s only January 2nd and I’m already mentally exhausted. Yet I can’t seem to stop. This should be a fun one!

Happy New Year to all of y’all. Make something awesome this year.

I maintain this here web log to - if nothing else - give myself something to write every week or so. Lately though, I’ve been writing so much hors-blog that I don’t have a lot of steam left for a self-indulgent, hey listen to me because I have a net connection, opinion piece.

How will the world go on spinning?

Today I am a vacuum. I have put out and put out and put out to a point where a void for creative energy has been created inside me. I can feel it sucking. Like being thirsty from within your brain. The output has reversed itself. I feel I need to absorb. To suck up energy. Stimuli. To consume.

Just in time for the holiday season.

And it’s good. A good time to let the process of creating reverse itself.

So I’m going to let that happen, fair reader. I’m going to indulge. Recharge. Attack my DVD collection or stare at the twinkling lights on my xmas tree.

Just for a little while.

Ah, my sweet woman… One more reason to love you. You give me opportunities like these to validate my archive of trivial knowledge by applying it to common, everyday situations!

The honey is definitely edible, I declared. Honey is the only food, in fact, that doesn’t go bad. Jars of it were pulled out of an ancient Egyptian tomb once upon a time and the samples were still good to go.

Those bees know what they’re doing. Not to take anything away from the ancient Egyptians of course, but the pyramids are hardly what you’d call pristine anymore. As a matter of fact, you’d be hard pressed to come up with anything man-made that has the lasting integrity and appeal as bee-made honey. And these days the expiration term on things is just getting shorter and shorter.

But not honey. Because bees don’t mess around. They don’t get distracted. They’ve got their one thing and they keep working on it. Day in and day out, generation after generation. They hone it. They refine it. They make it pure. Elemental.

That’s how you make something with lasting integrity. Lasting appeal.

Before Mankind it’d been a while since I’d picked up the drawing pencil, focusing more on the typewriter. Getting back into illustration has been fun. It’s also got me thinking about a question that I used to get asked a lot, especially in art classes. “How do you make up things up from nothing, and get them from your head onto the paper?”

The truth is, I don’t. Not exactly anyway. I think the impression from artists who illustrate the world around them is that people who draw from their brains are working in the same way. Copying the imagined image onto the paper. But it’s not really so - at least not in my case. When I start to draw, I know conceptually what I’m going for, but I can’t say it manifests itself as an actual image in my mind. And every pencil stroke brings with it micro adaptations and recalculations that are ultimately going to effect that image. It’s like constant back and forth between the juices in my head and the physicality of the pencil and paper.

I saw this back and forth play out in a similar fashion when I started directing. You have a concept in mind but there are simply too many variables in the universe for you to ever re-create that exact scene. So you adapt. You recalculate. You have to. I’ve seen - and we may often hear about - directors who have meltdowns when they are unable to adapt in this way. When they try and ultimately fail to recreate what they see in their heads in front of the camera. As though the process of adaptation is a compromise. To the contrary, that’s where the actual skill is required.

I’m glad I don’t have that problem. After all, I’m the only one who knows exactly what I had in mind to begin with so for all intents, what winds up on the paper (or screen) is exactly that.

Photoshop has stopped its brooding. Back to work!

Have you seen these things? Complete, classic works of literature printed on a single sheet of paper - and they’re totally legible too… From up close.

From a distance however, you can bask in the genius of simplified cut-out illustrations like the one I hatched for the Seth Grahame-Smith redux of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, now being adapted into a feature film / great fucking idea, wish I’d thought of it first: Instead, see large cut-out illustration for which I got paid… A free poster.

All seriousness though, quality prints that you can hang on a wall because turning pages is for suckers.

Here’s the link to Spineless Classics, the publisher of the posters. Make sure to tell them that for you, it’s all about the illo and that hot shot, Tyler Gibb.

Fear not! Mankind Book 3 is in the pipe. It’s on the way. It’s written, it’s drawn, it’s lettered, it’s being coloured as you read this. That’s right. Right this minute.

It’ll be worth the wait. This, I promise.

In the meantime… How many people have you infected today?

Only recently have I started approaching others. Others who may be helpful in turning these words on a page into pictures on a screen.

And I know I have a lot to offer. Literally, in terms of sheer quantity of writing; I have a lot of material to offer. After all, unlike most, I’m able to write full time. All day long, everyday of the week - not many are as fortunate. I thought this was an asset. Points in my favour. If someone in the industry were to ask me, “what are you working on?” I could easily ramble off the log lines to half a dozen projects I’ve been polishing over the past few months. Let alone an arsenal of material still undeveloped. How impressive I must seem to these curators of content!

No.

No, it’s only recently come to my attention that I may not look that way at all. See the guy with a ton of scripts lying around kinda looks like the guy who has nothing of value.

There’s an industry expectation when it comes to writers. Or perhaps the perception of an industry expectation. It goes like this: Writers are poor, lazy, alcoholic procrastinators, who work day jobs in video stores and devote very little time to actually writing. So if you show up to the party with half a dozen scripts, people think - damn, if you’ve got that many screenplays under your belt, how come I’ve never heard of you?

So I get it. It makes sense from this traditional viewpoint. Trouble is, there’s nothing traditional about entertainment any more. You can spend all your days writing and never pitching and wind up with a surplus simply because you like to produce as much of it on your own as you can. You can quietly amass thousands, even millions of fans of your work without ever making a blip on the radar of traditional entertainment.

But it doesn’t matter. When it comes to pitching my wares, I’m viewed as a writer. Even though I’m ambitious, don’t drink, only procrastinate doing things I hate (like a normal person) and haven’t worked in a video store since I was 21. It doesn’t matter to them. And I’m not here to change any one’s mind. I mean, sure, I’ll bitch about it on my own website but when it comes to getting the meeting you want to get, it’s all about accepting terms. Compromising. Adapting.

So I’ve amended my approach. You don’t want to hear about a range of possibilities. You don’t want choices. You don’t want surprises or new points of view. You just want something good. So “what am I working on?” Just one thing: The best fucking script you’ll ever read.