The Insecure Writer's Support Group wants to know when a writer acknowledges that their story is ready.

I'm a few days late for the Insecure Writer's Support Group post, but at least I'm in the same week. I guess October snuck up on me, so I apologize to those who participate in the Insecure Writer's Support Group that came here on Wednesday looking for my answer to the question of the month.

So October's question was, "When do you know your story is ready?" I think I'm reading this question in two ways. It's either asking me when I know I'm done with the first draft or when do I know I'm ready to publish. So, I think I'll go ahead and answer both questions.

Q1: When do I know when I'm done with the first draft? I am a fairly traditional writer so I do a detailed outline that picks off the events that I want to accomplish and these all lead toward a climax. Once the climax is over, then it's usually just one chapter after that in which I finish. Fairly boring, right?

Q2: When do I know when I'm ready to publish? It's basically a feeling in that I'm sick of working on it, and I know I've taken it as far as I want to and I just want it done. I want it over...so that I can get on with my life.

I may be different than some authors when I say that the most fun comes in writing the first draft. Revising and editing and formatting is tedium ad nauseum. There hasn't been a piece of writing I've finished yet in which I don't groan when a beta reader suggests a major change to a story plot piece that will entail hours of work.

To check out other bloggers participating in the Insecure Writer's Support Group, go HERE and read their stuff.

Contemplating the hollowness of his own existence the Flash changes timeline after timeline looking for the perfect reality.

There may be some spoilers ahead.

There are times when watching the Flash seems like it's actually a tale of one young man's descent into madness. After all, when you get too deep into the weeds of time travel, I would think that any specific timeline would have just as much validity as the one you left. So how could you justify changing one thing (or everything) when in the end it's all rendered irrelevant by the simple fact that time travel exists? Being a time traveler then is the ultimate self indulgence because you would in fact be choosing which reality was (in fact) the reality for everyone else.

I was expecting more of Flashpoint--the season three premiere, which happened last night on the CW. But I wasn't necessarily disappointed? I just thought it would go on for longer than it did. That's (I think) when it hit me: the idea that this series (and everything connected to it) is just Barry Allen's emotional journey in determining which reality is the one that viewers consume. Maybe the entire DC universe is actually just Barry Allen's version of events because he alters one thing here and there through time and doesn't seem to be able to control himself.

As for the death and life of his mom, I'm not sure why Barry caved so easily in letting his ultimate enemy go back into time and kill his mother after he worked so hard to save her. He apparently was losing memories of an irrelevant timeline and would eventually even forget that he was the Flash. However, why was any of that important? Barry's relationship with his parents has been a really strong point of the show. It's full of richness and depth, and it spins the coin on the all-but-worn-out plot of a hero being an orphan with no parents.

Barry Allen being played by a millennial is kind of perfect. He wants everything, but when things aren't the perfect story that he feels he deserves, he's left to contemplate the hollowness of his own existence and then must strive to change it.

Netflix channels a very honorable superhero in Luke Cage who slugs it out with the thugs of Harlem

A lot of care went into filming Luke Cage. The acting is superb, the story is riveting, and the hip-hop soundtrack is awesome. In watching the first two episodes, I loved how the music is so thoughtfully used to complement the visuals and the story. Another thing I'm really taken with is Luke Cage's character. He's a very honorable super hero, and he probably has more integrity than even Captain America. I mean, Cap was used by the government and compromised some of his ideals from time to time. That doesn't seem to be happening at all with Cage. Or maybe it's just that Luke Cage's ideals align better with normal people. Perhaps that's what I'm picking up on.

Anyone else take a turn at binge-watching Luke Cage on Netflix?

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is the perfect movie for people who love weird and strange things.

There are a few spoilers in this review.

I never read the book Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, but after seeing the movie last night, I wish that I had taken this phantasmagoric trip into the squirmy delirium of the author's mind. Upon its completion, I couldn't imagine another director that could handle the odds and ends of this peculiar tale better than Tim Burton. In much the same way as fairy tales can lend themselves to shocking moments by throwing an old woman in an oven or meeting a girl with no hands, the movie captures this same kind of viscera by giving us a Lovecraftian villain that has to eat human eyeballs in order to not be monstrous. How undeniably clever.

Asa Butterfield is Jake (who is perhaps at the lankiest that I have ever seen him), and he's a good hero for the story. I liked seeing a male cast in a sympathetic role, as the thing that makes him most peculiar is his ability to see the monsters coming. It's an interesting twist, because unlike Cassandra in the Iliad, Jake's ability to see the evil coming is believed by everyone, and it's through their unique combination of talents that all the peculiar children manage to come together to protect one another.

The one negative criticism that I have for the movie (I think) is entirely me. I found it difficult to keep track of the timeline and the loops through time. It was a fascinating (and ingenious) way to create bubbles of fantasy in our modern reality, and it lent the movie an "Alice in Wonderland" feel. But my mind kept wanting to try and resolve how things worked exactly, and sometimes I got confused with the looping and wondering why sometimes they could emerge in 2016, and at other times they were in 1943.

But perhaps all that we were supposed to take from the story is wonder. After all, how often is it that you see a boy walking with a rope tied to the waist of a girl who's floating like a balloon behind him? Maybe that's the stuff that dreams are made of.

Sweet Christmas...Luke Cage is the hero Foggy deserves.

You've probably watched Daredevil on Netflix. If so, will you at least agree with me that Matt Murdock is pretty much a dick to everyone. Jessica isn't much better (as in Jessica Jones). She's snark all day long, and it could really be tiresome hanging around that. Of course, Jessica's baggage comes from her father getting killed and somebody raping her while controlling her mind, but still.... I'm gonna borrow a word from Monday night's debate: temperament. Luke Cage has got good temperament. I like it, and he's the hero that Foggy deserves.

It's obvious too that Claire prefers Luke Cage to Daredevil in the trailer. After all, she's a nurse and probably gets tired of stitching Matt up every other night. Luke Cage is unbreakable. That's a nice if not boring quality to have in a superhero. I just hope that the villain is good. Compared to Kingpin and David Tennant's mind controlling rapist, the bar has been set pretty high.

For those of you who don't know, the dude with the XXL hoodie in the bodega in the trailer below (which Luke Cage trades out for his own) is Method Man, from Wu-Tang Clan. He shows up in lots of movies and was in The Wire.

This Friday is gonna be great. We've got an interesting movie coming out and on top of that,  I can begin binge-watching Luke Cage. I'm so ready to see him punch people like it's no big deal again. I'm calling it right now: this year's lazy Halloween costume will be a "bullet" ridden hoodie.

Dust is a short film that is one awesome example of how crowd-sourcing and Kickstarter can make amazing things happen.

This is the matte painting of the mine that's featured in the film. I wish I could draw with this kind of detail. What amazing talent some artists possess. I wonder how they do this? Photoshop? Click to Embiggen and really get an eyeful.

I watched this short film called "Dust" over the weekend (it's about 23 minutes long), and I thought it was really good. The story is pretty straight forward. Most of humanity lives in walled cities, and there are people called "Trackers" who are basically a kind of medieval "witch doctor"? At least that's what I got from it. The only one of note is of course the main character who has been studying a lifeform called a hydra which has the ability to basically evolve to cure anything. It cleaned up the streams of the world (making them non-toxic), and it appears to be able to neutralize diseases too. It's definitely an interesting concept.

Here's the official description of the movie from the Vimeo site:

A Sci-Fi/Fantasy inspired by anime and classic horror, Dust is set in a harsh and unpredictable natural environment where people have isolated themselves in an ancient city behind a massive wall. A socially marginalized tracker teams up with a black-market merchant to save the society that has rejected his way of life.

I kind of wonder if the dystopian world of "Dust" is some alternate Earth of the future or if this is a story of humans who have come to live on an alien world and essentially lost any technical advantage over the environment that they used to have. The alien life evolves rapidly, which is interesting to think about.

If you have the time, I highly suggest that you watch the embedded video. It's good to see a sci-fi story with a Japanese influence in it (was it filmed in Japan?), and it's really well done (I heard it was crowd-sourced). That and the dialogue is quite good (as is the acting).

Dust from Ember Lab on Vimeo.

The drug company Allergan challenged other biotechs to self-police themselves for reasonable price hikes and no other company in the world joined them.

Great beauty is a fairy tale blessing bestowed upon princesses at birth. There's a reason for that: everyone wants to be beautiful. And whether you like to admit this or not, money is the same thing as beauty in the United States (and in many cultures around the world). People who are beautiful have many social advantages in life. Well, the same thing can be said for people with money, i.e., they have many social advantages in life.

It's honestly time that more people accepted this for truth.

Yes, I'm actually going there. I'm saying that people who have money are "in a sense" beautiful. They have as much power over society (sometimes more so because beauty fades with time). If you think rich people don't have as much power over society as beautiful people (or you don't value money) then congratulations, but you're wrong (and in the minority). If it horrifies you that I could sit here and write that, "a beautiful person could have their pick of sexual partners" and insist that the word "beautiful" in that sentence could be swapped out for "rich," then I think you're naive. I think that there are a lot of angry, delusional young people out there who have been struck by this reality, are having difficulty wrapping their heads around it, and very much want society to change. Well I've got news for those people: that kind of thinking has been happening for thousands of years. It's also not going to change.

It's not a new idea to actually be young and think it's reasonable to be 1) young, 2) beautiful, and 3) wealthy enough to never be dependent on anyone else for anything. After all, chances are a young and reasonably fit person already has the first two qualities in the bag. That third quality seems perfectly attainable, right? If it weren't for society and capitalism standing in the way. But more and more, that third quality is (in all reality) the size of a mountain equivalent to Everest. The fact is, most people will not have what it takes to reach the top of that mountain (or to even make it to base camp). Most of us (no matter how you feel) will be mediocre.

It's a nice thought. But I think a lot of people are born to
just do this very thing. Again, not my rule. Just a fact.

Sorry to pop your narcissistic balloon.

But that's what narcissism is, right? It grows from that sense deep inside you that you deserve better and people just don't recognize the greatness you are due. I think it's healthy when you examine those inner feelings of bitterness at not being appreciated and the light comes on and you realize, "Hey, the reason I'm being treated like this is perfectly valid. I'm a mediocre person, have accomplished nothing that society deems as great, and as far as I can tell...never will."

Like being born with natural beauty, it is possible to be born "rich." But for most of us, this just isn't a feasible reality. For most of us, you will be born into a system in which you (and your children) will live in socio-economic bondage for your entire lives. In other words, you will always be "beholding" to someone for survival. And if they ask you to jump, you better learn to jump just right.

So where do the young get their idea of it being reasonable to ask, and be given, just three "small" things in life? Perhaps they were coddled too much by parents who told their children, "You are a special snowflake."

But here's the thing. Saying,

"All I want in life is to be young, beautiful, and to have enough money to not be beholding to anyone. I don't think that's asking for much..."

is what I would call a complete "break" from actual reality. It's insane. That anyone wouldn't look at that and see that it's actually asking for everything just blows my mind. And if I learned one thing in life, very few people ever get everything that they want. Not my rule. I'm just stating how it is.

Sure, there are people who insist that money isn't important in a partnership. They turn their noses up and live in denial. It's a demonstrable fact that arguments over financial matters and stress is the greatest cause for divorce and the destruction of relationships. Having six-pack abs only goes so far.

Is this how it should be? I have no answer with regard to this question. I can only say that this is how it is. This is how life works for many people in the world. And here is my point: greed is part of the culture of America, and no where is this more apparent than with drug pricing.

Drug price hikes for a life-saving epipen from drug company Mylan recently created a "media hurricane." I watched the CEO of Mylan addressing congress on Thursday on CNBC. She flew to her meeting in a privately-owned jet. And she showed nothing but contempt for anyone that doesn't see that these drug prices are necessary to ensure the proper delivery of the life-saving drug. If people can't afford it, well those people just die I guess. Why does she think this way? Because she wants to be beautiful, and having lots of money is the same thing as beauty.

This isn't the only example. Another CEO of a drug company a few months ago got called on the carpet before congress over a tear-inducing 5000% price hike to a drug (Daraprim) that saves lives for people afflicted with a rare "life threatening" disease having to do with exposure to dirty cat litter.

Again, why is this happening? Simple answer: people desire to be rich. We call it greed. Greed happens because money is so incredibly powerful. It makes wishes come true. It gives you power over society. People respect, worship, and envy those who have it in vast quantities. It has the same importance and desire associated with it as a straight man's fascination with a super-model. Cry in horror all you want, but unless the power that money has over people is lessened, things will only get worse.

It's not reasonable to expect people to not crave beauty. Therefore, it's not reasonable to expect people to not crave money. And I think I'm being perfectly honest when I say that very few ugly people would ever want this to change, because money gives them the social advantages that youth and beauty would naturally bring.

On September 6th, the Allergan CEO promised in a blog post that their company would limit future price hikes (in response to widespread criticism of the drug industry's practices). If you don't know, Allergan is an enormous biotech company. The CEO, Brent Saunders, also challenged other companies to join a pledge, fearing that someone like Hillary Clinton would start a push for federal regulation of drug pricing. This (of course) would make it harder for pursuers of money to become happy because there'd be fewer dollars to spread around for things like private jets, wining and dining, and being "pillars of the community"--another way of saying, "person with too much money gives it away for social status."

That seems promising, right? Someone in a big drug company finally got a clue and challenged others!

But here's the thing: No other company since then has accepted the challenge. Nada.

Allergan is the only one.

They've talked about this on CNBC. Some of the hosts of Squawk on the Street were kind of shocked. No one accepted the challenge? Is there no goodwill?

Yes, you are correct.

There is no goodwill.

No one in their right mind would say, "I choose to be ugly." No one in their right mind would say, "I choose to be poor."

That's our society. It's time everyone accepted it as fact. Look...I wish it wasn't so. I wish that money wasn't so powerful, but the rules to the game were set long before I ever arrived. I just happen to be useful in explaining them to people who may not understand how life works.