So this semester I'm taking a class on film noir at UCO. It meets one day a week, and we watch a film, hear a short lecture, and have the post-film discussion that every movie geek craves (there's even time for a cigarette break). If I had known that film (as literature) classes were this easy I would have started taking them four
years ago.

My justification for taking this class (and shelling out money that I should be saving up) is two fold:
1) It's a class where I show up once a week, watch a awesome movie, and talk about it. Conceptually there is nothing cooler.
2) Many of my story ideas are in some way influenced by noir's style, and most of that influence comes from neo-noir works (Pulp Fiction, Gattaca, The Man Who Wasn't There, Dark City, etc.). It will be incredibly helpful to go back to the roots of the movement (It's not really a genre, it's too tied to a specific time and place).

Ernie (music producer, music minister, piano teacher, and all around cool guy)has had a lot of contact with the owner of one of the comic shops in norman over the last decade, and the owner (I forget his name) has written and published a couple independant comics. Sometime in the next couple of weeks I'm hoping to set up an appoint with him and try and glean as much information about getting started in indie comics as I can from him. I have a couple general ideas for stories and one almost fully developed story brewing in my head, and I need to get them out of there to clear some room for more scholarly pursuits.

One of my favorite writers, when talking about writing, mentions that sometimes a Story just grabs a hold of you and won't let go, and you have to get it out of your system somehow to be able to do the work that pays the bills. And I think I'm at the point. Whenever I sit down to start working on a conference paper over CS Lewis (or driving to and from work, at work, in the shower, in church, etc.) my mind wanders to The Story and more and more of the characterization, the pacing, and plot points becomes obvious, more and more of the world is filled out. Explaining the Story doesn't help, it just crystalizes what I already have and makes me excited to work on it more.

And so that is why I'm taking to film noir class, to better explain the second half of a story that keeps running through my head and won't give me a moments peace.