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Between allergies, dust-clouds, lingering con-crud and deadlines I’m officially giving up on the possibility of saying anything coherant this week. Instead, I’m just going to share the earworm that’s been driving me crazy all week.

Over the years I’ve gradually noticed that the people whose creative output fascinates me the least are often the most interesting to listen to when they discuss their creative process. Today I found myself losing twenty-minutes listening to JJ Abrams talk about the role of mystery in narrative and the process.

Of course, by my earlier logic, one of these days we’re going to discover that Ewe Boll is a genius.

Jason Fischer – Clarion Peep, Awesome Dude, and purveyor of zombie stories – has won the second quarter of the Writers of the Future competition and a trip to LA. The Fisch has been chasing this dream for about three years now, often coming tantalisingly close to earning a spot, and there are no words for how happy I am that he’s finally picked up the victory. Honestly, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke.

By all rights I should be kneeling in the rain, shirt torn, playing air-guitar to November Rain in honor of this achievement (ask Jason why and maybe he’ll explain). Instead I’m blinking, bleary-eyed, into the dust-cloud of doom that seems to have enveloped Brisbane (and Sydney), and somehow it just doesn’t have the same effect.

The title’s actually a misnomer, since I’ve been operating out of my house for all four days of this year’s Gen Con Oz, but when you’re basically coming home to lapse into five hours of sleep before rising and returning to a convention it starts to feel a little like you’re living in a hotel room anyway. I’d given myself a break from the online world until Wednesday while I recovered, but once again I found myself having to link to something that’s far too cool to let it slide by.

So today has been spent catching up on sleep, e-mail, and cool stuff I missed while at the con – and among the coolest stuff that happened in my absence is the review of Horn on Joy 94.9’s Outland Institute radio show. I missed out on streaming the show live due to the con, but I’m thankfully about to listen in courtesy of the fact that you can download the podcast (look for episode eleven and aim for Narelle Harris‘ segment about eleven minutes in).

I’m going to break the radio silence for a moment because this is too cool not to share it.

Step 1) Head on over to Vodkandlime’s livejournal and check out the Twilight-esque book-cover for Horn.

Step 2) Be greatly amused.

Gen Con Australia kicks off on Thursday. It ends on Sunday afternoon. I’ll be working there, so drop past and say high if you’re around.

That said, I have a mountain of work to get done in preperation and I’m behind *again* (courtesy of computer trouble again – word stopped working on the laptop. That’s two sets of computer problems in a month. I wasn’t at all manly about it, and if if this keeps up I think I’ll be writing the next novella on google-docs using my mobile phone).

So I’ll see you all next Wednesday, folks, cause I’m kicking off the radio silence right about…now.

Because I’m tired and unable to articulate much today, so I give you the general mood of my week via  youtube clips from the family Wainwright. ‘Cause even if my week isn’t awesome, I can share the awesome of others.

1) Anger

2) Absurdity

3) An Ill-defined longing for longing

Right what is says on the tin – it got inspired by a facebook meme but my natural love of verbage meant it raged out of control. Anyway, this is actually a pretty good summary of what the interior of my head looks like when the subject of writing comes up. Some are me-specific, some a general, and most were written down fast in order to see what the first twenty-five thoughts that came to mind actually were. I take no responsibility for accidents caused if you follow any of these hastily constructed thoughts and give the usual warnings of upcoming writer-angst (it’s been that kind of week):

1) There is no “one true way to write,” but there are several commonly touted pieces of advice that both make sense to me and largely represent an decent list of “things worth doing unless you’ve got a good reason not to.”

2) This list is not one of them.

3) There is nothing I can achieve as a writer that will silence that little voice in the back of my head urging me to do more. I will never do enough and I can always do things better. This probably isn’t a bad thing, since the alternative is stagnation.

4) Fear is the mind-killer. Many problems with getting something written can be traced back to fear of some kind.

5) Writing does not lend itself to sick days. Nor does it lend itself to holidays. It would be nice if it did, but the realities of putting writing first means it’s unlikely to happen.

6) Writing is a stupid career choice. You will know this, because people will tell you the same thing in a myriad of ways – the low rate of monetary reward, the sneer people get at parties when you tell them what you do, the prolonged conversations with family members who still think things like “owning a house” and “getting a real job” are in your future. Eventually it will sink in and you’ll start having these conversations with yourself.

7) Once six sinks in, the primary thing between you and writing tends to be yourself (see point four) . There are no issues that cannot be fixed by writing more.

Focus on the things you can control (submissions, practice, wordcount), because it’ll distract you from the things that you can’t (acceptances, the publishing industry, society frowning at you because you’re a jobless wastrel).

8b) Wastrel is one of those words, you know? It just begs to be used.

9) It’s never seriously occurred to me that I wouldn’t make it as a writer. This could result in a very rude shock sometime over the next two decades.

10) Writing exists in isolation from the rest of the world – I have trouble seeing the correlation between real world issues (such as the nightmare busy periods in the day job, when I have one lined up) with low-energy-periods in writing. These things will be obvious to everyone else, but I keep missing them.

11) Writing is a million times easier once you’ve got a network of folks who understand how writing/publishing works than it is when you’re surrounded by people who don’t. The former understand why you’re excited by getting a short story published while acknowledging its not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, while the latter just think it’s “nice” or “a very big deal.”

12) Most writing advice and editorial conventions are much easier to understand and implement once you’ve been told why they’re in place. For example, understanding the history of poetry as a purely verbal Epic form helped me wrap my head around why rhyme and meter became important (and understanding that helped me figure out why free verse came about and started doing what it does).

13) There are many things in writing that you need to learn, but everyone assumes you already know how to do. Some of it is covered in how-to-write books and courses, but the really important stuff isn’t – how to deal with page-proofs, how to run your finances – and by the time you need to know it, people usually assume you’ve already got it under your belt.

14) Banging your head against a brick wall might not be the most effective way of bring it down, but it both works and proves enormously satisfying when you eventually succeed.

15) There is a point in every project where everything feels like its going wrong and it needs to be scrapped. Even something as simple as this blog-post (Incidentally, the self-critique on this kicked in right…now. This is doubt point for this list. I am giving myself permission to be a pompous wanker in order to get this finished – see point 4).

16) The primary manifestation of fear tends to be self-doubt, feelings of inadequacy, and a sense of self-depreciation in regards to writing.

17) Talking about writing with other writers can be a source of exquisite pleasure, but also a source of distraction. At some point you need to stop celebrating the fact that there are other people who ‘get it’ and get back to work.

18) Rejection is your friend – you instantly have a piece of writing that’s ready to send elsewhere, and a market that’s sitting empty and waiting for you to send them something. It may be frustrating at the time, but in the long-term having someone say no is a good thing. Acceptance mean you need to write more in order to keep the cycle going.

18b) Not that I’m knocking acceptances – they’re pretty damn sweet.

19) Writing is not art. Nor is it entertainment. The thing you have written at the end might be both, but conceptualising the act of writing as anything other than a job that needs doing tends to result of frustration (‘Course, conceptualising it as a job results in frustration as well).

19b) You aren’t allowed to hurt people who say things lings “I want to write to be more creative” or “I don’t care if I ever make any money, I just want to do this for me.” You’ll want to, really you will, but it’s impolite and the cultural myth around art largely means they’re over-romanticized the job.

20) None of the following things are mandatory parts of being a writer: coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, promiscuous sex, road trips, silly hats, cups of tea, an interesting life, drug habits, a garret in France, fame, fortune, volatile personal relationships, angst, suicide, fishing for marlin off the coast of pain, pining for a muffin and promising yourself you can have one after you’vefinished the next thousand words of your screenplay, neurotic self-destruction, a black turtleneck, anything else you can think of that doesn’t involve some aspect of either writing or submitting things. And yet, for some reason, I’ve made the mistake of thinking many of those are part of the process at least once.

21) You are not a real writer. There is no such thing. People-who-don’t-write will not think you’re a real writer unless you have Stephen King/JK Rowling/Stephanie Meyer-like success. There is no writers union who will drop past and give you a real-writer business card. Therefore, you should probably go back to work. Unless you’re a poet, because they do have a union in Australia. Although I’m not sure it does much, and they probably don’t have cards that’ll make you a real writer either.

22) Odds are, I will not have Stephen-King-like success. I’m okay with that, really. I probably won’t be JK Rowling or Stephanie Meyer either. I’m cool with that too.

23) I want to hide this list under a clicky-cut because it feels pompous and arrogant. This fear stems from the suspicion that I haven’t done enough to justify writing a list of thoughts about writing. Presenting myself as a writer who knows stuff invites a frightening level of public censure.

24) You will inevitably come to dislike most of the things you have published, if only because you can see the flaws. That’s a good thing – it means you’ve grown as a writer. When you can see the flaws even before something is published, you’re probably better off saying no and re-writing it rather than living with the nagging guilt.

25) The next draft of this list would be so much better. If I was sensible, I’d probably listen to myself on point 24. At the very least I’d go back and make sure it was all in first or second person. Unfortunately it’s time to go work on something else.

One of those sports that still hasn’t lost its novelty – there are two new reviews out there for the dedicated Horn-spotter. The first is available online at Specusphere – as usual, there’s a random sampling to whet your appetite:

Horn is a memorable, unique, and highly polished work.  Spanning noir, horror, fantasy and several other sub-genres, it has widespread potential appeal.  The novella is an excellent showcase of Ball’s ability as an author, and also a fine example of Twelfth Planet Press’s intriguing novella range. 

The other came out in the September issue of Locus magazine courtesy of their short-fiction reviewer Rich Horton:

New from Australia’s Twelfth Planet Press is a first rate novella chapbook, Horn, by Peter M. Ball. Miriam Aster is a freelance detective, having blown her police career with some unprofessional behavior, but she’s still called back for certain cases as a consultant. Cases, apparently, involving visitors from Faerie. This story starts with a teenager found raped and killed, evidently by a unicorn’s horn. To her regret, the case requires Aster to deal again with her former lover, an exiled Queen of Faerie, and of course Aster still loves the other woman, but knows she can’t get back with her.

But there’s a rogue unicorn loose, and maybe worse in the form of people willing to use a rogue unicorn for very nasty purposes indeed … All the traditional hardboiled attitude, mixed effectively with adark look a Faerie. Strong stuff indeed.

Should probably go do some work on the second novella now, so I return you to your regularly scheduled bloggery…

1) Two Reasons Angela Slatter is awesome

The latest Clarkwesworld magazine has an interview with eight Emerging SF authors, including the insightful and rather startlingly talented Angela Slatter. She says some smart stuff, as do the rest of the interviewees, and it’s well worth a read. If, however, you like you’re writing advice in a more direct and focused form, I really suggest heading over to Angela’s website and read through her advice on editing. Actually, I’d advocate printing out the entire post and keeping it handy next time you’re proofing something. I’ve been lucky enough to have stuff edited/proofed by Angela before and I can say with certainty that she knows of what she speaks here.

2) Interesting Writing Advice from Across the Interwebs

Still on the writing front, I’d also recommend going and taking a listen to Mary Robinette Kowal’s guest-spot on the Writing Excuses podcast. It crams four really useful pieces of advice to fiction writers (based on puppetry, interestingly enough) into the space of fifteen minutes. I transcribed them and put them in the folder where my draft of Black Candy is waiting for me to start rewriting, just as a reminder that I need to think very clearly when I start replacing all my habitual non-verbal tags that get scattered through dialogue.

3) Help Needed/Gen Con Australia

Do you know someone who loves fantasy and SF authors and roleplaying games who doesn’t suffer from stage fright and will be in Brisbane between the 18th and the 20th of September? If so, get them to drop me an e-mail at peter.ball@genconoz.com because I’m in need of some volunteers who’d be willing to MC some panels at this year’s Gen Con Australia. This is your basic call for interested folks – e-mail me for more details.

Yes, I realise this is an odd way to go about it, but I’m short on time and the usual pool of folks I’d ask has gotten shallow in recent years, and I figure most of you who are reading this are SF and Fantasy fans who might know some folks. Given that we’ve had to do this fast and there were set-backs due to the computer-crash*, I’m going to go with odd-but-direct rather than time-consuming-but-standard. :)

*after all my gloating about my back-up plans, it was discovered that I’d failed to back-up the outlook files for the account used in this exercise.

4) Horn Spotting

Horn got a nice write-up from Narelle Harris on her blog. As always, there’s the excerpt:

Horn is a novella, a fast read at 80 pages – a short, sharp uppercut of a book. Parts of it are hard and ugly, as they need to be for this kind of story, but it’s also a ripping yarn. It may leave you desperate for whisky and a cigarette, but you’ll finish it knowing you’ve fought the good fight.

As usual, I’ll mention that copies of Horn are still available from Twelth Planet Press (Not *many* copies, sure, which still blows my mind, but there are still some there if you’re so inclined…)

And now I need to go figure out what’s happening with the sequel. And figure out something to cook for write-club tonight. And get some gen-connery organised. ‘Tis a busy day in the office for me, which is as it should be really.