PeterMBall.com

Tonight, this song is the only thing between me and apathetic nihilism.

Which kinda begs the question of what I used to do in the days before youtube. I suspect I just went straight to the Smiths CDs and drank.

February has become the month we do not talk about, so I won’t. Embrace the mystery. What I will point out, somewhat belatedly, is the impressive scale of the recent Australian SF Snapshot which collected 90 or so interviews from members of the Australian Spec Fic scene (my interview would be over yonder).

Now I’m going to go clean the house, answer two weeks of e-mail, and do my best to rejoin the rest of the human race by some point late this evening.

Kathryn Cramer’s just posted the TOC for the Year’s Best SF 15 (edited by Kathryn Cramer  and David Hartwell, available soon from HarperCollins). On the list of included works, amid stories by Bruce Sterling and Alistair Reynolds and Nancy Kress and Geoff Ryman and many other folks, is this: On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War Machines of the Merfolk.

There might have been squee about that around these parts. The spokesbear gets excitable. You know how it is.

Being a single bloke who lives alone, I have a certain blindspot when it comes to shopping. Actually, I have several, but the one I speak of here primarily kicks in when browsing through the area marked “fruit and vegetables.”  I have my staples – there’s usually a spanish onion or two in the house, plus some potato and sweet potato if I’m splashing out- but I generally stick with a few vegetables and rarely touch the fruit at all. If ever there were a guy who steps forth to challenge the statement that “man cannot live on curry and pizza alone,” it’d probably be me.

I’ve mostly arrived at this situation through habit, laziness, and the tendency towards belt-tightening when one lives alone and doesn’t get to share around the general costs of living. I’m also aware that it’s not a good state of affairs, especially since I’m taking the easy route of take-away food far more often than I used too (which, yes, contradicts the belt-tightening logic above, but the other part of living alone is *keeping yourself sane* so it pays not to examine my logic too deeply). So last week I contacted one of those organic famer-direct delivery services the internet has on offer, and this afternoon a nice chap has delivered the first box of randomly-assorted in-season fruit and veg to my door.

It’s a veritable cornacopia of tastiness. I know, because I’ve already devoured the first of the nectarines. This is not the bit where the future is awesome.

No, the bit where the future is awesome came after about thirty minutes of searching for the doobie-do that connects my digital camera to my computer and failing. “Woe,” said I, “for now there will be no visuals to accompany the blog post.”

“Hey dumbarse,” said the spokesbear, “you dear realise that your new computer came with a SDHC drive that’ll fit the data thingy from your camera, right?”

And lo, he was correct, and the future corrected my problem before I even realised such things were possible. Freaking awesome. *This* is why it’s good to be a luddite sometimes.

Also, I finished rebuilding a story that’s been sitting around in parts for the last three months, waiting for me to revise it and fix it and sent it out in the world. Productivity FTW!

Also, I have peaches. They are delicious. The fruit half of that box is so not lasting the weekend.

And since today is Friday, and I’m certain of this because I’ve double-checked this time, I’ll be heading off to celebrate the launch of the Tangled Bank anthology where a bunch of fine authors (including Chris Green and Ben Francisco) have been rocking Darwinian Evolution, SF-Short-Story Style.

Current Project: Getting Back to Basics
Number of Stories Submitted in February: 0 of 8
Rejections Accrued in 2010: 0
Consecutive Productive Writing Days: 1
Days without chocolate: 9
Today the Spokesbear is: OM-NOM-NOM-NOM.

‘Tis a Thursday, today. Somehow this fact managed to elude me until I rocked up for the Friday launch of my friend Chris Lynch’s Tangled Bank anthology, which wasn’t on for obvious reason. I really shouldn’t be trusted to run my own schedule.

That said, the momentary mortification hasn’t really done much to dilute the fact that this is a week of awesomeness among my friends. There’s Chris’s launch tomorrow, the official announcement that Angela Slatter will be doing a short-story anthology with Ticonderoga Publications, due for release at Wordcon in September, and we’re counting down the days until Jason Fischer’s zombie novella After the World: Gravesend hits newsagents on Monday.

On top of this there was discounted ginger marmalade on sale at the grocery story today (score!), my laptop repaired and came in towards the lower end of the projected costs (double-score!), and I’ve managed to start watching a  TV series on DVD without spiraling into the twenty-four episode sleepless death march that usually happens when I try and watch a boxed set.

I’ve also settled down to start fine-tuning some stories so they can get submitted on Monday. Doesn’t really give me consecutive writing days, but I can live with that

Current Project: Getting Back to Basics
Number of Stories Submitted in February: 0 of 8
Rejections Accrued in 2010: 0
Consecutive Productive Writing Days: 0
Days without chocolate: 8
Today the Spokesbear is: distracted by ginger marmalade.

So last week I started working on a story about a man with a birdcage full or sparrows instead in of a heart and the question of what happens when you swap out the sparrows for something else. It ends badly (because it’s one of my stories and they almost always end badly), and there is heartbreak (’cause, again, I’m writing it…), and last night I finally hit the end of the draft and said “oh, well, that’s done.”

It’s not a terribly good story yet, and may never be, but there is rewriting to correct that problem should I decide it has the seed of a good story in there.

The important thing is that it’s done, because that’s how The Fear is combatted – you crush it beneath the weight of endlessly finished drafts until it gives up and goes away.

And because I was the model of writerly virtue yesterday, I’m going to go collect mail this morning.

Current Project: Getting Back to Basics
Number of Stories Submitted in February: 0 of 8
Rejections Accrued in 2010: 0
Consecutive Productive Writing Days: 1
Days without coke and other soft-drinks: 3
Days without chocolate: 6
Today the Spokesbear is: getting his emo on.

I got the writing moving again over the weekend. Not full, productive workdays where I get my 1,000 words down, but enough to feel like I’m actually doing something. Today’s list of things to do consists of words: words; e-mail; tracking down groceries. I will achieve all of these. Everything else is superfluous.

This will not, of course, prevent me from wasting time on the internets.

Current Project: Getting Back to Basics
Number of Stories Submitted in February: 0 of 8
Rejections Accrued in 2010: 0
Consecutive Productive Writing Days: 0
Days without coke and other soft-drinks: 2
Days without chocolate: 5
Today the Spokesbear is: sleeping in.

It turns out that spending two-to-three weeks writing by hand just wasn’t on the list of things I was willing to do. Fortunately this roughly coincided with the realisation that I could pick up a very cheap desktop (to replace the machine that died last September) and write it off as a business expense. It’s not as ideal as no computer problems at all – I’ve spent the last two days uploading the various programs and back-up files onto the new machine rather than working – but it has fringe benefits (hello, photoshop. I’ve missed you).

It’s a stinking hot, evil day outside my office so I’ve retreated into the air-conditioning with a pile of Primus CD and a large vat of coffee. The coffee because my sleep patterns are shot right now (going to bed at eleven, getting to sleep around 4 am). The Primus because I watched a lot of Robot Chicken in a row and it’s Les Claypool themesong reminded me that, yes, godsfuckit, they really were one of my favourite bands.

Current Project: Getting Back to Basics
Number of Stories Submitted in February: 0 of 8
Rejections Accrued in 2010: 0
Consecutive Productive Writing Days: 0
Days without coke and other soft-drinks: 0 <- Yes: FAIL
Days without chocolate: 3
Today the Spokesbear is: wishing I’d stop tooling around with the new computer and *get to goddamn work*

My attempt to roll out the productivity and conquer The Fear hit a road-block yesterday – what seemed to be a minor computer problem (power jack coming loose from the laptop casing) has rolled out into a terrifying ordeal which will culminate in the absence of a computer in the house for 5-to-1o working days while the problem’s corrected. The computer goes in this morning, so…well, basically I’m quietly screwed after that. No word-processor, no e-mail, no basic tools of research. I can work with a pad and pen, but these are only good for the drafting rather than the actual finishing and submitting of work. This…complicates…that whole submit lots of things in February plan.

Meanwhile, in more positive parts of internetland, the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2009 has just been released. Horn got recommended in the novella section and my Strange Horizon’s story On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War-Machines of the Merfolk is mentioned in the Short Story listing.

My mind, it is blown by this turn of events.

(Congrats also to Lisa Hannetand Paul Haines and a bunch of Twelfth Planet Press projects and a bunch of other friends I’ve probably missed, but I’m skim-reading everything right now due to the dwindling battery power).

Mornin’ peeps. The laptop’s on battery power* at the moment so I’m racing against time to get a blog-post written before the computer yawns and says “sleepy now, going away.”

Yesterday I wrote 381 words on a story, poked at another to see where it fell over**, cleared out 50-odd e-mails had been waiting for me to answer them since the beginning of January***, ate half a loaf of bread, took out the rubbish, pondered tactics for tonight’s Bloodbowl game****, and learned that one of my stories from last-year has been picked-up-for-a-reprint-that-I’m-not-sure-I-can-talk-about-yet-so-we’ll-leave-that-there.

Among the various e-mails was a note from Andrew C Porter that basically went along the lines of linked you on my blog, and you might want to go check out the nice things Apex Submission’s Editor Maggie Jamison said in her interview. And so I went, and nice things were said, and Andrew’s blog proved to be fun and vaguely maddening with his insistence on posting Advanced Dungeon’s and Dragon’s trivia that I half-remembered but couldn’t *not* try and answer out of some vague and misplaced sense of gamer-geek pride. Andrew’s also got interviews up with John Klima of Electric Velocipede and Rick DeCost of Absent Williow Review, and blogs quite honestly and amusingly about the whole trying-to-get-published thing.

Current Project: Getting Back to Basics
Number of Stories Submitted in February: 0 of 8
Rejections Accrued in 2010: 0
Consecutive Productive Writing Days: 0 <- Say it with me: FAIL
Days without coke and other soft-drinks: 1
Days without chocolate: 1
Today the Spokesbear is: trying not to point out that giving up chocolate is pointless if I fill the gap with half a loaf of white bread and butter, failing at it, then giving me an aggrieved “shouldn’t you be working” sigh.

*keeping the laptop on battery power while playing on the internets means I can’t waste the *entire* day hanging out here.
**The beginning, mostly
***folks should know that I am teh suxxor at e-mail when afflicted with The Fear, because every e-mail starts with the question “how can I avoid looking like an idiot.”
****I play halflings. The scattered few of you familiar with Bloodbowl can laugh at the absurdity of contemplating tactics now.