March 2016 – Peter M. Ball

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

This Is My Goddamn Mountain

I want to write a story that hits you like a shiv to the gut. I want to get inside your head and fuck with your shit. I want to take a thing that seems familiar and make it seem weird and new. I want to finish this story; this novella; this book. I want to do better, creatively, professionally, strategically. I want to figure out this blogging things and deliver better content here. I want to get more stuff out there. I want to do more with the stuff I’ve already written. I want to write a bunch of stuff I haven’t had a chance to write yet: a comic book; a short-story collection; a whole host of story ideas on my hard drive. A whole bunch of novels that I still don’t quite know how to pull off. I want to walk into a bookstore and see a bunch of books with my name on it on the

PeterMBall 31/03/2016

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

There Is Nothing Surprising About a Writer Getting Rejected (Even JK Rowling)

THE SET-UP STAGE ONE: JK Rowling releases some of her rejection letters from the Robert Galbrath books via twitter. STAGE TWO: Bloggers and journalists everywhere write articles and posts about this, because pretty much anything Rowling does is news these days. She’s JK-Fucking-Rowling, after all. STAGE THREE: Every fucker everywhere starts talking about extraordinary it is that JK-Fucking-Rowling – one of the best-selling novelists of all time – still collects rejection letters. STAGE FOUR: I lose my fucking mind and plots a world tour where I can visit every writer who used such a phrase and shake them by the neck while screaming “NO. IT. FUCKING. ISN’T.” until they swear they will never do it again. THE ARGUMENT: THERE IS NOTHING EXTRAORDINARY ABOUT REJECTION Not mine. Not yours. Not JK Rowling (particularly not when she’s writing as Robert Galbrath and no-one knows yet). We want it to be news because, as a culture, we’d like to believe that extraordinary talent will conquer

PeterMBall 30/03/2016

Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx

Technical Difficulties. Please Stand By.

I went to a con. My brain is not working. I have a presentation to the board of the Writers Centre tonight. I want to lie here and moan about sleep. I want to get up and write about the con. I want to finish a short story and go start rewriting my novel. I want to read all the books I acquired, which was comparatively little for me at a con, and it will still keep me going for the next year. I want to write follow-up emails for the unfinished conversations. I want to say thank-you to a bunch of excellent moderators who chaired panels I was on, and excellent moderators who chaired panels I went to see and really enjoyed. I want to talk about how important cons are, and how important they aren’t in the scheme of becoming an SF writer. I want to write big, detailed posts about SF and masculinity, and large-scale story structure,

PeterMBall 29/03/2016

Journal

Some Days, You’ve Just Got Nothing But The Books You Recommend

I wish I knew what to post about today. I would claim that my brain feels spectacularly empty, but that would be a lie. My brain is brimming with things I could write about, I just lack the confidence of articulating them well within the space I’ve got allotted before I head off to the final day of the Contact. I keep thinking of answers I should have given in panels, or things I could have explained better, but sitting down to write those out would mean giving context. I keep thinking about interesting questions and conversations I’ve had, but still haven’t had a lot of time to process. I keep thinking about the peeps I’ve run into, and the new folks I’ve met over the last three days. New authors, established authors, eager readers and fans. The folks I wish I could have talked too longer. None of that’s going to happen. My train arrives in ten minutes and

PeterMBall 28/03/2016

Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? Two-part week for me: I’ve

PeterMBall 27/03/2016

Works in Progress

#AmWriting

I’m off to Contact 2016 this morning. I expect I will see a large number of the folks who are usually reading this blog over there, at the Hotel Jen, but for the rest of you, a blog post. I am writing a story at the moment. Technically, I am rewriting a story, because the first draft already exists in a notebook that I’ve been carrying around for the last month. Originally I thought this would be more akin to editing, but it’s not. The story that goes into computer is mostly akin to the hand-written draft in terms of structure – everything else gets changed. Don’t get me wrong: editorial processes are useful, at this point. I’ve been working my way through all the planning suggestions in Charlotte Nash’s How to Edit a Novel, which provides an incredibly useful process for editing work, but my handwritten drafts are very spare and very messy and very, very wrong. And so I am

PeterMBall 25/03/2016

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Would that it were so simple?

I went to see Hail, Caesar on Tuesday night and I’ve been thinking on it ever since. It’s a great film that is not, when you get to the end, a great film. A confusing contradiction that makes perfect sense once you’ve seen it, because it does so much right that it’s vaguely disappointing when you get to the end and find yourself asking, “so, that’s it?” It reminded a good deal of seeing Zoolander for the first time back in 2001. A whole lot of people love that film and regard it as a classic, but it drove me crazy. The plot is…slight. An excuse to hold together a whole bunch of comedy set-pieces that are, on their own, funny, but never add up to something bigger. The difference, in this instance, is that I loved Hail, Caesar. It was exactly three scenes into the film before I knew I’d purchase a copy of it when it come out on DVD, because

PeterMBall 24/03/2016

Journal

You Toy With My Natural Emotions

By the time you read this, I will be on the doorstep of my local computer repair place, anxiously waiting for them to open so I can picking up goddamn laptop. They assure me it is fixed. And only two days outside their initial projections, which is something of a miracle given the way technology fails tend to creep up on me. Assuming they are right about the fix – please, gods, let them be right – I will give them money and cart the laptop to Write Club where I will promptly WRITE ALL THE GODDAMN THINGS. I do not like it when my technology fails me. It will be good to be back. In the event this proves to be a cruel taunt on the part of the fates…well, we shan’t consider that.

PeterMBall 23/03/2016

Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

PeterMBall 20/03/2016

Journal

And Now We Are Thirty-Nine

I turn thirty-nine today. As is traditional, I am posting the first-thing-I-Do-On-My-Birthday-Ugly-Selfie, because no birthday is complete until my parents ring wondering why in hell I would put such a thing on the internet. This year, we celebrate the new reality of me and sleep: Occasionally, just for the hell of it, I will wake up and say Luke, I am your Father, just ’cause the breathing effects are right. It was about this point, last year, that I fell asleep while driving and finally got to the point that my doctor to thought hmmm, maybe sleep apnea? We should send you for tests. It took a really long time to get to that point, but I’m incredibly happy that shit got sorted out. Years of feeling like I was somehow broken, and suddenly there was a fix. Thirty-eight was a pretty good year, as a result. I look forward to thirty-nine. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I shall go and celebrate my birthday

PeterMBall 18/03/2016

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

In Search of a Deliberate Error

Still waiting on the laptop to come back from repairs, which means my internet access is largely dependent on an old desktop and the wifi hotspot on my phone. It’s been ten days, which means we’re heading into the outer limits of the time I was quoted. Were I the kind of guy who believed such quotes, I would estimate that I’m back online (and blogging regularly) towards the middle of next week. Because I know my history with computers, I figure it will be me and the phone for another week or two. at the very least. Still, one of the advantages of being laptop free is that I’m catching up on a whole bunch of reading. I spend a lot more time with a tablet while the computer is out of commission, which means it’s relatively easy to slip into the Kindle app and catch up on some of the ebooks I accumulate for travel reading. This week’s reading is

PeterMBall 17/03/2016

Stuff

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

PeterMBall 13/03/2016

Month: March 2016

This Is My Goddamn Mountain

There Is Nothing Surprising About a Writer Getting Rejected (Even JK Rowling)

Technical Difficulties. Please Stand By.

Some Days, You’ve Just Got Nothing But The Books You Recommend

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

#AmWriting

Would that it were so simple?

You Toy With My Natural Emotions

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

And Now We Are Thirty-Nine

In Search of a Deliberate Error

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

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