I’m writing the first half this post on campus at UQ. It’s approximately 7:03 in the morning, and the cleaner is working their way through the offices. I’m here early because I teach a class at 8:00 AM, because it’s the first week and I still don’t know exactly how to find the room, and because I like to get on campus an hour early for classes. That’s my buffer, should there be traffic problems or train delays, and on the days when there are no such problems, it leaves me with approximately 47 minutes of time to fill once I arrive. Occasionally I have a plan for this time: going to the library, for example. Catching up with friends before class. Today — and for most of the coming semester — my plan is this: Do not give this time to Facebook or Twitter without a damn good reason. Instead, I’m making a conscious decisions about the way you’ll use the little slices of time to advance the writing projects that matter to me. # I often think of the period between 2005 and 2009 as my most productive years as a writer. Part of that is invariably hindsight

Let’s not dance around this fact: there are works I have out there, in publishing land, that I am less proud of than others. No, I will not tell you which ones. No, I will not confirm your guesses. No, it’s probably not the work you’re thinking about. In public, you try not to denigrate your work. For one, it’s stupid to tell people, well this, it’s not my best, is it? For two, it’s stupid to tell someone who likes that work, well, you’re kind of a sucker for liking it, ain’t you? People like what they like. When they like your work, you shut your bloody mouth and say thank you, like a grateful person should when they’re getting paid to make bloody art. But still, those works exist. Occasionally, in the company of other writers and artists, you will venture so far as to mention your fear that what you’re doing right now is shit, or that what you’ve done in the past is shit. That everything is shit, and perhaps its time to go back to…shit, whatever it is you do when you’re not being a writer. If, indeed, you have such a thing (terrifyingly, I do not). Once you hit

ONE: MASLOW THE FUCK OUT OF IT My friend Laura Goodin has a saying: Maslow the fuck out of it. Actually, that could be a lie. She has something similar to this, but I can’t remember if I’m inserting the profanity or the profanity was there when she deployed it in our most recent conversations.  If I’m wrong, the intent was definitely something close, and I will owe Laura a beer and an apology. Life would be much easier if I actually copied down the interesting things my friends said, exactly, on the basis that I will one day want to write a blog post around their adages. But for our purposes, lets go with this. Laura Goodin has this saying: Maslow the fuck out of it. Near as I can gather, the saying come from her years working with emergency services, where she would train new recruits in the best way to respond to a crisis. When in doubt, work your way up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Take care of the biological needs, then the safety needs, then the social needs. Much as those of us on the internet would disagree, providing a populace with food and a safe place to