PeterMBall

Works in Progress

Day Planner

Today I am: a) writing b) making plans c) washing up d) buggering off early to play DnD Last night there was write-club, whereupon I wrote about fifteen hundred words on my next Flotsam story, then sat up into the wee hours forcing myself to write 250 words on the novel project for 2011 (which is currently called Tarnished Silver Swords, but once existed under the working title of the weird lovecrafty-ghoul-swashbuckley-wahoo-novel; neither of these is workable as a final title). I thank Trent Jamieson for the reminder to do the latter, courtesy of his recent blogpost aboutgetting stuff done despite being a procrastinating slacker (which is not to say that Trent is a procrastinating slacker, just that I am and his advice came at the right point to remedy that). There has been too much not-writing in my life this January. I have another five days to rectify that.

PeterMBall 26/01/2011

Big Thoughts

Actually, fuck it, I’m ranting

Every now and then publishers I respect a lot go and do something stupid, and this makes me a little sad. This weeks’ case-in-point comes courtesy of the writer’s guidelines for Ticonderoga’s latest anthology, which I read through and had a complete WTF kind of moment when I stumbled across this. A masculine tone will be favoured but not sought exclusively (i.e. avoid becoming bogged down with intricate descriptions and fancy window dressing in your world building; save your word count for a solid scene – or 2 or 3 – of conflict, action, aggression, etc). (see the addendum below) I mean, yeah, seriously, what the fuck? Setting aside the fact that anyone’s daft enough to phrase their preferences like this in an online world where x-fail has become part of the dialogue and there’s a new generation of readers (and writers) sensitive to gender issues, I actually found this kind of disappointing because it runs up against one of

PeterMBall 24/01/2011

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Sexy Batman

So I was going to rant tonight, because it appears there’s things in the blogosphere to rant about, but then I thought better of it all. Instead I’m just going to suggest that you all go and read the latest installment of Hark, A Vagrant and catch up with Sexy, Sexy Batman. I find myself wishing more Batman comics were like this. And now I’m going to eat leftover prawn and feta pizza from lunch.

PeterMBall 24/01/2011

Smart Advice from Smart People

Nancy Kress on Fixing the Ending

Nancy Kress recently did a short post on how she fixed a story ending that wasn’t working, although it sneaks in as part of a post about other things. The short version, for those not inclined to follow links, goes something like this: Step One: go back to the last point where the story last excited you. Step Two: Change the action of a secondary character. Step Three: Chart the protagonists response to that change. I may have sat there staring at the advice for a good ten minutes this morning, wondering how the hell I’d never thought of it. I mean, it’s simple and rather obvious, but seeing it articulated like that as a process is somewhat revelatory.

PeterMBall 21/01/2011

Journal

Apathy versus Anger

Today I spent my free time at work engaging in what is quickly becoming my favorite procrastination activity: daydreaming about ways I can quit my job to write and making lists about the things I need to do in order to make that happen. On one hand this makes for a nice change – this time last last year I was unemployed and dreaming of ways to pay rent – but after three months in the new day job things have evolved to the point where it’s a hindrance rather than a help. You see, somewhere along the line I ceased being the office assistant and became the unofficial web-guy for the company. My day’s went from data-entry to content production and putting together a plan for the company to revise the website and engage with social media. I’m far from an expert on this kind of stuff – I got the job by virtue of being the sole person

PeterMBall 20/01/2011

Journal

After the Rain/After the Flood

So the buzz on twitter is that the After the Floods e-Anthology has raised over $1200 for the Queensland Flood Appeal, to which I can only say you fucking rock, fans of Australian SF. The special editions title becomes even more poignant now, when the floods are over and the clean-up begins, than it was when we were watching the water rise. I spent much of my day playing courier for the Day Job, delivering orders that’d been held up by the water, and I got to see a fair chunk of Brisbane while I was driving around. Some of the city has held up remarkably well. Some has not. I got home from work and read that there’s a major arterial road that’s potentially ready to slide into the river, which is something that seems oddly surreal. I’ve got friends who are only just making it home after leaving their houses. My sister has absconded to the Gold Coast for

PeterMBall 14/01/2011

Journal

Flood, Part 2

News is that the floods have peaked, and peaked at a slightly lower level than expected, which is one of those bright sides that only remains a bright side until you turn on the television and look at the large swathes of Brisbane underwater. I went for a poke around my suburb this morning, just a little after sunrise. My street seems to have fared pretty well – we’ve had a couple of very small patches of water covering the road and there’s various detours, police barricades and other stuff keeping people from driving through them. Since I’m within the area that they’re blocking off, it’s a safe bet I won’t be driving anywhere today, but all in all it didn’t seem so bad. Then I found this, about 5 minutes walk from my house. To put the above in perspective – that big reflective thing that looks like a river used to be a main road. The trees just

PeterMBall 13/01/2011

Journal

Flood

Brisbane is bracing itself for the worst flooding the citiy’s seen in over a century, and it appears the worst of it will hit around 4 AM tomorrow morning. While I live in one of the affected suburbs, it kinda looks like I may be up high enough to avoid the worst of the waters. Roads may be cut off, but I should stay safe and dry (and if not, well, I’m ready to run for higher ground and there’s plenty of it around). I went to go take some photographs of the local creek (which, until yesterday, I always thought of as a particularly ambitiuos bit of drainage system rather than an established body of water), but was promplty stymied by water covering part of the road about 300 m from my house. Since I wasn’t in the mood to wade, and the local traffic makes dashing onto the road itself rather stupid, I’ll instead send you over to

PeterMBall 12/01/2011

Works in Progress

Process Notes

1) I’m writing in third person this year. This really isn’t my preferred narrative POV, but so it goes. I shall write slowly and suck more, neither of which are fatal conditions. 2) My writing goals are as they always were: take over the goddamn world. 3) I need to remove all forms of fiction from my work area for the foreseeable future. This would be easier if there wasn’t a bookshelf over my desk. 4) I’ve given up on planning this year. I write what needs to be written, then I write other stuff. 5) The parenthetical aside is a thing of evil. 6) There are edits that need doing. I should probably go do them.

PeterMBall 10/01/2011

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

The Cure

A friend of mine just posted this on facebook. Due to overwhelming nostalgia and flashbacks to teenage angst, I, of course, am immediately posting it here. ‘Cause, honestly, I don’t care how long it’s been since you last listened to the cure, it’s still too damn long. And now I go back to the edits and line-proofs, in the hopes I get them done in time to not piss off editors. Catch you on the morrow, peeps. Don’t let the Monday get you down.

PeterMBall 09/01/2011

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

They had me at “Horse Mounted Gatling Guns”, they lost me at “Megan Fox”

So I sat down and watched the Jonah Hex movie over Christmas. This was a mistake. Don’t get me wrong, I really wanted to like this movie. I mean, it has a bounty hunter who can speak to the dead and horse-mounted gatling guns in the first ten minutes, and that kind of absurdity is the kind of wrongness that I’m willing to roll with. And for the first first half-hour or so, things were looking pretty good – it wasn’t a great movie, but it was zany and weird and it had undead fucking cowboys and that kind of shit is awesome. Then Megan Fox showed up. A few years ago I had a friend who worked off the theory that Kate Beckinsale was the kiss of death for a film. As soon as she appeared on screen you were pretty much doomed to a cinematic experience that sucked. At best you’d get a film that achieved a kind

PeterMBall 05/01/2011

Works in Progress

Is This Thing On

Today is the day I returned to work (both day job and the real job), and that means my blogging hiatus is over. Admittedly, it should have been over back on the first of January, but those of you following the twitter feed will already be aware of the somewhat crappy way I kicked off 2011. I spent New Years Day dealing with the catastrophic aftermath of an accident with a bottle of red wine, a somewhat less catastrophic car accident on my way to pick up cleaning supplies and a bunch of new work shirts, and an encounter with a rusting hot water system in the garage that caused my elbow to swell up to twice it’s normal size. If I’d blogged on the day, I probably would have spent five hundreds trying to say what can be summed up as, essentially, fuck fuck fuck. I’ve just spent the last two hours banging out some much needed worded count

PeterMBall 04/01/2011

Author: PeterMBall

Day Planner

Actually, fuck it, I’m ranting

Sexy Batman

Nancy Kress on Fixing the Ending

Apathy versus Anger

After the Rain/After the Flood

Flood, Part 2

Flood

Process Notes

The Cure

They had me at “Horse Mounted Gatling Guns”, they lost me at “Megan Fox”

Is This Thing On

Book Information?

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