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1) Whip It

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a blog post-reviewy thing about Whip It for about two weeks now, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just not going to happen. Not because I think it’s a bad film – it’s utterly charming in its ability to recognise that something can be simultaneously camp as hell and the most important thing in the whole damn world – but because it fits into the same space as contemporary art where I find my critical vocabulary isn’t really up to the task of expressing what I’m thinking about after seeing the film.

 My short, haphazard take on the film goes something like this: it’s endearing. Specifically, the kind of awkward-coming-of-age endearing you find in Taylor Swift film-clip, only Whip Itcome without the puritanical undercurrent that usually causes me to froth at the mouth when encountering Swift’s oeuvre (and thus, Whip It comes closer to having actual substance). The film actually reminds me, very strongly, of Bring It On (another film that didn’t seem like something I’d like that somehow turned out to be highly entertaining) and I kinda wish it existed in a world where Bring It On didn’t because there’s far to many parallels there. The sound-track is phenomenal in its eclecticism, but gets bonus points for including both the Ramones and Yens Leckman.  The most irritating thing about the film is Drew Barrymore’s characters, but only because it’s exactly the same character she played in the Charlie’s Angel’s films with a tendency to act stoned on top. Plus it has Ari Graynor in a minor role (Graynor seems to have become the new incarnation of the cinematic past-time once dubbed “Breckin-Meyer-Spotting”)

It’s also a goddamn spectacular film to watch from a writing point of view because there’s not a damn subplot in the whole thing that doesn’t get a resolution in the end. Admittedly this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but there’s something powerful about knowing that if a film introduces conflict it will provide resolution to it, even if said conflict is just a five-second scene between the protagonist and a minor character in the opening minutes of the story. While Whip It telegraphs a lot of punches on the macro-level (I doubt anyone can’t pick the father’s final scene in the film a full hour before it happens), it gets a pass on this because the resolution of the really minor conflicts are also dragged back into the main plot and made meaningful.  It’s a neat trick, and one I’m gleefully lifting given that I’m in the midst of writing the second draft of Black Candy and dealing with a dozen or so minor characters who walk onstage and do very little after their first appearance.

Seriously, though, you can probably ignore all that and go with this instead: my friend Chris and I are the kind of snarky, mid-to-late-thirties blokes who are continiously dissapointed by films and prone to venting our dissapointment in Waldorf-and-Statler type critiques. As a general rule, it’s a bad idea to go and see film you think you’ll like when either of us are around.

Both of us hit the end of Whip It and said “Yeah, I need to own a copy of this.”

 2) Minimally Acceptable Levels of Productivity

 So I set myself the goal or writing 14,000 words words last week. I didn’t succeed. In fact, I struck a point significantly below success:

On the plus side, it means I’ve hit the minimum accepted levels of productivity for seven straight days now (aka if Peter doesn’t write a thousand words a day he ceases to feel like a human being and makes life miserable for everyone) and actually started to live like a real human being again. There are even parts of my house that are clean, and food that isn’t ordered from the Domino’s website.

That largely means the weekly goal achieved what it needed to achieve, right in time for the rewrites of Cold Cases to land in my inbox.

Possibly a dangerous question to ask, given that I am the energizer bunny of Avatar-hate, but the movie came up at one of the regular games last week and everyone else at the table seemed to like the film (except the one person yet to see it, who isn’t likely too) and I realised that where I see stunted story that doesn’t do anything after the set-up* a bunch of other folks are seeing unmitigated awesome. 

And I continue to not get it, just as I never got the appeal of the Transformers film and the Matrix and a bunch of other things, and while I’m normally okay with that given that everyone reads a film differently it’s starting to bug me a little this time around. I find myself wondering whether the expectations of films have shifted so far into the boundary of spectacle that story ceases to be important, or if there’s been some kind of fundamental shift in the genre of film-making that I just haven’t figured out yet.

So I turn the question over to people who did like the film: what’s the appeal?

*Incidentally, there’s an interesting article on the Avatar-that-might-have-been if it’d followed the original treatment of the film. It seems to answer every major problem I have with Avatar and reads like a film I would have been gushing over if it’d actually made it to the screen (hell, if even a fragment of it made it to the screen *besides* the pretty FX)

It’s been a rough week thus far (yes, all two days of it) and I’m in a covety kind of mood. I can’t help it, honest. Coveting things is one of those survival tactics that kick in when I’m otherwise unsure of what’s going on in the foreseeable future. And I figured I’d share some of the coveting. A tiny big of it, anyway. It will distract me until my jelly is ready to come out of the fridge and do it’s comfort-foody magic.

And so, in approximate order, the six things about America* that I tend to covet:

1) Home-delivered Chinese food that comes in neat folded cardboard boxes.

Oh little paper boxes full of wontons, cashew and noodle, how I dearly covet thee. In the fifteen years I’ve actually been eating Chinese food (I started late in life, after some bad experiences in my childhood) I have always been disappointed by the plastic containers in which Chinese take-away is served.

To say nothing of my disappointment upon discovering so few Chinese restaurants will deliver in my homeland; Pizza, I can order in, and a good Indian curry if I pick the right suburb. Thai food, maybe, should I be very lucky; heck, in recent months I’ve even had the option of home-delivered schnitzel, though the cost of delivery is prohibitive (and unlikely to be taken up on, were it not for the novelty of the experience). Home delivered Chinese food? Never seen it. And even if I had, there would plastic containers and the disappointed wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I have heard, of late, that the folded boxes are on their way out, a conceit retained in movies and TV shows because they’re far more aesthetically pleasing than plastic tubs. If this is true, I shall be a sad panda. Should I ever actually make it over to America to visit the various friends I don’t get to see often enough, you can bet that my default response to the question of “what do you want for dinner” will inevitably be “Chinese” in the hopes of eating from said cartons. And this is in spite of the fact that Chinese food and my digestive tract rarely get along.

2) Constitutionally protected right to free speech.

Because say what you will about the bits of your constitution and its many amendments that seem outright crazy (yes, constitutional right to bear arms folks, I’m looking at you), this one is just plain cool. That you have folks who recognise how awesome it is to have this and fight to keep it from getting stomped into the mud is likewise very cool.

Those of us stuck in Australia don’t actually have this right, though it’s a fact that catches most people by surprise. It would depress me less if we used it to silence the vocal-but-utterly-moronic segments of our populace, but unfortunately we tend to celebrate them and offering them a spot on Dancing with the Stars.

3) Doctor Pepper

They tried to launch it in Australia, they really did, but many of my countrymen just didn’t seem the glory in a fizzy drink that tasted, primarily, like cough syrup. I suspect it’s because they never got around to putting bourbon in it, but that’s just me.

I would also be covetous of the fact that you have Jolt, but there are enough hardcore geeks in Australia to ensure you can usually find it lingering in the back of some non-franchised twenty-four hour convenience store somewhere. Six weeks ago I would have coveted your Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, but it appears there’s now a supplier importing them to my local store, and that fucking rocks.

I don’t, however, covet your tendency to use high-fructose corn syrup in such drinks. That shit is just wrong. And it makes your cola taste funny.

4) Stamps

Not for any aesthetic or monetary value, just for practical reasons. I need to send self-addressed stamped envelopes to America pretty regularly, so coveting stamps is just a business decision and will remain so until the SF magazine industry is run entirely via internet submissions.

This would be higher on the list, but I’m fortunate enough to be well-stocked in American postage for the moment. I’m just, you know, coveting on the principle that I’ll need them eventually.

5) Southern Gothic…

…because kudzu, ghosts, vampires, and melodrama warm my heart. And because Australian Gothic involves too much red dust, dry heat, and empty landscapes to be much fun. And because kudzu is a fun word to say out loud.

6) Population Density

Yes, I know this isn’t universal, but you guys have a lot of people. Even your small cities are big enough to dwarf most of the urban areas in Australia. I’m sure it comes with its own problems, but with population density comes interesting pockets of subculture and more people who are likely to be interested in whatever weird-ass thing you’re interested.

As a guy who tends to like weird-ass things and frequently finds himself with limited options for talking about them locally, population density is one of those traits that looks particularly promising.

*disregarding the various awesome American peeps who’d I’d gladly steal from you, the fact that America tends to be the  biggest market for English language fiction in the world, and the fact that it’s the hub for SF industry. ‘Cause those go without saying.

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.

Ever wondered what I look like after pulling an all-nighter? I’m not sure why you would, but through the magic of built-in laptop cameras and my own hazy logic this morning you’re going to get it anyway.

Current stimulants: coffee, panic, a bowl of port wine jelly, three short bursts of sleep (45 minutes or less). If you need me, I’ll the guy who thinks he’s a hummingbird.

I just thought I should mention it because, you folks, honestly, you rock my goddamn world. I say this full aware that it’s one of those phrases I overuse, but this week I mean it quite literally. My world, it is rocked. I spent part of yesterday studying my to-do list for the next couple of years – not months, like I ordinarily work, but whole damn years – and realised there is a stuff on there. Stuff with tentative release dates and upcoming deadlines and the possibility of more stuff on the end. Stuff that I don’t have to write and figure out a market for, because there are folks who are waiting for it and setting deadlines and expecting it to sell once it’s released.

There’s still a part of me that’s absolutely bewildered by the fact that there are enough of you paying attention to what I write in order to justify that. Writing’s always been a bit like that for me – consciously I know there are people I don’t know reading the stories, but somehow it never sunk in and reached the subconscious level. For years it was just me, and they were dark and unpublished times. Then it was me and the Clarion peeps, and then other writers in the Australian community I met through those folks, and then some of my other friends who don’t write (many of whom I knew for years, and knew I wrote, but remained utterly separated from anything I was doing because I was paranoid and didn’t talk much about the specifics). With the release of Horn my extended family started taking an interest, rather than nodding and saying “yes, a story in an anthology, that’s very nice.” Last year I met my first person who said “oh yeah, I’ve read your blog” and it blew my freakin’ mind. This is not to say that I didn’t know you were out there, reading, just that it never actually sunk in to the point where I thought about when sitting down to write.

And now there are folk who are willing to gamble money and effort on the fact that there are enough people out there, people I don’t know, who want to read something I haven’t actually written yet. I spent part of last night looking over the to-do list and that hit me pretty hard, eliciting a short Keanu Reeves type “whoa.”

Of course, I’ve spent the last twelve hours talking myself out of thinking that this is a big deal, making all the usual arguments about “they’re mostly novellas” and “small press” and “not a full-time writer earning a living wage yet”, but that’s primarily because I need to reduce that realisation down and make it manageable in order to keep working, otherwise my brain will jam up in panic and nothing well get done. But the realisation is still there, underneath all the word-counting and project planning and figuring out of deadlines. My approach to writing has changed in a very tiny way, because you folks started reading. And enough of you liked things like Horn enough to justify plonking down a wad of cash and buy a copy, which led to the suspicion on the publisher’s part that it’d be nice to try it again.

And that rocks my goddamn world. I know I said it in my last post, and at the beginning again, but I feel the urge to say it again (and will probably keep saying it in the future): Thanks for reading, you crazy crazy people. You’re all goddamn awesome.

So as a result of my request for female authors one of my off-line friends decided it would be a lark to say “you know, you really *should* read Stephanie Meyers.” And after the requisite laughter that follows such a suggestion, I said “yeah, right-o” and promptly organised to borrow a copy of Twilight from my sister (who had, in turn, borrowed it from a friend, and wishes it to be quite clear that this is not her book I am borrowing; she was lured into reading it by its popularity among non-reader friends, and her response to the novel are probably even more negative than most).

To be honest, the book wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I mean, it didn’t touch me anywhere inappropriate or threaten to eat my children or anything like that. It just kinda ambled along telling an familiar-if-unpretentious story for the first half in which Bella and Edward stay away from each other, then turned into overblown teenage angst which made me want to slap the characters as they referred to one another as heroin addictions and such, then had an inexplicable vampire-attack-chase-scene-watchamie to come to its unlikely conclusion without any real meaning ’cause, yo, the bad guy was just there to make for an ending, yeah?

Then there was prom.

I could gripe, because this is a very easy book to gripe about, but I figure there’s enough of that. And, honestly, after years of reading some of the more florid ends of the gothic romance I can even understand the appeal, especially if I were part of the target demographic. Lets just say it’s not my thing, and that I’d probably need some kind of bribery to convince me to continue with the series. Instead I’m just going to wander off and quietly contemplate how much more awesome this book could have been if it was written from the POV of, say, Billy or Tyler-who-cannot-drive-on-ice, becoming the friend and confidant of his neighbour Edward Cullen, who is in the process of going all Jay Gatsby for the new girl. ‘Cause I think Twilight by way of the Great Gatsby would have been awesome, and it would have spared me the interminable angst that made up the middle portion of the book. Plus, then, the stalkery stuff would actually be a literary homage rather than just plain creepy.

This time as part of a three book review on Mondyboy’s blog covering a trio of Twelfth Planet releases – Horn, Dirk Flithart’s Angel Rising, and the New Ceres Nights anthology (featuring work by a whole bunch of worthy peeps including Dirk and Angela Slatter).

I’m officially locking myself away and doing minimalist blog posts until I’m done with the current Black Candy draft and the various trips to the hopital (and at the risk of being inappropriate I really hope the later resolves itself first – given the absence of euthanasia legislation in Australia we’re basically watching a family member dehydrate and starve to death, and frankly that’s bullshit).