Tag: Stuff
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Writer-brain

My boss, Kate Eltham, is leaving the writer’s centre in a couple of months. She’s heading off to be the next chairperson of the Brisbane Writers Festival, and I’ve got to admit, that’s something that excites me. She spent six years turning QWC into one of the best resources for writers in the country, and I’m pretty sure she’s going to turn BWF into one of the finest damn literary festivals in the world. That’s the kind of person Kate is – smart, ambitious, transformative. As a Brisbane writer and reader, I’m really looking forward to seeing the kind of festival program she runs in 2013. On the other hand, as a guy who works in the writers centre, my first thought upon hearing the news was fuck, time to be a writer again. And I gotta tell you, that thought hurt. I haven’t been a writer in a while now. A year, at least. Maybe longer. I’ve written, certainly, but

PeterMBall 22/06/2012
Works in Progress

The Lion and the Aardvark: Aesop’s Modern Fables

So about halfway through 2011 I got an email from Robin Laws which said, in essence, I’m doing this anthology of modern fables for Stone Skin Press; might you be interested in contributing? I was. In fact, my first response, which didn’t actually get put into my emailed reply, was oh, fucking, yeah I’m interested. You’re Robin-freakin’-Laws. That kind of enthusiasm is unseemly in an professional email, and I do try to contain my inner fanboy when talking to editors. The actual email probably said something like I’d love to be involved. Here’s the premise for my story. You know. Sedate. Professional. Only twice have I written for editors or been published in markets that my gamer-friends have recognised. The first time that happened, it was when I was published in Weird Tales. This is the second. In this instance, my enthusiasm probably seems somewhat mysterious to any writer-types who aren’t involved in gaming, so the short introduction to Robin is this:

PeterMBall 13/06/2012
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Great Writing Advice Learned from Pro-Wrestling, Part One

Unless you’re a wrestling fan, you’ve probably never heard of Al Snow. He was a wrestler, and a damn good one, and he’s spent years behind the scenes training new wrestlers and talking about wrestling and generally holding forth on the state of the industry. Basically, Al Snow is a smart wrestler whose fond of a good rant, and as a fan of wrestling in general I’m okay with paying twenty bucks for an entire DVD full of his rantings. Some of his rants about wrestling contain remarkably good advice about writing. For starters, Al Snow never lets you loose sight of the fact that wrestling is a business. It may be fake – it’s always been fake – but the wrestlers job is to get in there and put on a match that allows fans to suspend their disbelief and buy into the illusion that it’s real. This is no different to fiction, at all, and it’s one of

PeterMBall 08/06/2012
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Howl

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating accross the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated… – Howl, Allen Ginsberg It’s been a long time since I engaged with Howl in its entirety. Those first few lines, sure; if you’re into poetry in any way, there’s pretty good odds you can reel off the first line and half of Howl from memory. They’re among the most well-known in American poetry, and there’s no getting around the fact that they’re a brilliant opener (Although, I have to admit, in my head I

PeterMBall 25/05/2012
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Hanging with the Spokesbear: Undead Press

Spokesbear: Undead Press. Peter: Really? Spokesbear: For reals, yo. Peter: Okay, really?  Spokesbear: Are you objecting to the topic or the patter? Peter: Both, but mostly the latter. Spokesbear: Stop trying to hold me down, dog. Peter: Seriously, what the fuck’s with that? Spokesbear: Just trying it out for size. Peter: Stop it. Really. Spokesbear: Like you never fantasize about walking into a room and saying ‘what up, bitches?’ Peter: I do not. Spokesbear: … Peter: Okay, I do to, but that’s not the point. I never actually break it out in conversation ’cause I know it’s a bad idea. Spokesbear: Hater. Peter: … Spokesbear: Okay, I’ll stop, but you have to talk about the Undead Press thing. Peter: Fine. Spokesbear: Fine. Peter: FINE. Spokesbear: FINE. Peter: … Spokesbear: … Peter: … Spokesbear: … Peter: So, the Undead Press thing? Spokesbear: Yeah? Peter: Really hard for me to talk about without engaging in victim-blaming. Spokesbear: Sure, ’cause you’re an asshole.

PeterMBall 23/05/2012
Big Thoughts

Everything is Artifice

Years ago, when I first started my never-to-be-finished PhD, I had one simple belief: everything is artifice. I suppose it’s a natural enough conclusion to come to when you’re twenty-two years old and reading Lyotard’s theories on the post-modern condition during the bulk of your waking hours, and it certainly seemed to explain an awful lot about the things I didn’t quite understand about the world. That any attempt at authenticity was but a carefully constructed stratagem to create the illusion of authenticity made sense to me. After all, I lived on the Gold Coast. Trying to deal with the concept of authenticity on the Gold Coast is fucking confusing, since the whole damn city embraces artifice as its default state.  You make sense of it as best you can, or you get the get the hell out. These days I’m older and dumber and I have about thirteen years of additional experience to process, and I’m still not entirely sure that my

PeterMBall 21/05/2012
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

In this post, I swear a lot for no apparent reason

I’m sitting here on a Sunday trying to remember what I was going to blog about. There was plan a while back – perhaps even a written one – but I’m afflicted with a curse that causes me to forget anything remotely plan-like the moment I sit down at a keyboard. Fortunately, I have a back-up plan: 4 Random Things where I place Fuckin’ in the centre of the entry title. 1. DENNIS FUCKIN’ LEHANE One of my favourite book stores is Brisbane’s Pulp Fiction, a speciality-store focused exclusively on Fantasy, SF, and Mystery/Crime fiction. When I first started patronising the store I stuck to the fantasy/SF side of things, revelling in the ability to pick up fiction from small presses and mid-list authors I wouldn’t ordinarily be able to track down. All that changed about…jeez, I don’t know, but a while back…and these days I tend to pick up a few things from the crime side of things. I’m a fan of the

PeterMBall 16/05/2012
Works in Progress

Project Du Jour: Untitled Victorian Planetary Romance, Pt 1

I’m kinda psyched about my current writing project, but I think it needs a far sexier working title than the one it’s got right now. There’s something about the Untitled Victorian Planetary Romance, Pt 1, that doesn’t feel like an adequate representation of the book. It’s been a long while since I charted the progress of a creative project on the blog, and I’ll admit that I was a little gun-shy about talking this one up. For starters, the project is largely being done simply to prove to myself that it can be done, that I can actually put together sixty-thousand words of coherent narrative in first draft form over five weeks of writing. Once upon a time the only question would have been the coherent narrative part of the equation, but me and writing haven’t gotten along for the better part of the last eighteen months. Life kept offering me excuses and I kept taking them, and slowly it

PeterMBall 14/05/2012
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

6 Eclectic Thoughts

1. MY SECRET SHAME I’m going to share a secret: I actually like the taste of instant coffee. There are days when I prefer it to the real thing, especially since ordering the real thing can be a hit-and-miss affair that results in me drinking a horrible concoction created from burnt coffee grounds, urine, and the spiteful hate of people who kick puppies. Instant coffee is never great, but at the same time, it’s never really a disappointment either. It embraces the law of averages and settles for a long, slow arc of mediocrity and met expectations. This is not to say that I’m indiscriminate. There are some brands of instant than are better than others, and I’ll shy away from the worst offenders who seem to have taken the burnt-coffee-ground-urine-and-puppy-kicking-spite combination as their own particular flavour of choice. So yeah, me and instant coffee, we’re tight. In fact, I’m enjoying a cup right now as I type this, and it’s pretty

PeterMBall 11/05/2012
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Hanging With the Spokesbear: Social Media

Peter: So I’ve been reading a lot about blogging and soc— Spokesbear: No. Peter:  But I — Spokesbear: No. Peter: Listen— Spokesbear: No, we’re not doing this. Peter: Not doing what? Spokesbear: This thing we’re you’re all excited to be blogging and working again, so you show up writing a post about social media and blogging in which you ramble on about nothing. Peter: I wasn’t going to ramble about nothing. Spokesbear: Sure you were. “So I’ve been thinking about…” is your own private code for “I have something to say that I don’t want to say and so I’m going to circle the point for two thousand words.” I’m INSIDE YOUR HEAD man, I know these things. Peter:  (small voice) But I’ve already written the blog posts. Spokesbear: No-one cares. Peter: They might. Spokesbear: Alright, they might. I don’t fucking care though, how’s that? Peter: YOUR NOT THE BOSS OF ME, BEAR Spokesbear: … Peter: Right, sorry. You’re totally the

PeterMBall 09/05/2012
Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx

write club today

You’ve got to admit its not t a bad place to spend a few hours writing.

PeterMBall 15/02/2012

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