Random Acts of Literary Vandalism

February has become the month we do not talk about, so I won’t. Embrace the mystery. What I will point out, somewhat belatedly, is the impressive scale of the recent Australian SF Snapshot which collected 90 or so interviews from members of the Australian Spec Fic scene (my interview would be over yonder).

Now I’m going to go clean the house, answer two weeks of e-mail, and do my best to rejoin the rest of the human race by some point late this evening.

It turns out that spending two-to-three weeks writing by hand just wasn’t on the list of things I was willing to do. Fortunately this roughly coincided with the realisation that I could pick up a very cheap desktop (to replace the machine that died last September) and write it off as a business expense. It’s not as ideal as no computer problems at all – I’ve spent the last two days uploading the various programs and back-up files onto the new machine rather than working – but it has fringe benefits (hello, photoshop. I’ve missed you).

It’s a stinking hot, evil day outside my office so I’ve retreated into the air-conditioning with a pile of Primus CD and a large vat of coffee. The coffee because my sleep patterns are shot right now (going to bed at eleven, getting to sleep around 4 am). The Primus because I watched a lot of Robot Chicken in a row and it’s Les Claypool themesong reminded me that, yes, godsfuckit, they really were one of my favourite bands.

Current Project: Getting Back to Basics
Number of Stories Submitted in February: 0 of 8
Rejections Accrued in 2010: 0
Consecutive Productive Writing Days: 0
Days without coke and other soft-drinks: 0 <- Yes: FAIL
Days without chocolate: 3
Today the Spokesbear is: wishing I’d stop tooling around with the new computer and *get to goddamn work*

1. So it’s three five-day-old news by now, but Clockwork, Patchwork and Raven won the 2009 Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Short Storyand I now have a shiny glass trophy kicking around the flat. The Spokesbear demanded I photograph him with the newly acquired, but it’s remarkably hard to photograph a curved glass trophy with a bear looming over it. Instead I’ll just mention that a hardcopy of the story is available in Apex’s Descended from Darkness anthology and sales of the book go towards keeping Apex Magazine running.

The weekend itself was freaking awesome and laden with opportunities to catch up with folks I don’t get to see anywhere near enough (the redoubtable Jason Fischerand Best-Fantasy-Short-Story-Co-Winner Christopher Green among them).

2. Finally sat down and indulged my inner Charlie Kaufman fan by watching Synecdoche New York. It felt rather like someone had cut the last twenty minutes off Adaptation and left us with the confused muddle of stuff, but it also replaced Nicholas Cage with Philip Seymour Hoffman which helped keep me watching once I realised the plot-compass was set somewhere between “meander” and “Plot? Who do you think you’re talking to, buddy?” Overall it seems to be one of those big, muddled films you can primarily admire for their ambition and the quality of the parts. I’m sure it would reward me for putting the effort into puzzling out its metaphors and meanings, but at the same time it doesn’t actually inspire me to do so.

3. There’s a partial TOC for Twelfth Planet Press’ suburban fantasy anthology, Sprawl, making its way around the internets. It runs something like this:

Liz Argall – Seed Dreams (comic)
Peter Ball – One Saturday Night, With Angel
Deborah Biancotti – Never Going Home
Simon Brown – Sweep
Stephanie Campisi – How to Select a Durian at Footscray Market
Thoraiya Dyer – Yowie
Dirk Flinthart – Walker
L L Hannett – Weightless
Pete Kempshall – Signature Walk
Ben Peek – White Crocodile Jazz
Tansy Rayner Roberts – Relentless Adaptations
Barbara Robson – Neighbourhood Watch
Angela Slatter – Brisneyland by Night
Cat Sparks – All The Love in the World
Anna Tambour – Gnawer of the Moon Seeks Summit of Paradise
Kaaron Warren – Loss
Sean Williams – Parched (poem)

4. I am so totally over summer.

5. It’s lunchtime. I’m off to scrounge up some food.

For those who may be wondering, allow me to clarify what exactly it is you’re looking at in the accompanying photograph. That, my dear peeps, is a photograph of victory in action. Or a pile of 205 books that are ready to leave my house forever and never return, thus clearing shelf-space and giving me tacit permission to buy new books should I ever find myself in possession of discretionary cash ever gain.

The problem, at this point, is that I have no idea how I’m going to get many of these books out of the house. Some I suspect will be claimed by friends (particularly the gaming material and fantasy books) and I expect the rest will go to charity of some kind, although the logistics of carting a box of this size to a salvo bit could be a bit of a problem.

Still, the cull is done, and when I originally wrote “get rid of 200 books” on my to-do list I seriously thought it was the thing least likely to get done. Getting rid of books is hard work for me, but I kinda found a rhythm for it at the end.

Between this and the submission of the Cold Cases draft, I’ve now completed 11.25% of the 80-point-plan for an Awesome year I wrote back in July, meaning my year has finally stepped into double-digits. I bring this up because I suspect the plan is going to be due for a quick revision over the next couple of weeks, since there are some points on it that are now more-or-less impossible* (relying, as they did, on having the computer that died in September rather than my laptop) or irrelevant (focused on options that have been cut off for various reasons).

*technically, this doesn’t make them impossible so much as really difficult and more time consuming, but given their primary role in the plan that’s effectively renders them null.

Still off putting the finishing touches on the Cold Cases draft before I hand it over to Twelfth Planet Press. I should be back on Friday, being my usual blathering self, but until then have a picture of the Spokesbear doing his part:

And now I’m back to the manuscript, for the spokesbear is a harsh taskmaster.

Had an e-mail conversation with the publisher which basically amounted to “I’m going to be busy this week, so you might as well take a few extra days if you want them.” To which I replied “well, yeah, okay,” and promptly fell asleep for much of Sunday instead of rushing to get the edits finalised.

On the plus side, I woke up after all that and said “Oh, yeah, that’s why that scene isn’t working.” Space from a manuscript is a wonderful thing.

Apart from that, it looks like there’s another couple of days between me and sanity, and I’m about to abscond to the Gold Coast for a few days where I can cajole my parents into proofreading the manuscript for me :)

See you on the other side

First, a little pimping: The Queensland Writer’s Centre has announced the November Writing Frenzy, a month-long initiative to get people writing whether they’re engaging in the month-long madness that is NaNoWriMo or just looking to get a project done. Part of the program consists of several Writing Races held on the Australian Writers Marketplace Online Forums, including one this Sunday between 3 pm and 4 pm where I’ll be floating around and answering as the guest racer between the frantic attempt to kick off the NaNoWriMo project. Drop by, say hi, and get some words down if you’re a AWMO subscriber.

Unlike the puntastic Jason Fischer, who’ll be following up as a guest/race captain for the 10th of November Writing Race, I don’t promise to wear a tricorne hat while executing my duties (which seem to consist of “talk about writing” and “write,” which are pretty cool as duties go).

I may have a bear on my head though. It’s been that kind of week.

The invite came at a good time actually, because this weekend is going to be all about the words (Unless you’re actually my friend Chris and you’re coming over for a game of Bloodbowl during my one break from the deadline madness, in which case there will simply be the wailing and gnashing of teeth as the dice fail my team of plucky halfling football players yet again). My current plan for the weekend write-fest looks something like this:

Friday - Write Club with the inimitable and awesome Angela Slatter. Must cook dinner, write a lot, and apologise for the lack of chocolate this week. Then write, bitch about writing, catch up with news of the outside world, make zombie jokes, and write some more. If things go well I’ll have the Cold Cases draft done by the time I turn in this evening. Write club is awesome. I heart the write club.

Saturday – World’s longest writing binge. Seriously. My current plan is to get up early, write a like a manic to finish any of the chapters that aren’t finished on Cold Cases, get some rewrites of chapters that are already outdated and need fleshing out, take a break to play Bloodbowl, then review my notes on the NaNoWriMo project. If I actually get Cold Cases done on Friday night, all the time scheduled for novella drafting will be devoted to a short story instead. Either way, I’m hoping to write until my fingers bleed and collapse into bed with visions of spellchecker faeries dancing through my head.

Sunday – NaNoWriMo Kick Off, the aforementioned Writing Race in the afternoon, and some revision on the Black Candy manuscript in the evening because my poor ol’ novel re-draft has been fermenting that little bit too long now.

Basically, it sees that I’ve hit one of those periods where it’s actually less stressful to spend seven or so hours at the computer, producing words, than it is to avoid the work. I like to capitalise on those periods while the opportunity is there.

1) I signed up for NaNoWriMo

There’s plenty of folks among my circle of friends who do this every year, but for me it’ll be the first attempt at the nano-madness in seven or eight eight years. I primarily signed up because I miss the rigor of the public daily wordcount and it’ll be nice to have somewhere to put one without boring the hell out of everyone reading the blog. Should you be interested in watching me change the totals on a wordcount meter I can be found under the name PeterMBall on the nano site. I also promise there will be minimal wordcount updating on this here blog. Honest.

2) I started writing short stories again

And it’s been a while, I tell you. I took a break from short fiction around the middle of the year with the goal of getting a novel drafted. After that I took a break in order to focus on getting the draft of Claw done. And after that, I stayed on a break while focusing on getting the novella that replaced Claw done. And now it’s October and I’m looking at the pile of unfinished, awkward stories and wondering if maybe it’s time I get back to them. ‘Cause, at the very least, when writing short stories I can pretend I know what I’m doing.

3) I paid off my credit card debt

And for a breif, glorious period I allowed myself to feel happy and at peace with the world. Then, five minutes later, I did the math on how I’m going to buy groceries and pay bills over the coming month and the giddy high of being free of the soul-crushing debt wore off. So it goes, folks, in the lands of unemployed writerdom. Please don’t try this at home

4) I started reading the collected works of HP Lovecraft*

After years of playing the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game, revelling in the critical commentary that surrounds his work, and collecting more Lovecraft anthologies than you poke a stick at, I finally broke down and started reading the short stories of Lovecraft in what I hope is their entirety.

5) Write Club Returned after a long haitus

There was merriment . And wordcount. And chocolate.

* For those who may be curious: the Lovecraft reading will be the third male writer I’ve read since asking for recommendations for female writers a few months back and the first that’s not work-related. This puts my reading total at about 4 books by male writers to 38 books by women over a period of three months. And I’m working on another blog-post about that project once I’ve got some free time in my schedule.

I’m currently preparing to head off to the Gold Coast, primarily to spend a few days catching up with my parents who I haven’t seen for longer than a dinner since they came back from their trip OS a month ago (and, it must be said, to languish in the peaceful surrounds of their home and get some writing done while I’m away from the internets). With that in mind I’m going to forgo today’s entry and make mention of an anthology due to hit shelves in December. Of course, you don’t want to wait for December to organise your copy, because *all the really cool kids are preordering now*. You want to be one of the cool kids, don’t you?*

Descended from Darkness: Apex Magazine Volume 1
Scheduled Released December 1st, 20009

Man, I’m excited about this one. Descended from Darkness collects a lot of the work that appeared on the Apex Magazinewebsite during the first half of 2009 (and maybe a little 2008) into an attractive anthology that has the dual benefit of letting you read these great stories offline *and* contributing a few dollars to keeping a pretty damn awesome online magazine running (with the added benefit that if you order using that link on the top, you may also be contributing beer money to your not so humble author).

So why get Descended from Darkness? Well, for starters, it’s one of those ultra-rare anthologies that’s going to feature me and my most excellent peep Jason Fischer(recent Writers of the Future Winner, Clarion Mate, and all-around dude) on the same table of contents. Plus the genre that Apex promotes (Horror-SF) is one of my favourites and I suspect it doesn’t get enough love. Plus there’s a bunch of other writers on the TOC that make for an assemblage of awesomeness - Mary Robinette Kowall, Lavie Tidhar, Ruth Nestvold, Ekaterina Sedia, and Theodora Goss among them. And the best thing is that it’s a total try-before-you-buy thing if you want it to be – just go check out the magazine archives to see what Apex has been doing.

*All suggestions of peer pressure should be attributed to my own tendency towards awkward cheesyness  when engaging in self promotion, not a reflection of said anthology. Which will be very cool. And has an awesome cover, which I haven’t been able to convince my website to upload and display. And this makes me sad.

So here’s something I realised during my week off: I’m tired of not being awesome.

Lets forestall the inevitable reassurances that tend to follow when you post stuff like that – I’m aware that I am, occasionally, capable of awesome (although it is very un-Australian to admit it, and it is said here with a modicum of irony). There have been the occasional flashes of external validation that remind me of this, plus there’s the posse of folks who make up my friends list. I mean, lets face it: Jason Fischer? Awesome; Angela Slatter? Awesome; My Call of Cthulhu peeps? Awesome; the various folks who have published my fiction? Yep, they’re awesome too. They may have their occasional moments of self-doubt in this regard, since recognising awesomeness in others is easier than recognising your own internal awesomeness, but as a blanket rule I think they all score big points on the awesomometer. As are many other folks (my DnD peeps, my family, etc) who aren’t readily linkable online. I figure that if you can find a collection of awesome folks who are willing to stay in contact and help you out, then there has to be the potential for latent awesomeness in you somewhere to justify that.

So I’m not denying the fact that I’ve done some big things in the last couple of years. Things worth being proud of. Things I can look back on and say “that, that was awesome.”

Basically, what I’m saying here is that my life is occasionally awesome. There are things that I’m good at, but they’re the kind of things that lots of people are good at. I want to achieve more than good. I want total awesome, slathered with awesome-sauce, with a side order of awesome fries. I want to be able to end the year and think “wow, that was a bloody good year” rather than “yeah, some good stuff happened, but the last year primarily sucked.”  I want to kick back after finishing my yearly goal-check next July and say “I fuckin’ rock” with total confidence. I kinda managed that this year – my primary goal was getting my writing back on track and finishing a novel draft, both of which I managed – but lots of other things fell by the wayside. It seems like things have been falling by the wayside for years now, primarily because they’ve been dubbed too hard, too scary, or simply too expensive to achieve without putting in some hard work.

Call it a contact high from a week of productivity porn, but I’m pretty sick of those three excuses floating around in my world.

So this year I’m setting them aside. Between now and June 30th, 2010, I’m going to strive for awesomeness. And to keep me on track, I’ve created victory conditions – an 80-point list of goals that I can mark off as they’re achieved. Some of it is a sensible and reasonable continuation of stuff I’m already doing (redraft and polish Black Candy, get some novellas written, get a whole bunch of stories written), some of it is about rebuilding parts of my life that have slipped by the wayside (pretty much any goal that isn’t writing based), and some are about rebuilding my life so it resembles the life I’d like to be living (reading 104 books in the coming year, getting myself down to a healthier weight). It may be a purely personal metric, but I figure that if I can achieve a high proportion of the things on said list (I’m aiming for 90%) then my year will have been pretty damn awesome.

Part of this is going to involve rethinking the way I blog, since I’ve strayed a long way from my goals when I originally migrated over to my personal website rather than simply livejournaling. In fact, it’s turned into the one thing I’d promised myself it wouldn’t turn into – a place where I log wordcounts and engage in random acts of self-promotion. Part of this comes down from thinking about the blogging process the wrong way, getting caught up in the goal of blogging for its own sake. I’m still not entirely sure how it’ll change, although I’ll be aiming to post both more regularly and less often.