Deborah Kalin's Blog, page 21

seriously. wtf?

I live on the third floor of an apartment block.

There are no flats above me, no one in the block (to my knowledge) owns a cat, and I don't see how any neighbourhood cat could get to my balcony.

Which is why I'm utterly at a loss to explain the BONES LITTERING MY BALCONY.

is that a lamb rib?

okay, seriously, is that teriyaki chicken? who the fvck is eating teriyaki chicken and dumping the bones on my balcony?

The bones appeared singly over the past month. Since I can't see how a cat could get onto the roof of the apartment block (there are no adjoining blocks with rooves high enough, and no trees the cat could climb that would deliver it so high), I'm forced to consider alternative theories.

Like cannibal birds.

I see a lot of birds sweeping in and out of my view. They love to roost on the roof, however briefly. Mostly pigeons, mynah birds, and ravens. And since the advent of the bones, I am now wondering if they're not EATING THEIR OWN KIND UP THERE.

apropos of musing

» Of The Fish Balls

I said: Watch out! They're kinda plasmic!

She said: They're really hot.

 

» Of The Sitcom

I said: It's just totally pedestrian. At best.

She said: It's really bad.

 

I thought: I use big words.

um, yeah. well.

Damn snakes aren't so easy to avoid.

but the year is slipping away, and i miss the words

There's an interview with Paolo Bacigalupi up at Techland and, quite apart from the fact that I am now livid with jealousy over what is apparently the coolest surname meaning EVER, towards the end of the interview Bacigalupi has some powerful things to say about writing:1

For me … having the raw ability … it was meaningless, ultimately. It was the willingness to write four novels and fuck them all up and keep going that was the definer … the willingness to accept failure and not let it stop you, and to not let that define you.

And I feel like it doesn't get talked about, that idea that nobody accidentally gets published. You don't accidentally fall into writing a novel. Just the process of actually writing a novel is too damn hard for anybody to accidentally fall into it. And if somebody says, "yeah I just did it," they're probably lying. They wanted it and they went after it is what they did.

…Discipline comes from within, not from without. I think of it as being, there are those people who are waiting for the thing to arrive, and then there's people who are going out and making it. I think about it as almost theft. You almost have to steal the book from the rest of your life. There's so few things that are going to support you in the process of writing a book. There's always more child care. There's always some emergency that has to happen. There's always some reason why, you know, you have a deadline at your regular job and so you have to stay up late, and you can't get your writing done. If you're going to write it's always stolen from somebody else's time, or some other responsibility.

Life's been a bit hectic lately, complicated by such fun things as being stalked by RSI and productivity targets at the dayjob, not to mention a ludicrous quantity of errands, and it's been stealing my writing time and energy. Worse, I've been letting that happen — because the stories I have at hand are being uncooperative, and procrastinating on them is far easier than wrangling them into submission.2

Carving time out of your day and life to write is a lesson I've already learnt — but it's also one of those lessons I continually have to re-learn and re-affirm. It can be a hard fight, to carve out that time for myself and my stories, but the hardest fight is to do it consistently and incessantly, every day. Life lets me steal a pocket out of any given day without too much trouble — but when I try to steal a pocket out of every single day, life fights back. Sooner or later, life lands a suckerpunch, and I'll miss a day. That's when the slide starts, and I find myself skipping two days and promising myself if I just have the rest of the week off from writing to knock over all these errands I'll be able to start again on Saturday with a clear head.

Finding time to write, it seems, is one endless game of snakes and ladders. Only without the ladders.

Today I'm going to dodge those pesky snakes, though.

And/or investing in the creative process, since it has a far wider application than simply writingWell, okay, to be fair to me: calling life a bit hectic lately is a touch of an understatement. But still.

i've lost all ability to tell what day it is

Well, it's been over a week now, and there have been no more naked men strutting around the driveway. I share this news because people have been sending me text messages: encountered any nude or rude people today? insanity factor check? nekkid loon count, update!

In fact, I have not seen Mr Balloons at all, clothed or otherwise, since That Morning, otherwise known as the day the world went so crazy1 I began to wonder if I had any secrets worth the effort of inceptioning. Given I don't normally run into him particularly often, it's hard to tell whether this means he's back to his normal routine, or whether he's now enjoying a restful holiday tucked up in the locked ward of the closest psychiatric unit.

Instead I have been entertaining myself comparing the phone plans available through different providers.

They're universally crap. Dear Australian telcos: kindly get over yourself. I'm not actually sure which of you I loathe the most.

i'm pretty sure this bridge has greater structural integrity than any of the phone plans available to me

There were quite a few decidedly crazy things that day, not least of which was Mr Balloons. And the tram delivering me from home to work, during peak hour, including sitting at one set of traffic lights while it cycled through red and green several times, in only 30 minutes, a time I have never matched even in non-peak hour.

because certainty is a false prize

Last weekend I took a leap of faith.

It's been eating at me all week long, and I've only just realised that the reason I'm edgy, and angry, and wanting to lash out, is because I've been feeling vulnerable and stupid.

There was something I was waiting to do — waiting for the right time, the right moment. There were good reasons to wait, every reason to wait and none not to, and I'd promised myself I would do just that.

But last weekend, on the spur of the moment, I changed my mind.

I've decided ...

then posh spice got on my tram

Internets, let me tell you about my morning. Because do you know what happened this morning? The world got its crazy on, that's what happened.

Hands up who remembers Mr LOOK! BALLOONS!?

I've seen him around a couple of times since that apparently alarmingly magical morning. He's never been quite so enthused since, and I've always been busy, so mostly we've just wandered past each other with an acknowledging nod or smile. Personally, I've been quietly of the opinion that he's a habitual drug...

i miss the sky lately

not since the holocene

I may or may not have contracted some form of con lurgy despite barely managing an attendance. (Turns out a con in your home town? Surprisingly inconvenient. The dayjob expects you to earn your keep, instead of swanning around pretending you're a real grown-up writer.)1

So instead of actual, you know, content, on the producing of which my brain cannot focus because it keeps whispering that whisky would surely help our current circumstances, I give you photographic evidence of the Mongolian...

if you launch it, they will come

Did you know, that if you announce a launch of your book, and invite people to said launch, they'll actually attend?

Normal people will find my amazement at this fact the astonishing part of the above statement, but I'm pretty sure it's been documented several somewheres that writers are, in point of fact, just a smidge nuts at the best of times, so go with me on this.

I was expecting a modest handful of the usual suspects, including the drop-ins lured by Tessa's and my smuggling in of...