Peter M. Ball's Blog, page 134

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.

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.

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 of stylized aesthetic to try and cover for the lack of plot and continuity (see Underworld, and Van Halen), and at worst you got the kind of film that made you wish you could beat someone with a cluestick until they admitted their failings and gave you your two hours back (see Pearl Harbor).

Now Megan Fox seems to be performing the same function, 'cause I swear to god that every scene after her first appearance, even the ones she wasn't actually in, the film made less sense and tried to cover it by shoehorning metaphors for terrorism and the atomic bomb into what was essentially an occult western. Plus evil confederate general John Malkovich did some crazy evil with a tattooed Irishman while beer leaked out the side of one-of-those-Quaid-chap's mouth.

To my considerable dissapointment, they didn't bring back the horse-mounted gatling guns.

They almost managed a stylized aesthetic that made me want to like the movie more than I did, but I got distracted by trying to figure out exactly how the not-really-an-atomic-bomb McGuffin worked. 'Cause, seriously, I'm all about ignoring science in favour of awesome, even I thought that shit made no sense. I spent the last half hour of the film drinking scotch and screaming "seriously, what the fuck?" at the screen.

- sigh -

I wanted to like that film. I really did. If only they hadn't made it so damn hard to like.

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 on Paradise City, the first of my Flotsam stories to appear in the Edge of Propinquity this year, and it appears that I've finally found the goddamn awesome that'll give the series its own identity.

And really, thank fuck for that, 'cause it's about time I tracked something down. This project's been haunting me for the last two months – I'd pitched it a while back and it got accepted a scant few days before Dad's heart attack, so I kind of lost track of everything in the month that followed. By the time I actually had the opportunity to write again, I had utterly lost track of why I thought this series of stories was a good idea in the first place. I still had plots, of course, and structural plans and ideas. I just didn't have the intangible something that makes some stories fun to write and some stories…less fun to write.

Normally that isn't a huge problem, 'cause the awesome usually shows up if you keep poking an idea, but  I'd somehow forgotten that amid the hospitalvisits and the new day job and the general flailing around that ended 2010. Now there is marathon writing sessions taking place to make sure the Awesome is delivered on time, especially since I'd managed to copy the deadline down wrong and suddenly lost three days on what was already a tight schedule. I will, presumably, blog more about this when I'm not busy chugging gatorade and writing like a demon to get things done on time.

To borrow a phrase from the inemitable Jason Fischer who recently went through the metemorphisis from flailing panic to kicking-the-arse-of-the-deadline writing machine: it's time to throw down the Guantlet and unleash the goddamn Fists of Steel. Such is the refreshing power of deadlines. You don't have any other goddamn choice.

Project: Paradise City, Flotsam Story One

Current Draftage: 980 words

Total Draftage: 980 words

Panic Levels: Moderate, but not overwhelming

Spokesbear Status: Full of I Told You So, Dumbarse.

Procrastinatory Activity Du Jour: blogging, obviously

Next Procrastinatory Break: Probably at 3,500 words.

Current Sountrack: Welcome to the Jungle, Guns and Roses

Things I Would Be Blogging About, Were I Blogging this December

1) The rejuvenating power of The Birthday Party's Release the Bats when you're tired, pissed off, and generally unwilling to engage with things.

2) How unfeasibly cool it is that Angela Slatter had her books mentioned on Ellen Datlow's list of book recommendations for XMas.

3) The somewhat tricky process of making the first installment of Flotsam, my series due for the Edge of Propinquity next year, work the way I want it to work.

4) Getting the chance to interview Dan Abnett for a friend's podcast, only to have the technology fail us at a crucial moment and steal away the audio.

5) Plans for the blog in the new year, many of which have already been discarded as unworkable because, yo, I am weary of plans. After being lured back to the working world by the promise of paying rent and eating meals that consist of more than potatoes and Soylent Green, I'm finding the ideas of plans kinda abhorrent at the moment. I feel the need for spontaneity somewhere in my life, so the blog may as well be it.

The Festive Season

Someone wise and adroit once said that it's better to not blog than to blog poorly, and after reviewing my to-do list for the rest of the year I've decided to take heed of that advice. The Spokesbear and I are going to take a partial sabbatical from the internet over December while I get some stuff done. I'll be on e-mail and checking facebook and doing all the stuff online that I'm required to do for work, but there's going to be no blogging taking place until the 1st of January. Links to cool stuff (such as the best of the year list over at Last Short Story) will take place over on twitter.

See you all in 2011, and may the holiday season treat you well.

The Magic of Trent's Book Corner

1) This amuses me.

2) It's also posted because my parents read my blog and sometime in the next month they're going to start the yearly dance of "what do you want for Christmas

and I'm forced to give them a list of books and DVDs that are not easily available in their hometown of the Gold Coast with nothing but mall-spawn bookshops catering to tourist's looking for a beach read. Now apparently I'm being unfair with that accusation, for they have a Border's now, but after fifteen years as a reader in one of the least reader-friendly cities I've ever been in, I remain unaccountably bitter.

In any case, when they ask this year, I'm going to tell them "All I want for Christmas is a copy of Managing Death," for it should be widely available on release and Trent is an awesome dude. And 'cause the first book, Death Most Definite, was a cracking read. And 'cause the video corner amuses me.

Swancon 36

A few months ago I decided to do the sensible thing by my financial situation and give up any plans of going to Swancon 36 (aka Australia's nat-con). It was the right decision back that – I was unemployed and broke and heavily in debt, and although there were all sorts of good reasons to go to Perth (Peeps! Ellen Datlow!) the money just wasn't there. Admitting that fracking hurt too, 'cause occasionally I'd talk to Alisa over at Twelfth Planet Pressabout using Swancon as a rough launch date for Claw, and I do so love being around when a new book goes out into the world.

Several things have changed since then. For starters there's no chance that Claw will be out by Swancon, largely because the recent mess of dayjob and parents having heart surgery meant I just wasn't able to meet the original deadline*. On the other hand, Swancon still has a chance to catch up with peeps and Ellen Datlow as a guest, and my recent acquisition of a day job means there's the possibility of being able to afford to go without crippling myself financially for the next three years.

I spent most of the week running numbers, just making sure that it was possible, and what it came down to is this: I can afford the flights, I can afford the membership, and I can probably afford to eat while I'm in Perth. What I'm struggling with is the attempt to find accommodation that's within my budget and still close to the con site. Which means, should I commit to going, I'll need to find someone to split a room with.

Which brings us to you, dear peeps – if there's  anyone going to Swancon in April who'se looking to split a hotel room for four nights , could you maybe give me a shout?

*something I still feel bad about, for all that Alisa was understanding when I e-mailed. For all that "my dad just had a heart-attack/open heart surgery" is a reasonable excuse, I've learned my lesson – the possibility of an unexpected emergency need to be factored into how I meet deadlines from now on. Especially since 2011 has a *lot* more deadlines than I'm used to. For there are always going to be emergencies, and I dislike the feeling of not getting things done on time.

Electric Velocipede

I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but there's a new issue of Electric Velocipede on the horizon and I have a story in it. Apparently Electric Velocipede were handing out promotional postcards at World Fantasy that challenged people to match six opening lines with the authors who wrote them. You're invited to follow the link and find out why this causes me some form of squee. There may well be some kind of contest associated with it,  although there's no closing date mentioned in the post and I'm a little behind the times, so it's entirely possible said contest no longer applies. Or can't be entered online. I can't really say for sure from perusal of the post, but I'm all for embracing the mystery.

After seeing the full table of contents I have to admit that I'm looking forward to the double-issue, largely 'cause I share a ToC with the esteemed L.L. Hannett and I'm always pleased to be in the same magazine/book/etc with friends.

On the Appeal of Easy Targets

So I've set myself some modest goals this week: 500 words a day of writing; three blog posts*; at least one day where I limit myself to two coffees**; buy one Christmas present so I don't get stuck shopping during the evil December shopping crush. Thus far, I've failed horribly at all three, although I can at least make progress the first of my list by clicking publish. This is the curse of modest goals – it's too easy to let them slide, figuring there will always be a moment later where you can get things done, but for the moment they're a necessary evil because the immodest goals were just too damn intimidating for me. Monday was a rough day for writing; Tuesday was much improved, largely courtesy of a 3k night at write club, but today I've been letting the side down again, focusing more on planning than writing new words. Still time to rectify that before bed, just, but we'll see how I go.

I keep reminding myself that the size fo the goals isn't important at the moment, it's the routine I'm chasing. Figuring out ways to get things done, finding an hour or so to write when I need it, getting used to putting words on the page again. I suspect that none of the three thousand words I wrote yesterday are going to be used, but the frustration of the story failing to come together eventually served as the catalyst for figuring out what the story may well be about.

* this would be the second.

** upgraded from one coffee a day because drinking coffee at work is a necessary evil – I work downstairs and the rest of the staff are upstairs with the coffee alcove, so it gives me a legitimate excuse to see my workmates and let them know I'm off for the day.