Day: March 18, 2023
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

Don’t Write What You Love

My birthday is the 18th of March. The anniversary of my father’s death is the 19th of March. This one-two punch often catches me off-guard, a double-whammy of anxiety and guilt that throws me off my game despite my belief that I’m feeling fine. As mentioned in the authors note for this week’s Saturday Morning Story, I honestly figured this would be the first time in thirty-eight weeks where I could not produce and post a story for my patrons. Then Vulture did an article on Kelly Link, and I decided to spend Friday hustling to get a new story done. My biggest influences have always been short fiction writers, and Kelly Link rates up there as one of the biggest. Stranger Things Happen and Magic For Beginners are two of my favourite collections ever, and half the reason I attended Clarion South in 2007 was the chance to get taught by Kelly. In a lot of ways, her work

PeterMBall 18/03/2023
News & Upcoming Events

It’s My Birthday. Have A New Short Story…

Today’s my forty-sixth birthday, so I’m kicking off today’s post with the traditional unflattering birthday selfie. I gather these have long been robbed of their power to horrify my mother, but I kinda dig having an ongoing archive of my rarely-photographed face to reflect on as the years go by. This year, my birthday falls on a Saturday, which is also when I post an original story to the Eclectic Projects Patreon every week. I honestly thought this week would be the first time in thirty-eight weeks I skipped a day because I didn’t have a story done—the week before my birthday is always rough for me, and rougher still now the 19th of March is the anniversary of my father’s death—but the weekly short story project has changed my relationship with writing. First, because I don’t actually want to skip a week after thirty-eight weeks of showing up without fail. Second, because writing a story a week will change

PeterMBall 18/03/2023