ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG
Adventures in Lifestyle Hacking

Mapping the Uncertainty (Or Why I’m Logging My Way Through 2021)

It’s New Year’s Day here in Brisbane. January 1st, 2021. The hell year of 2020 is in the rear view, and the coming year is shiny and new and only a little splattered by the ongoing shit it inherited from the previous 365 days. I woke up this morning, wrote three pages, then spent an hour walking around the neighbourhood to check out the damage New Year’s wrought. Here, in my neck of the woods, it’s mostly roadside vomiting and evidence of some kind of car accident at the intersection near my house. More than I expected, as we seemed to be taking things quietly last night, but nowhere near the New Year’s record. Once home, I made a coffee and fired up a fresh logbook for the year. I picked up the logbook habit from Austin Kleon, who advocates for the practice on his blog and in his book Steal Like An Artist. The process is basically what it says on the tin: log all the major things you do across a day in one place, so you’ve got an ongoing record of your year and what you did with it. It’s also a way of keeping track of little details: when did I last put the electric toothbrush on to charge (or, for that matter, when did I last change the brush head)? When was the last time I contacted X about that project? How long has it been since we started watching that TV show? All of

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01/01/2021 No Comments
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

The Line When Soup Becomes Soup

I spend a lot of time fascinated by the mutability of words, which is one of those things that’s seeped into my fiction from time-to-time. This made me a sucker for Something Something Soup Something, a concept that’s part-online game and part philosophy experiment about the mutability of a simple concept like “soup”. The narrative behind the game is simple: it’s the future; aliens are making soup and teleporting it into your kitchen, but their understanding of soup is often flawed and needs a level of oversight. You stand by the teleporter and look at their creations, saying yes or no to each, and after a round of 20 or so serves the game will put together your personal philosophy of soup based upon your choices. It’s a really simple concept and a similarly simple bit of coding, but the gameplay is secondary to the experiment going on behind the scenes – while there’s a general consensus about certain elements that make soup soup, these aren’t universal. The concept is vague, shifting, and impossible to define, particularly once you’re presented with options that might be soup. The results challenge the idea that any concept is truly knowable, despite our belief that there are specific definitions. It’s a timely reminder of the problems inherent in that assumption: Most people believe that we live in a world where everyone understands what words mean. But that assumption seems to be very flawed from the outset. So if we actually misunderstand each other on such simple

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29/12/2020 No Comments
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

What Readers Ought To Know About What Writers Ought To Know About Die Hard

Every December, around this time, my blog goes a little crazy as folks discover the What Writers Out To Know About Die Hard series of posts and start asking particularly sensible questions like, “wait, we’re only halfway through, were’s the rest of the series?” and “so you’re going to finish writing this, right?” And much as I always nod and promise I’ll get back to it one day, the odds of it making it to the top of my to-do list have always been low for a couple of complex reasons, most of which I fell into the habit of not talking about in public. So, with that in mind, here’s the current state of play: I wrote these back in 2013/2014, when I wasn’t in the best of physical or emotional health. They were powered by a clinging-on-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth energy that fueled all my writing at the time, trying to bang things out before my sleep condition left me falling asleep at the keyboard and filling the page with the same letter. I reacted a lot, rather than planning next steps, and dug holes without figuring out how to get out of them. It’s…hard…to touch upon that mindset again. Writing an entry is a huge amount of work. Each post averages about five thousand words, and takes about two days to produce while I do the close reading of the film. I’ve spent more time engaging in close analysis of Die Hard than any book or series I’ve looked at

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17/12/2020 1 Comment
Journal

Pattern Recognition: The November Resolutions

On the 30th of November I celebrate three years since Brain Jar Press launched its first book, the Birdcage Heart & Other Strange Tales. I’d been so focused on the upending Brain Jar birthday I overlooked another milestone—on the 27th it’s been twelve years since I started writing this blog and charting my progress as a emerging science fiction writer. It’s tempting to make noises about blogging less often than once did, and wish for the days when a blog post would inspire conversation and feedback, but the truth is I’ve already blogged more often in November 2020 than I did back in heyday of blogs back in 2008. It’s got me thinking about recurring pattern in my life, where November rolls around and I focus my sights on changing up my approach to a particular aspect of my writing and publishing career. In the past it’s manifested as starting a blog and publishing company, but also starting year-long writing challenges, investing in courses on marketing or cover design as I try to fill gaps in my game, or applying for mentorship programs and other forms of training. Basically, there’s a weird little confluence of the publishing industry slowing down a bit, paid work easing off for contractors or university sessional staff, and the traditional end-of-year freakout about the cost of the holidays that gets me asking how am I going to up my game next year and taking the first steps to do so. This year is no exception.

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26/11/2020 No Comments
Stuff

An Important Publishing Lesson: Don’t Launch Your Company in November

Ah, the holiday season is almost upon us. All the signs are there: Brisbane is turning into a sweltering slow cooker of humidity; Netflix swarms viewers with terrible Christmas movies (and, frankly, the temptation to watch them all is oddly overwhelming); NaNoWriMo is in full swing; and the sales of Brian Jar books evaporate into the ether as everyone waits for the Black Friday deals at the end of the month. There are many lessons I’ve picked up the hard way in this publishing gig, but one of the biggest I’d pass on to aspiring indie publishers or writers is this: don’t launch your goddamn publishing company in November. If you attempt it, you’re launching a new book into a maelstrom of distractions that will make it hard to nab the attention of readers. You’ll end up drowned out by the Black Friday promotions, American thanksgiving, the swarm of NaNoWriMo deals aimed at writers, and that lingering awareness everyone has that they’re about to blow a whole lot of cash on presents and Secret Santa exchanges at the office and a series of holidays celebrations. Naturally, three years ago, I cluelessly ignored all of this and put my first Brain Jar Press book up for sale on November 30. And in every year since, I hit November and plan a celebratory new release to mark Brian Jar’s birthday, and quietly forget the lesson of the previous year about how difficult it is to sell books at this time of year.

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25/11/2020 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

When a Fluke Gives A Moment of Respite From the World

If you haven’t not seen any of the articles about an out-of-control train being caught by the fluke of a whale sculpture, I can heartily recommend it as a temporary respite from the stress of the world right now. Go check it out. Personally, I’ve hit the point where I’ve removed all forms of social media and news from my phone, turning it into a very expensive ebook reader with my Ebook app positioned where my browser used to be. Every time I reach for the phone to fill a few minutes, I’m reminded to read instead of spending the next hour doomscrolling Twitter, The Guardian, or checking FiveThirtyEight. If you’ve never actually gone through the process of removing web browsers and social media from your phone, this is a damned good week to try it.

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03/11/2020 No Comments
Works in Progress

Project Notes: Death of a Nom De Plume Cover

One of the weirder side-effects of going all-in on doing print projects with Brain Jar Press was the increased number of folks who hired me to do layout and cover design in other places. It turns out small chapbooks make for very effective business cards. I kinda put some long and hard thought into accepting these gigs. Design is very much not-my-specialty — everything I know about pulling covers and layouts together is largely the product of short courses and teaching myself things as I go — and I have a good deal of imposter syndrome about saying yes and ruining someone else’s project. At the same time, these freelance gigs typically push me to learn how to do stuff I normally wouldn’t, and I’m generally happier doing projects that push me to learn new things (and, despite having imposter syndrome, I do actually enjoy the creative challenge of cover design). Weirdly, the project I finally said yes to ended up being the most ambitious and pushed me way out of my comfort zone in terms of genre–pulling together the cover for Death of a Nom-de-Plum, a cosy 50s police procedural that was recovered from documents of the late Australian playwright Dorothy Blewett by UQ’s teaching-focused Corella Press. The first real challenge with doing a design gig for someone else, rather than a Brain Jar project, largely came down to control and familiarity. This was the first time I’d designed a cover to someone else’s brief instead of having final

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01/11/2020 No Comments
Big Thoughts

It takes work to be out of work

We’ve had a few days of storms here in Brisbane, but today they’ve given way to blue skies and warm breeze and a very happy cat reclaiming her spot on the balcony. I’ve spent a good chunk of yesterday morning answering email: replying to quote requests from folks interested in book and cover design; responding to authors I owe responses to for Brain Jar (alas, I’m still behind, for reasons that will be clear below); clearing some tasks on the NEIS training program that’ll eventually become the NIES assistance scheme helping the press along next year. Then I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon trying to navigate the complex bureaucracies of Australia’s unemployment system for the fourth time this week, which is starting to feel a little like I’ve stepped into Kafka’s The Trial in the sheer absurdity of trying to get a simple problem resolved. It’s become particularly frustrating because I first called because they’d overpaid me, and I let them know and suggested I’d rather like to pay back the extra before it became a source of stress. Now, four calls in, this starting point has largely been forgotten and the tenor of each successive conversation is increasingly “we’re going to fuck you up for this debt, son, if you don’t pay it back.” Nobody, of course, will tell me how much I owe or how to pay it back because some switch has been flipped and cannot be unflipped and therefore they can’t actually move me

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31/10/2020 No Comments
Journal

SWOT Day

We’re juggling home office spaces here in Casa Del Brain Jar, trying to find an optimal amount of space to get everything done on my end while also factoring in space for my partner to work from home a few days per week. It’s interesting to sit down and interact with things from this perspective: the wireless keyboard which proved to be untenable for writing because the Shift key wasn’t reliable may find new life on the second desk; the upgrade from printer to printer/scanner back at the start of the pandemic proves itself to be a prescient decision; my old desk-top, only ever bought as a back-up if the laptops end, starts to show its age as my partner sizes it up as a potential second screen only to discover that it’s a relic of an era before HDMI ports, requiring a VGA connection. I’m doing up a proper business plan for Brain Jar Press this week, guided through it as part of the New Enterprise training program. It’s a moderately intense experience for an artist who, despite being relatively business minded, still gets away with flying by the seat of my pants an awful lot when it comes to strategy and planning. One of the tasks is doing an SWOT analysis, breaking down the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the business model. And while the biggest threat is always illness or incapacity on my part–such are the dangers of being a one-man shop–the real threat lies in

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29/10/2020 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Recommended: David Tennant Does a Podcast…

David Tennant Does a Podcast is a constant source of unexpectedly good advice for artists, largely because its not a podcast attempting to deliver good advice–it’s just Tennant sitting down with a bunch of talented people and asking the questions he’d like to have answered. There’s also an interesting pattern form–every season, the best episode in terms of creative advice always seems to come from an unexpected angle. For example, season one is awash with fantastic interviews with great actors like Tina Fey, John Hamm, Olivia Coleman, and Ian McKellan, but the episode I’m most likely to re-listen to for a creative boost is inevitably the one with James Corden talking about the lesson he learned from Tom Hanks. In the current season, the best episode thus far is the interview with Cush Jumbo. The entire thing is worth it, but I honestly think the section where she talks about the dark periods of her acting life and the sheer lack of relief when you’re in the early hustling-for-work-and-always-broke phase of your career is something most artists should hear early on.

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28/10/2020 No Comments
Works in Progress

Picking Places to Exist: Writing, Publishing, & Social Media

Over the past few months Brain Jar Press has released a series of chapbooks and short story collections at a pretty decent clip. Both Kathleen Jennings Travelogues: Vignettes from Trains in Motion and Angela Slatter’s Red New Day and Other MicroFictions have sold in surprising numbers (and, in Kathleen’s case, really surprising numbers). We’ve brought Angela’s Winter Children and Other Chilling Tales out in paperback and ebook for the first time, and I released the second issue of the Kaleidoscope’s Children series, Unauthorized Live Recording. Meanwhile, things chug along behind the scenes. I’m gearing up to announce a big project that will run through 2021, incorporating work from a half-dozen different writers. There are individual releases all the way through the year, including a nice mix of reprint projects and original works. Which means this week is all about contracts, doing a short course on micro-business management, and figuring out the current thorny problem du jour: where do I want to exist, online, as a publisher and a writer? One of the side-effects of setting up Brain Jar as it’s own brand, rather than making it an offshoot of my writerly presence, is the way it doubles the workload of being online and engaging with people. There are two Facebook pages, two Twitter feeds, two Instagram feeds, and two newsletters that need to be maintained. There are also a handful of professional groups I maintain a presence in, and some old webforums I like to post to (because I am

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27/10/2020 No Comments
Works in Progress

Process Journal: Immutable Laws of the Brain Jar

Over the past few weeks I’ve been following the Observation Journal template laid out by Kathleen Jennings, pushing myself to pay attention to creative patterns and sites of attention. Structurally speaking, given my focus on Publishing rather than Writing at the moment, my right-hand pages tend to be a lot less on creative exercises and a lot more on wrapping my head around what I’m doing with Brain Jar Press. This week, I tried the Immutable Laws exercise from Mike Michalowics’z The Pumpkin Plan, which aims to break down the three core, non-negotiable beliefs at the heart of what you do as a business. Essentially, the codes you live by, and the strictures you don’t go against because it’s pulling you away from the reasons you do what you do (it is, in essence, a very you don’t want to be published kind of exercise, applied to businesses instead of writing). They’re also the three things that other people should know about working with you, as the immutable part is pretty iron-clad. When it came to Brain Jar Press, some of mine where…surprising. IMMUTABLE LAW 1: ADD VALUE The first question I’ve asked myself with every book we’ve taken on thus far is ‘how do I add value to this work that the author can’t (or won’t)’. It’s an important starting point for me because Brain Jar Press doesn’t offer advances, which means I need to have a firm idea how and why it’s going to be profitable for an

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05/10/2020 1 Comment

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