ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG
Works in Progress

Novella Deathmarch, Day Four

Today the novella did good things. Less of the Death side of the equation and more of the March. The sub-conscious writing muscles have remembered how to work and the story starts chugging along under its own steam. I can look of the current draft and see the shape of the book it’s going to be when it’s done, which is something I hadn’t managed prior to starting the deathmarch. The voice started settling down. I remembered how to take stuff out of a rewrite, especially when it belongs in another scene. All is well with the world. The real measure that the Deathmarch is working, though, comes when I can look forward to the next writing project without immediately running off to work on it instead. When I’m avoiding a project, I’m all about the distraction. Today I’m all about the focus, and hopefully I can start transitioning to normal sleeping patterns instead of maintaining the manic manic working-to-five-in-the-morning approach that defined the first three days. Not that I’m against working ’til five in the morning, but the rewrites tend to make camp in my brain and keep me awake for a few hours after that. I’m starting to miss sleep, just a little. Still, Deathmarch FTW. It’s nice to remember how this writing thing goes.

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22/04/2010 No Comments
Works in Progress

Deathmarch, Day 2

I’ve been at it for six hours today, and I’m about halfway through the second chapter of the novella. I’m okay with that. The first half of the second chapter was actually the hard bit, given the amount of damage I’ve been doing to the plot. The second half is mostly rewriting a scene to fit it into a new location, which should be relatively easy to do. All in all, I’m digging the deathmarch as a way of getting this done. I always forget how happy I am when focusing on a story like this. It starts off feeling like a drag, this whole sense of OMG-there-is-so-much-to-do, but once I’m underway it all settles into a comfortable routine and things get done. I like it when things get done. I like it even more when I can spend two hours on the couch, staring into space while I try to figure out how I get between two points in the narrative, and it’ll actually feel like work thanks to the compacted nature of the deathmarch. Now I’m going to rock out to a medley of bad eighties hair metal (probably starting with Pour Some Sugar On Me) for twenty minutes before diving back in and knocking off the rest of the second chapter.

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20/04/2010 No Comments
Works in Progress

Novella Death March: Day One

About ten hours ago I parked myself in front of the laptop and started rewriting Cold Cases. I came up for air a few times, primarily to check e-mail and eat cake, but otherwise I’ve had a pretty consistent day at the keyboard working on the novella. I’ve made a terrible mess of the story. Possibly seven or eight terrible messes, given the plethora of drafts littering my computer. This is the way rewriting goes in my neck of the woods. I fiddle with things. I break them and see what’s wrong. I look at a scene and wonder what the hell I was thinking, then hammer away at it until it starts to look a little better. Also, rewrote the first chapter. Like, heavy rewriting of the first chapter. And for the first time, I actually like the way it ends. The 2010 rejection count has hit 2. That means there’s just 98 rejections to go

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19/04/2010 1 Comment
Works in Progress

Chaos, Chili-Carrot Cake, & The Twelve Day Deathmarch

On Friday I sat in the middle of messy apartment, contemplating the messy state of affairs, thinking a series of messy thoughts. And after a while I thought, well, enough of that then, it’s kind of a drag, and instituted a plan to cut through the chaos and get stuff done. I spent Saturday and today cleaning rooms, ordering bookshelves, and taking care of long-neglected tasks. Not enough that I’ve instituted order across the flat, but enough to give me a foothold. That was phase one. Phase two requires me to finish the rewrites on Cold Cases*. I have twelve days. That’s a chapter’s worth of rewrites per day, about two-and-half to three thousand words. If I succeed, I will allow myself to have a guilt-free weekend of not-writing in May**. I’ve prepared for this task by making a weeks worth of meals in advance, stocking up on coffee, and dancing around the house to Goldfrapp***. To aid me in this task****, I also baked a cake. Specifically, a chilli-carrot cake. It looks something like this: Not an elegant looking cake, I’ll grant you that, but tasty. Tasty wins out over elegance in my world, especially since I’m the one who’ll be eating it. It also brings the sum total of cakes I know how to cook up to two (the other being a variant on Sri-Lankan Love Cake served with ginger cream, which I can no longer make because I no longer own a food processor and refuse to crush

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18/04/2010 1 Comment
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Stacking Books in Piles

It seemed like a slightly manic goal when I set it back in July of last year, but my question to read 104 books in the space of a year may actually work out. I finished Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own this morning, which brought my reading total up to 74 books, then put together the final thirty books I’m planning on finishing between now and July 31st. They now live on my bedside table, a pile of words that can be beaten down day by day until I finally clear the whole damn thing. To make the goal I need to clear three books off this pile a week, which is a little less daunting than it should be because of my bad habit of reading half a book and getting distracted (and cherry picking stories out of anthologies and collections). There’s a lot of bookmarks already in that pile, which should cut the reading time down a little. Course, after I finish this pile, I have to tackle the to-read bookshelf I’ve set aside for the next eighteen months. I really do need to declare a moratorium on new books at some point, especially since there’s a whole ‘nother bookshelf of unread books in the back of my wardrobe (right about the point where Narnia should be). Admittedly, *that* shelf is stuffed to the gills with stuff that’ll probably go in the next book cull, but it seems like cheating to take things off the list

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17/04/2010 1 Comment
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Puttin on the Pimp Hat

1) Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet has announced the Table of Contents of its next issue due, which will contain work by two of my favourite peeps, Ben Francisco (a man oft-mentioned in this blog for his general awesomeness) and Dan Braum (a man of equal in awesomeness, although somewhat quieter on the internets and thus name-checked around these parts far less than he should be). If I didn’t already adore LCRW and subscribe, this would be the kind of one-two punch that’d convince me I need to pick up an issue. 2) Ellen Datlow’s released the honorable mention’s lists for her Best Horror of the Year anthologies and it includes Horn and the work of a bunch of folks such as Jason Fischer, Angela Slatter, Lee Battersby, Lyn Battersby, Chris Green, Paul Haines, and presumably a couple of other friends whose names I’ve missed in the quick skim I just did. This allows me to tick off yet another thing on my list-of-writer-goals-that-I-shouldn’t-really-keep-because-I-have-no-real-control-over-whether-they-happen-or-not (an unwieldy title, I know, but it’s still far less unwieldy that the list it accompanies; I’ll be chasing entries on said list when I’m eighty). 3) Speaking of Jason Fischer, he’s just put up a sneak preview of a comic he scripted. And speaking of Angela Slatter, she’s holding forth on the subject of her favourite cross-genre works over as part of SF Signal’s Mind-Meld. The peeps are going crazy with the cool stuff this week, so make with the checking-out and such.

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16/04/2010 3 Comments
Works in Progress

2010 Rejection Count: 1

Man, it’s been one of those weeks. You know the ones – you make a mistake early one, a really dumb one that was easily preventable if you’d had half-a-brain, and by Friday afternoon you’re at the bottom of a tailspin from hell where the world is a single chaotic mess and you get deep into the groove of wallowing in your own angst. Of course, by you I mean I. There’s a reason I avoid the internet on those weeks. History teaches us that no good comes from posting while engaging in massive acts of self-recrimination. Of course, history also teaches me that I have a habit of letting one mistake cascade into several in the same manner that this week did, so it’s not like I’m terribly good at learning things. Then I got a rejection letter today, which snapped me right out of it and got me focused.  There are a bunch of people who are going to suspect some level of irony in this statement, but it’s been about five months since someone said “thanks, but this isn’t for us,” and I’ve really, really missed getting rejection letters. You see, no rejection letters means you’re not making submissions, and not making submissions is a bad sign when you’re trying to pay your bills as a writer*. Plus, if you’re the kind of writer who responds to negativity as a challenge (and for all my sins, I am), rejection letters are the barb that keeps you writing. Nothing

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10/04/2010 1 Comment
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Unlikely Musical Obsessions

There is a rumour that Ratt is going to release a new album through Roadrunner Records later this year. Against all odds, this brings me joy.  And it will continue to do so until I realise it has the potential to be an ever bigger debacle than Chinese Democracy. Oh hair metal, I miss you so. Just, you know, don’t bring back the hair and tight pants when you slink in through the back door of teenage nostalgia.

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06/04/2010 1 Comment
Big Thoughts

Opting Out

Facebook recently announced another round of changes to its privacy policy that’s got some folks concerned. The short version, for those who prefer not to follow links, goes something like this: a group of pre-approved third party applications will be given permission to automatically siphon your data should you or one of your facebook friends visit it. This basically means you may click on a link and discover a website that already knows who you are (plus your date of birth, location, sexual preference and political allegiances, should you have put such things in your profile and left them accessible to others). To be fair to facebook, you don’t have to be involved with this, but the default settings will make it possible unless you specifically go and set your profile to opt out of the option. I first joined facebook for work reason when I was working for Gen Con Australia in 2007. I avoided it for as long as possible, because even back then I was wary of the seductive qualities the social-networking gloss over what essentially seemed to be a massive data-sink collecting personal information about the whole damn world. I stuck around after I stopped working for Gen Con Oz because the social-networking gloss does have its good points, but I was always pretty wary about what I agreed to and what it I didn’t. Despite all this, the proposed changes don’t really bother me that much. The facebook privacy policy has always been a worrying document

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31/03/2010 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Talking to the Spokesbear About Recent Reading: The Lathe of Heaven

“You read The Lathe of Heaven?” To his credit, the Spokesbear manages to say this without making it sound like an accusation. Of course, he immediately proceeds to sniff the cover like one of the drug dogs you see at the airport, which kind of undoes his momentary attack of self-control. “You don’t like Le Guin and you’ve had that book sitting on your shelf for six years without reading it. What gives, dumb-arse?”” “I don’t like Earthsea. That’s not a condemnation of her work in its entirety.” The Spokesbear made a nervous coughing noise in the back of his throat. “People will kick your arse for not liking Earthsea. You know that, right?” “I’ve locked the door and taken the phone of the hook. I can drag the shotgun out of the in-case-of-zombie-apocalypse kit if we need it.” “Sure.” I fidgeted as I made coffee, uncomfortable under his stare. “Fine,” I said. “It’s short. I need short books. I promised myself I’d read 104 books by the end of July, most of them written by women, and I’m falling behind.” The Spokesbear doesn’t look convinced. “That theory doesn’t work so well when you don’t like the book, kid. You have to *want* to read things.” “I liked Lathe of Heaven.” He sniffed the cover again, pulled a face like he’d discovered a stash of rotten eggs instead of literary cocaine. “This? It’s had a bookmark living at the end of the first chapter since your first attempt to read it

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30/03/2010 4 Comments
Journal

People Must Die For This

Over the weekend I spotted a billboard that delivered some very bad news: Hey, Hey It’s Saturday is coming back. Online research reveals they’ve been given a run of twenty episode based on the strength of last year’s revival shows, and that they’ll be aired on Wednesday nights in an act of true cognitive dissonance. Darryl Summers is still going to be at the helm, although there’s no news as to which female co-host he’s planning on denigrating this time around. I’ve only got three words in response to this: What. The. Fuck? I’m not entirely sure there’s a good way to explain the lurking evil of Hey, Hey It’s Saturday to non-Australians, but suffice to say that it’s got a fine history of being hosted by a malignant, misogynist gnome who simply refuses to die no matter how many fucking gaffs he makes over the course of his career. It’s a show that routinely built its humor out of the humiliation of others and the othered, and I actually celebrated the first time it got cancelled (and wailed in despair when they announced Summers as the host of whatever Celebrity dancing show he hosted a few years back, for in that moment I saw Hey Hey’s return and trembled). Worse, it’s evil is kind of insidious, because it cloaks itself in a defense of nostalgic Australiana and normalises its behaviour. When Harry Connick Junior protested the inclusions of a blackface skit of the Jackson Five during last years nostalgia showcase

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29/03/2010 1 Comment

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