ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG
Works in Progress

Claw Update

Claw Draft Projected Total: 25000 Total Words to Date: 6315 Words Done in Previous 24-hour Period:1,673 Deadline: April 30th Last night made for an awesome burst of writing – finished chapter three, worked out some more things that were bugging me about the first two chapters*, and promptly took the daylight hours of Sunday off in the name of cleaning, playing a few hours of D&D, and preparing to go back to work tomorrow. Fortunately the part of me that’s damn happy about doing a minimum of 2000 words a day for the last four days albeit not all on this project) is making noises about how it’d be nice to keep that going. *to whit: when writing a hard-bitten character, or at least when writing this particular protagonist, having them start off in the dark trying to work out what’s happening is the wrong choice. Having an investigator start with an idea of whats going on, then subverting it in a way that points out that things are actually worse than they thought, is a much better approach and makes for more lively dialogue with far less straight expository monologuing from secondary characters. Interestingly, I think I stumbled over the exact same revelation at about the same point when writing the first draft of Horn…

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19/04/2009 No Comments
Works in Progress

Claw Update

Claw Draft Projected Total: 25000 Total Words to Date: 4642 Words Done in Previous 24-hour Period: 879 (Was all prepared to angst about this, then realised it’s nine more words than yesterday) Deadline: April 30th Reasons to Squee: Chapter Two is done. Chapter three introduces a character I hadn’t planned for, but is proving to be fun. Made many notes on fixing the awkward bits of Chapter two as well. Reasons to Wail: You know what? Not much today. All is well in my writing world. Non-Novella Writing: Wrote about four-thousand words of short-story draftage last night (yet another reason not to angst over today’s wordcount), and finally finished the draft of my post-apocalyptic-dragon-cyberpunk-western story. Given this is one of those ideas that I’ve been throwing around for a year or two now without ever finalising it, I find myself very happy. Things worth checking out: Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Freelancer’s Guide (In progress and published on-line as it goes along).

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18/04/2009 No Comments
Works in Progress

Claw Update

Claw Draft Projected Total: 25000 Total Words to Date: 3763 Words Done in Prior 24-hour Period: 870 (Ach) Deadline: April 30th Reasons to Squee: Today, very few. Chapter two, thus far, is a big ol’ mess of revisions waiting to happen. It is, however, almost done and will likely be over some time tonight. Reasons to Wail: Apparently I’ve decided to follow a car chase with a bi ol’ lot of exposition in which the primary action is a possessed cat eating a hamburger. On the Plus Side: I’ve more-or-less finished off all the crits I owe; I got some very nice rejection letters; and I got said stories out again fast. On the Down Side: I lost my groove when it came to putting in time at the keyboard today, choosing to do things like shopping instead. Must rectify this, and soon.

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17/04/2009 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

This is why I’m not a reviewer

I have two moderately hard-and-fast rules when it comes picking movies: no musicals, and no spoofs. I’ve developed these rules after years of being a miserable git who complains about things, and they’re usually followed for the safety of everyone involved. I’m just not geared to enjoy either of those genres, so it’s safer to avoid them. Last Friday, while visiting the local video store, I broke said rules three times. The first to pick up Cabaret and The Producers, the second to pick up Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. To their credit, none of those films was the worst thing I watched this week (that was a film called Blue State, which made me profoundly irritated and left me wondering if a film that was theoretically about being part of the American left was perhaps funded by conservatives gleefully trying to make lefties look idiotic and redundant); yet all three reminded me that I really shouldn’t watch musicals or films that built their commedy around spoofing other films. Walk Hard actually managed to be funny for about six consecutive minutes, largely due to cameo’s by people playing the Beatles; Cabaret was actually pretty watchable, but I’d happily have traded most of the plot for a story revolving around the MC at the club who proved more engaging than any of the leads; and The Producers just isn’t my thing – the sole moment I actually developed an interest in the film was when the crazy German was on-screen

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17/04/2009 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

I’d kinda made a promise to myself that I’d stop posting Amanda Palmer/Dresden Dolls clips on Fridays, since I’m aware that I do it quite a bit. It isn’t really intentional so much as a reflection of my tendency to be very focused on one band for a few years – there’s a period in my late teens where I had the same kind of thing going with REM and the Cure, a time in my early twenties where there was ungodly amounts of Primus and Korn*, and now I seem to have caught the Dresden Doll’s bug (although it may yet turn into a long-term obsession, in much the same way that I never quite lost my obsessive fanboyishness of Nick Cave). Anyway, yes, I keep telling myself to hold back on the Amanda Palmer clips. I think, by now, you’ve all more-or-less caught onto the fact that I regard the band as awesome wrapped in greatness and delivered with a side of awesomesauce. That said, I picked up the Live at the Paradise DVD this week and stumbled over this cover and lets face it, Amanda Palmer + Black Sabbath Covers = Full of Squee and Win! *And yes, you can laugh at me for obsessive Korn fan, but I promise it made much more sense when I was twenty-one.

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17/04/2009 No Comments
Works in Progress

The Jams? I have kicked them. Yes, finally.

There has been actual progress on the Claw draft over the last twenty-four hours, alongside more mundane acts of not-sucking such as finishing short stories (two!) and doing the washing up. Hell, I even walked over to the local Indian take-away to pick up dinner in the interests of getting some exercise. Claw Draft Projected Total: 25000 Total Words to Date: 2893 Words Done in Prior 24-hour Period: 1,432 (not to shabby, considering this mostly came together around 8 PM last night and I’ve done other stuff today) Deadline: April 30th Reasons to Squee*: Chapter one is done, after a good nine or ten weeks of being unable to figure out who to move from the set-up I wanted to the story I wanted. Plus the fix makes for a logical reason to keep the possessed Russian Blue feline in the narrative for all ten chapters. Reasons to Wail: Still got nine chapters to go, and I seem to have put in a car chase. Why in hell is there a car chase? I’m so not a car chase kind of guy… Reasons to go hmmm: Miriam Aster is apparently okay with the existence of fairies, and psychics, and possessed cats, but still a bit iffy on the concept of gods. That last point’s actually been something of a sticking point for me in coming at this draft, since I’m largely feeling my way through the writing-of-a-sequel idea and wondering how far I can push the world that’s set up

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16/04/2009 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Red Planet Squee

Given my weebling joy of the Flash Gordon marathon I posted about a week or two ago, you may be inclined to speculate that I’m something of a fan of these planetary romance/sword-and-ray-gun genres wherein heroes from earth are plucked up and cast across the universe by various means. You would, of course, be correct – and thus be able to predict the gibbering joy that filled my office this morning when I discovered that there is a John Carter of Mars film in the works, with Michael Chabon working on the script. It’s still a long way off, to be sure, but I shall remain quietly excited about the possibility that it may manifest and be good viewing. I’m now going to head off to the computer without the internet to get some work done, in the hopes that yesterday’s burst of productivity can be maintained.

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16/04/2009 No Comments
Journal

Drinks

Today was full of busy-work: sending of short-story contracts; making a trip to the bank; doing some spot cleaning around the house (a futile effort); booking flights to Adelaide in June; putting together the final touches on a job application; followed by heading off for drinks this evening with the ever-awesome Angela Slatter and the mighty Jason Nahrung, upon which time there was discussion on the matter of writing, not writing, what might be written, not having time to read, procrastination, and other topics which tend to crop up when writer’s gather in one place. All in all, a fine day, albeit not the kind of day from which great blog posts are made; nor, for that matter, the kind of day that results in a satisfied writerly glow of contentment that comes from knowing one has done what’s necessary to produce words and such. Fortunately I felt so lazy after said chat that I came home and had a short burst of work (albeit of the editing, flensing and market-research variety; actual writing comes later). I keep wanting to do a longer post about the role downtime, busy-work, procrastination and outright laziness play in the creative process, but I find it difficult to conceptualise them in such a way that won’t me sound like a) a complete pillock, or b) someone in need rescuing or reassurance. Thus I set it aside, confident that it will either work itself out later (or that I have nothing really noteworthy to say on the matter). I

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14/04/2009 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

Because it’s been a Flash Gordon kind of week, this week. Rewatched the movie, watched the Sci-Fi channel series from last year (so by-the-numbers it hurts, but watchable regardless), and re-read some comic collections I had around the house. Also because Autumn is coming, and Queen’s bass player reminds us all of the horrible crimes committed when one picks the wrong sweater in the morning.

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10/04/2009 No Comments
News & Upcoming Events

Horn update

Coming in June 2009 from Twelfth Planet Press Horn by Peter M Ball http://www.twelfthplanetpress.com There’s a dead girl in a dumpster and a unicorn on the loose – and no-one knows how bad that combination can get better than Miriam Aster. What starts as a consulting job for city homicide quickly becomes a tangled knot of unexpected questions, and working out the link between the dead girl and the unicorn will draw Aster back into the world of the exiled fey she thought she’d left behind ten years ago. All in all, Miriam Aster isn’t happy. The last time she worked a case like this it cost her a badge, a partner, and her life. This time things are going to get much, much worse. (Via Girliejones. And Angela, who noticed this before me)

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10/04/2009 No Comments
Journal

The demoralizing effect of having your self-image shattered

I am in two minds today. One part of me notes the general exhaustion that follows the Monday-of-Doom (aka the day I teach seven straight hours of classes, pacing like a maniac the entire time) and says “Seriously, man, just post something and worry about content tomorrow.” The other part of me looks at the long string of blog posts about nothing in particular and thinks it’s probably worth holding off until I’ve got something worthwhile to say. Given that I thought “shit, I look old today” when I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror a few minutes back, I think  the first impulse is going to win. I am, however, going to go away and start putting together a more meaningful post for later 🙂

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07/04/2009 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

I was seventeen or eighteen when this came out, and sufficiently into the works of William Burroughs to be overly affectionate towards any song that made use of the Wild Boys and mugwump jism in their lyrics. If I remember correctly, this came out the same year I traumatized my mother by asking for copies of Junky and Queer for Christmas, forcing her to go from bookshop to bookshop asking for them without context. To her credit, she found them – this wasn’t an easy feat on the Gold Coast at the time, and probably still isn’t today (though I hear they’ve put in a borders now, which may make things easier).

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03/04/2009 No Comments

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