ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG
Journal

Movable Objects

Over the last few weeks my laptop has taken on an increasingly stationary role. I’ve pulled it away from the current set-up exactly twice–once for Write Club and an afternoon at the university, and once when it was necessary to write away from the desk due to other things going on in the flat. the rest of the time it’s sat in the same spot, with the same peripherals plugged in or attached to the bluetooth. Surrounded by the same tools, the same books, the same project notes. After two or three years of migrating around the flat two or three times every work day, the steady routine of being able to just sit and write is surprising. Of course, give that it’s Wednesday as this post goes live, I’m probably engaging in my once-weekly ritual of carting the computer across town to get work done. On the downside, I’ve been in a stretch of letting my phones get smarter again. More notifications, more access to distracting stuff. Just as making the laptop less movable has had some surprising benefits, it may be time to dumb down the tools that get used for jobs that aren’t writing.

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28/08/2019 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Movies That Surprised Me: Office Christmas Party

I remember when Office Christmas Party hit cinemas, and I’d planned to go see it. The film looked awful, a little slice of seasonal narrative that was going to be equal parts debauchery and twee, but every time the trailer’s played I kept noticing actors whose work I dug in the supporting cast: Kate McKinnon, Olivia Munn, Courtney B. Vance, Randall Park, Jennifer Aniston. “It will be terrible,” I told myself, “but it could have some great moments.” Then life got busy, ’cause it was the holidays, and it’s time in cinemas was incredibly short. There was always a movie slightly more appeal playing at the same time, and I went to see that instead. Fast forward to last week, when my partner and I settled in for a trashy movie night and scrolled through the new releases on Netflix. Office Christmas Party flashed up, and the graphics were basically Kate McKinnon in a terrible holiday sweater, and my partner was sold on that basis. “This will be terrible,” she said, “but Holtzman will be great.” So we loaded up on junk food and put the movie on, and lo….it was almost entirely the movie you expected it to be after watching the trailer. But–and I’m going to stress this–it’s only almost entirely the film you’re expecting: Yes, it’s about a bunch of plucky office misfits trying to save their company with a massive party; Yes, it’s reliant on familiar jokes about sex, drugs, alcohol, and inappropriate behaviour; and, yes,

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27/08/2019 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

RECENT READING: Clementine, Cherie Priest

I started describing this book to my partner as I was approaching the midpoint, running through the key details: steampunk western; Escaped slaves turned dirigible pirates; a female spy forced to become a Pinkerton because she’s too famous for the South to want her anymore; MAD SCIENCE SUPER-WEAPONS! My partner basically asked me to stop and put it on her to-read pile before I’d finished the list. Clementine is part of Priest’s Clockwork Century series, which started with 2009’s Steampunk Zombie Western Boneshaker and rolled through another 5 novels and two novellas. This is one of the latter, originally released as a special edition by Subterranean press and now out in paperback for everyone who wants to catch up. As a novella, it’s not going to be for everyone. It’s definitely a long novella–I’d estimate that it runs close to 40,000 words–but it packs a lot of story, action beats, and two POV characters into that count. The result is a story that rattles along at an incredible pace, but it’s definitely one for the people who like moving fast and know the world from the prior novels. It is, in fact, the kind of book that makes for a really interesting case study for my PhD, although I’m not entirely sure that I have the time to do it justice before the thesis is due. Anyway, I loved this book. I’ll be going back to it and studying its techniques closer, to get a feel for how it moves

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26/08/2019 2 Comments
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? Right now I’m in the phase of Project Stairwell where I need to a) tell a really good ghost story within the context of the story, and then b) deliver on said ghost story when I send characters in to figure out what’s really going on. What’s inspiring me this week? Do Anything Vol 1: Jack Kirby Ripped My Flesh, a collection of Warren Ellis’ columns about the history of the comic book field, filtered through Jack Kirby as a nexus point and the conceit that Ellis has Jack Kirby’s Robot Head on his desk

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25/08/2019 No Comments
Works in Progress

Status Post: 24 August, 2019

Another week draws to a close and the next week is being planned, which means it’s time to break out another Status Post as I survey the state of things here in Brain Jar Headquarters. BIG THINGS ACHIEVED THIS WEEK: Some weeks the achievements are the big list of things you did above-and-beyond the list of things you set out to do. Some weeks the achievements are the things you kept on track despite the drawbacks. This week is one of the latter, with my fiction writer suffering but my PhD word count and a lot of goals on the non-writing side of writing were all met. And I did sneak in shiny new website redesign during the week, when it was clear creative work wasn’t going to stay on track. That lets me tick a task of the “one day’ list, and opens up a bunch of opportunities that weren’t there under the old layout. Also, there was this: YES! This is what I've been saying for years, and why I was so disappointed with what was done to my script for #Sharknado 4. @petermball hits the nail squarely on the head. Sharkandos, Zombie Tidal Waves, and Verisimilitude https://t.co/pZgKMrXFF2 via — Thunder Levin (@ThunderLevin) August 22, 2019 CHALLENGES, MET & UNMET: I’ve had a pretty good run of getting stuff done of late, but got caught in a someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet discussion earlier this week that derailed me midweek. I also ran into the dark side of productivity–the part were anxiety

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24/08/2019 No Comments
Smart Advice from Smart People

Vintage Links 004: Heroine’s Journey, Mortal Kombat, Re-Setting After A Bad Day, & Professional Discomfort

The Vintage Links series is an attempt to clear 600+ bookmarked links I compiled over a period of six years, mostly coinciding with the period in which I worked for Queensland Writers Centre. It involves a lot of stuff I flagged because it would be useful at work, in my own process, or just plain useful. Every week I gather together four of the best links I came across while clearing out the bookmarks folder on my browser, presenting a grab-bag of interesting stuff. I’m going full Marie Kondo on those fuckers: everything is checked, thanked, and either deleted or properly filed so I don’t have to deal with it again. If you want to see more, you can see the prior instalments using the Vintage Links tag An Oral Hisotry of the Mortal Combat Movie (Aaron Couch for Hollywood Reporter, 2015) Read it at Hollywood Reporter I have a soft spot for video game adaptations. They’re very rarely great works of cenema, but will often be servicable and entertaining (Tekken, DOA, Resident Evil), bizarre to the point of abserdity (Double Dragon, Super Mario Brothers), or a cinematic car crash of ubelievable proportions (Streetfighter). Back in 2014, Aaron Couch did a bunch of interviews with folks involved in one of the first adaptations to reach that servicable and entertaining milestone—Paul Anderson’s Mortal Combat adaptation from 1995.  This breakdown of the film’s production process is a fascinating look behind the scenes, casitng light on the challenges that impact on the final product of a

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23/08/2019 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

New Writing Kit: Logitech MK850 & Field Notes

Yesterday I hit a milestone: for the first time in nearly four years, I’m a week ahead on writing blogs. Which means the temporality of these posts gets a little weird, because “Yesterday” can now mean a week-in-the-past-when-I’m-actually-writing-things, or one-day-back, when-I-was-posting-about-a-thing. Getting ahead has largely been a function of the first major change I made when setting up my new workspace: adding in a whiteboard that sits in front of the “goofing off” computer, tracking my weekly to-do list. Thus far, it’s kept me on track with writing, with reading, with blogging, with newsletter creation, and with a bunch of little things I need to do throughout the week. It’s not a bad result for something that cost me $20, in terms of the value it delivers. I get quite gushy about it, when talking to folks about getting shit done. The other pieces of new kit i’ve added to my workspace is this: a Logitech MK850 wireless Keyboard and Mouse combo and a set of Field Notes notebooks. The keyboard was a change requested by my partner, especially since the new desk set-up makes it easier for me to work over weekends. See, I have a habit of typing incredibly fucking fast when I’m in first draft mode, and I’ve always worked on old, cheap banger keyboards that make an incredible racket when I’m really flying. Typing a thousand words typically sounded like a hailstorm rattling against a corrugated iron roof, and while that was satisfying to me on

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22/08/2019 No Comments
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

Sharkandos, Zombie Tidal Waves, and Verisimilitude

Last week, my partner showed me the trailer for the next film from Ian Ziering and the guys who did all those Sharknado films, a little flick they’ve dubbed ZOMBIE TIDAL WAVE. For those who haven’t seen it yet, I encourage you to take a look: As fans of large chunks of the Sharknado franchise, we’re naturally excited about this film. It looks decidedly B-Grade and terrible, but at least 50% of the time this combination of actor and director have taken a terrible concept and made it into something far more interesting. They pushed the ambition of the film and played things straight, delivered above and beyond what was expected of them. The other 50% of the time–I’m looking at you, Sharknado 4–they blew it by playing things for laugh. I did a write up of what made a really good Sharknado films in my newsletter after we rewatched the series last year. It ran a little something like this: I am known, among my friends, for complaining loudly about the fact that Sharknado 4 is the worst of the franchise because it finally gets silly. Peter, they tell me, it’s a series about shark-infested tornado, it’s already quite silly.  It is. That’s part of what people love about the series: it’s terribly silly, terribly goofy, and altogether unrealistic. It’s also why I point people towards Sharknado one through four in order to study how silly concepts can be made to work as a narrative (and, weirdly, become a

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21/08/2019 No Comments
Adventures in Lifestyle Hacking

The Difference Between Busy & Working

Back in 2013, I made the decision to stop using the phrase I’m Busy and it’s associated attempt to shut down conversations or engender pity/respect from people who asked I was going. I did pretty good with it for a while, but words like busy creep back into your vocabulary if you don’t monitor for it. Certainly, this year, it’s back with a vengeance in my conversations, because the alternative often involves uncomfortable conversations about death. So I went back to I’m busy. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to make other people uncomfortable, or deal with their emotional response as they realised they’d tripped over a livewire. However, after reading Jory Mackay’s recent post over at Fast Company, I suspect there was also a large part of me that needed the validation when other things weren’t going right. Mackay’s writing on behalf of RescueTime (admittedly, a service I use and adore), so there’s a certain amount of vested interest in getting people to think about their relationship with busyness. It doesn’t, however, mean that he’s wrong, especially when he starts framing the problems of staying busy versus doing your best work. There’s a paradox when it comes to busyness that goes like this: Anyone with professional ambition strives to do great work and be recognized for their talent and therefore is in high demand (i.e. busy). However, the more in demand you are (i.e. busy), the harder it is to provide the same quality of work

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20/08/2019 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

RECENT READING: Do Not Say That We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien

It took me an incredibly long time to read Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say That We Have Nothing, but that’s not a reflection of quality. It’s an intense kind of book, dealing with an extended family of musicians during the Cultural Revolution in China, and the fall-out on their children’s lives afterwards. I frequently hit the end of a chapter and took a short break, coming back after a bit of a breather. It’s intense and complex and beautiful and heartfelt, and if you’re any kind of creative artist who occasionally looks towards politics and wonders how bad things can get, it’s going to be an intense read. But it should–really, really should–be read. Back in 1916, a Russian named Victor Shklovsky wrote an essay about the nature of art. In it, he argued that our perception has a tendency to become automated, and the role of art is to disrupt that automation and force us to look at things anew: “After we see an object several times, we begin to recognize it. The object is in front of it and we know about it, but we do not see it – hence we cannot say anything significant about it. Art removes objects from the automatism of perception…” Art of as Technique, Victor Shklovsky, It’s as good a guideline for recognising great art as I’ve ever seen, and the sheer amount of disruption that Thein achieves over the course of her novel is impressive. It ranges from small, graceful moments

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19/08/2019 No Comments
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? I’m deep in the draft for Project Stair, which started off as a Short Fiction Lab project but may just edge into longer territory by the time I’m done. It’s a YA-quest-fantasy set around an underground ocean, filtered through the kind of Lovecraftian logic of a Guillermo del Toro horror film. I spent the bulk of last week getting the shape of the thing, and realising that I couldn’t achieve the effect I wanted without really fleshing the details out on the various sub-quest narratives. This week I’m hoping to finalise two of the three

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18/08/2019 No Comments
Works in Progress

Saturday Status Post: 17 August 2019

It appears I had a bunch of good ideas back in February, many of which were derailed by life rolls and complications far beyond my control. One of these was the regular STATUS POST as a lead-in to the Sunday Circle, and I’m going to try and back into the groove of such things. HAPPIEST MOMENTS OF THIS WEEK: I finished the redraft for Short Fiction Lab #4, handed it off to Brain Jar’s resident beta reader, and put it up for preorder at the usual suspects. BIG THINGS ACHIEVED THIS WEEK: After rocking the whiteboard as an organisational tool earlier this week, I’ve actually succeeded in getting a bunch of things on-track. Aside from the aforementioned development work on Brain Jar’s next release: I hit my writing quota for the thesis for the first time since June, and actually started buying down the word-debt I owe that project. I progressed a fiction project every day this week–not quite back to the 1,666 words a day i think of as “cruising speed” as a writer, but close enough to make me happy. I’ve written a bunch of blog posts ahead of time, because I’ve missed the routine fo regular blogging and would like to get back to it. I got my reading mojo back, devouring three books in the space of seven days. Consolidated everything I need to do into a single work space, instead of shifting around the house. It doesn’t quite tick everything off my list from last

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17/08/2019 No Comments

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