Peter M. Ball

Smart Advice from Smart People

Open Tabs Left After Reading Austin Kleon’s Blog Archive

I’ve been exploring the archive’s of Austin Kleon’s blog recently, and spend a lot of time falling down rabbit holes as one interesting post expands out into multiple links and thematic obsessions carrying on over time. For the first time in years, I’m leaving a series of open tabs on my computer, waiting for things to be read and processed and talked about. Earlier this week I curated a list of some of my favourite posts/links Kleon had written about notebooks and included it in my newsletter, and it’s proven to be one of the most popular things I’ve mailed out in the last few months. Today, I find myself poking at two of the open tabs that didn’t fit into that list thematically, but are definitely just as interesting if you enjoy thinking about process and art. Don’t Discard, Keep All Your Pieces In Play talks about the gap between being interested in things and feeling like you should

PeterMBall 03/05/2019

Works in Progress

Celebrate the Little Victories

There’s a writing-based group I track where folks are encouraged to post celebratory screenshots when they finish a draft. It’s a nice little ritual, and so I’m borrowing it to celebrate a moment here: Yesterday, after twenty days and thirty-six thousand words of drafting, I typed <<the end>> on the first draft of a new novella. For those who have been following along, this means it took about four days and six thousand words to flesh out the skeleton draft and get this into a state where every scene actually reads like a scene. It’s not done yet–the books is rough as hell, and names changed halfway through when it inherited a title I’d been planning to use for another story featuring this character. More importantly, the story may be finished to the point of coherence, but that isn’t the same thing as being good. The next step: let it lie fallow for a week or so. Nail down some

PeterMBall 30/04/2019

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 thinking this will be

PeterMBall 28/04/2019

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Damon Suede’s Hot Head, Verbs, and Jane Austen

I was lured into reading Damon Suede’s Verbalize after hearing him do interviews with Kobo Writing Life and Joanna Penn’s podcast. In both, he laid out his approach to writing by focusing in on character strategy and tactics rather than psychology and background, with a particular focus on how this dynamic plays out in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The moment I heard him lay out the idea that Darcy’s strategy is preserving, while Lizzy Bennett seeks to provoke, I was sold on the potential of his approach. That he continued this analysis in both Verbalize–in more detail, and spreading the focus to the minor characters–was one of the delights of his book. Naturally, after reading his non-fiction books on writing, I got curious about his fiction work and how he deployed his advice there. I picked up his first novel, Hot Head, about a pair of firefighters who develop feelings for one another and try to hide it for

PeterMBall 26/04/2019

Works in Progress

On Skeleton Drafts and Pantsing

This morning, around 10:00 AM, I finished the skeleton draft of a new novella about phantom punches, MMA, and a sailor who desperately wants to impress…well, pretty much everyone, including the reader. It started out as a project that drew inspiration from Robert Howard’s Sailor Steve Costigan stories, but quickly became its own thing. If nothing else, there’s less overt racism and sexism than Howard’s Costigan stories. Also, more starships and space stations. The skeleton draft is the phase of the project where the story is more-or-less done, but only in my head. In practice, there are scenes where I’ve locked down the major beats and narrative pivots, but haven’t yet locked them down. Or scenes where a secondary character appears for the first time, but doesn’t yet behave like they need to because I don’t know their role in the story until I push towards the final chapter and see their impact. Right now, the biggest unfinished scene is

PeterMBall 25/04/2019

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Notes from Recent Reading: Ruined by Design, Mike Monteiro

Just prior to my dad going into hospital last month, I wrote an entire blog post about choosing who gets to monetise your attention as an artist working in the early 21st century. If you got something out of that post, I recommend that you set aside an afternoon to read Mike Monteiro’s Ruined By Design: How Designers Ruined the World, and What We Can Do To Fix it. Specifically, the list on page 115, where he runs through the ways in which various online institutions make their money, culminating with a a statement that is both incredibly glib and still nails a particular discomfort I’d been feeling for a few years in social media: “Twitter makes money by getting you to fight with Nazis.” Mike Monteiro, Destroyed By Design Of course, given that it occurs 115 pages in, Monteiro’s built a lot of scaffolding around that statement. He’s talked about the ways in which engagement is monetised and how

PeterMBall 23/04/2019

Sunday Circle

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

PeterMBall 21/04/2019

Sunday Circle

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

PeterMBall 14/04/2019

Sunday Circle

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

PeterMBall 07/04/2019

Adventures in Lifestyle Hacking

Tidying the Desk

We cleaned the apartment last weekend, trying to drive a stake through the heart of the debris that had accumulated through the rolling hell that was the month of March. I took this snapshot of my desk prior to tidying it up, capturing the accumulated mass of bags, stacked notebooks, and paperwork that hadn’t been processed. I have a process for cleaning my desk these days–drawn, unsurprisingly, from a quick YouTube bit Marie Kondo put together for a UK magazine back when her book came out. It runs through a five step process: Take a moment to refocus on what the space is used for, and how I’d like it to be used. Pull everything off and group them into Notebooks, Papers, Misc Stationary, and Sentimental Things (Anything that doesn’t fit into those four categories probably doesn’t belong on my desk) Keep the things that help me ‘spark joy,’ which in this context means ‘do my job better’ as much

PeterMBall 06/04/2019

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Venetia & Other Recommendations

Right. Friday. Back at work this morning, teaching a two-hour tutorial on Georgette Heyer’s Venetia and writing craft. It’s interesting teaching the same books two years in a row, because I can see the impact current craft interests have on the way I read. For instance, reading John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story over the last year kept me looking for the ways Venetia’s subplots serve as echoes of the central conflict, and gave me a new appreciation for the way she’s surrounded by people who are perceived but not really seen by others. Similarly, after reading Damon Suede’s Verbalize while sitting by Dad’s hospital bed, I kept paying attention to transitive verbs and the way they build the narrative (If you’ve not heard Suede talking Pride and Prejudice on a podcast, google his name and track down one of his interviews with Joanna Penn or Kobo Writing Life about the book). And because I’ve been immersed in Kenneth Quinn’s

PeterMBall 29/03/2019

Journal

Funeral Day

Woke up this morning and put on a collared shirt and tie, good pants and shoes that were not sneakers. I drove to the far side of the city and admired the kangaroos in the gardens, avoided a gathering crowd of people for as long as I possibly could. At ten o’clock, right on schedule, we started my father’s funeral service, and the rest of the day was a blur of mourning and people offering their condolences. First, at the crematorium, and then at the small pub around the corner where we decamped for dad’s wake. Tomorrow, I go teach classes. Meet with my PhD supervisor, try to write some things, and start the process of getting our flat in order after three or four weeks of neglect. It feels–rather oddly–like coming back from holidays, that same process of gathering the loose tethers of routines that were ignored while away and trying to weave them back into a familiar life.

PeterMBall 28/03/2019