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 breaking in the new

PeterMBall 22/07/2018
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? The main focus this week

PeterMBall 15/07/2018
Works in Progress

“What is he carrying in his pocketses?” Or, the Current State of the Notebook Wodge

Whenever I go deep into notebook mode, there’s inevitably a point where someone catches a glimpse of my bag and comments on its contents. This, it should be noted, is completely understandable – I’m working relatively light at the moment, and when I emptied my backpack and pockets this morning I was still carrying around 9 different notepads and an assortment of pens. They make for a pretty impressive wodge of works-in-progress. For those curious about such things, here’s a rough breakdown of what I’m carrying around at any given time, starting at the bottom and working my way up: WAIL NOTEBOOK (Brand X 80 page Pressboard Notebook, Blank): . It’s being used to draft the third Miriam Aster novella, and I wanted something cheap and relatively durable to use instead of my usual hardcovers. The logic behind this was simple – I’ve started and failed to write a third Aster book for a decade now, and the weight of all

PeterMBall 14/07/2018
Works in Progress

Notebook Week

I’ve fired up the laptop for the first time in three days and find myself slightly baffled over how to make my brain work in concert with a keyboard. I’m immersed in redrafts this week, kicking the tyres on a couple of novellas, and I’ve switched up my usual process by doing the rewrites by hand instead of glaring at the computer screen. The process I outlined on Monday proved significantly useful that I’ve stuck with it for the bulk of the week – get out, find a nook or cranny to hide in, scribble a few words before tramping my notebook to the next spot. It’s been a while since I’ve drafted in handwriting alone, and as always I’m kinda surprised by how efficient it is. The work doesn’t look finished when it’s done – nowhere near – but I suspect that’s a feature rather than a flaw. The inability to delete and tinker with a line means I

PeterMBall 12/07/2018
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Dancing Brolgas, Steel Balls, and Beating Hearts of the Universe

Today I spent a lot of time walking around the city, alternating between finding quiet places to write and popping into bookstores and art galleries to check out the notebooks they had on sale. I spent longer than intended in the Brisbane gallery because I had to check my bag before I could go to their bookstore, so I figured I may as well take a look around. I spent some quality time staring at Judy Watson’s Sacred Ground, Beating Heart, which is one of those art-works that’s done a disservice when you look at reproductions because it looses some of the texture and depth that makes it intriguing when seem up-close (stare at it long enough, and it’s almost like staring into the night sky – it’s got the same kind of depths). Another chunk of time was spent in front of Sydney Long’s Spirit of the Plains, which is basically the illustration for some kind of Australian magic realist

PeterMBall 09/07/2018
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? Back on Median Survival Time

PeterMBall 08/07/2018
Journal

Bees, Angela Carter’s Postcards, and Circling the End of a Tale

Yesterday, Melbourne writer David Witteveen retweeted this forty-second clip of a bee hatching that kept me amused for an half-hour, and thus went onto the list of links I’ll revisit for a future project that is rather bee-centric. You should probably follow David’s twitter feed – it’s frequently full of interesting stuff, in that way that the feeds of so many librarian/author types I know frequently tend to be (My other recommendation on this front would be Gessorly’s Tumblr, although the librarian/author friend I suspect of being behind that feed is so circumspect about their identity that I’m not 100% sure it’s who I’m thinking of, and thus I will not name them here). The glory of the internet is not that everyone gets famous for 15 minutes, but that everyone has the opportunity to curate based upon their interests. The glory of being a writer – you’re free to stop work and contemplate bee hatchings and how you’d describe

PeterMBall 06/07/2018
Journal

Cocktails and Narratives That Start Listing Sideways

I spent part of yesterday researching cocktails, for the fantasy element of Fairy Dust, with Whisky Chaser, hinges upon a particular character who makes a particular drink. In my head that drink has been an Old Fashioned, for I have a fondness for them and it’s a nice allusion for the problem that drives one of the characters, but the Old Fashioned is not an exciting cocktail. It involves no shakers or bartending shenanigans, just the combining of ingredients that ultimately become something delicious. So I spent an hour googling cocktail recipes, looking for something with more pizzaz. Came up with nothing, and stuck with the old fashioned for the moment. So I started figuring out where my affection for the Old Fashioned actually came from, and I think it can be traced to my friend Allan over at Type 40 (purveyors of fine pop culture artefacts and props) who drank them when I visited Melbourne at some point, and then

PeterMBall 05/07/2018
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Hope and Fear and Figuring Out a Story

Yesterday, I wrote 979 words on Pixie Dust, with Whisky Chaser. Finished up right about the point where my beloved fell asleep after suffering an epic bout of insomnia, so I wrote up today’s edition of Notes from the Brain Jar, watched Dream Dangerously, the documentary about Neil Gaiman’s last signing tour, and thought very hard about processes and writer goals for an hour or two so I didn’t disturb her. Notes were made. Pens and notebooks were deployed. It was, for perhaps the first time, I worked until the battery on the Macbook Air ran out. I’ve never outworked the MacBook before, outside of the occasional day where I’ve forgotten to charge it overnight. It’s battery power has been remarkable, compared to other laptops I’ve owned and battered into submission. Today feels remarkably accomplished, even thought not all that battery power was expended on the act of writing. It’s interesting to work on this particular story, because I’m finally doing something with

PeterMBall 04/07/2018
Journal

Electricity, Angela Carter, Exposition, Pineapple Salsa

There’s an interesting post over on Lifehacker about the cost of electricity in Australia and why it’s unlikely to fall any time soon. I’m linking to it because how electricity is priced tends to one of those mysterious things that people blame political parties for, without truly understanding how it works, and it’s useful to occasionally get people thinking about such things. Then again, my dream political party is the one who runs on a campaign of we’ll tax you so hard it fucking hurts, but we’ll spend it on public services and state-of-the-art infrastructure for the public good. I am destined to be disappointed every election, even if someone actually runs on such a platform. Also, I am reminded that I really should be checking in on The Conversation (where the original post was sourced) much more often than I am. For example, this article about the characteristics shared by “happy city” Instagram pics regardless of which city is being

PeterMBall 03/07/2018
Journal

Now that the Marking is Over, Routines Get Rebuilt

It’s a bright, sunny Monday where I woke up early and got to work on writing projects first thing, getting a bunch of stuff done before I sit down to write this blog post. It’s cool enough that I notice when I walk around without socks on, but not so cold that I regret this decision within an hour of waking up. Over the weekend I realised that the last three weeks have been rough on my mental health. This shouldn’t be surprising – end-of-semester marking is one of those gigs is custom-built to trigger all my anxieties: high stakes, tight deadlines, and you only get one shot to put together feedback that will help, and you want it to be clear because there’s no chance to explain or expand on things the way you do when critiquing stories for friends. All of this comes together to create a very muddied vision of what “doing a good job” looks like,

PeterMBall 02/07/2018
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? As predicted/feared in last week’s

PeterMBall 01/07/2018