ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG
Works in Progress

Hell Track Project Diary: Day Three

Here is the upside of running this project diary alongside my six-week project sprint: it forces me to be conscious of my process and the things that affect it. This was particularly useful today, because I hit a perfect storm of three seperate things that had the potential to derail my momentum: Wednesdays are the days I sent out my Notes from the Brian Jar newsletter, which means that part of my day is given over to preparing the weeks content and setting up the mail-out. Ordinarily I budget two hours a week for this – often spread out across multiple days, but lately it’s been happening on the day. Wednesdays are also my weekly Write Club catch-up with Angela Slatter, which means there is often as much talking about writing. This skews my writing time later in the day, which means I can’t just schedule more short sprints in the event I’m not getting much done.  I got about three and a half hours of sleep last night courtesy of some unwelcome insomnia. I work far less efficiently when I’m tired, and I’m more prone to give in to on-the-spot rewrites. I knew days like this were coming, albeit not this early, which is why I aimed to overshoot the 3,000-words-a-day target I need to hit my goal. On the other hand, it’s easy to have two days where you drastically overshoot like I had day one and day two, then assume this is the new normal with regards

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07/02/2018 No Comments
Works in Progress

Hell Track Project Diary: Day Two

The last time I tried this kind of public writing diary, I was working around a couple of restrictions. These included a day-job that limited my writing time, undiagnosed sleep apnea that was having an adverse affect on my mental and physical health, and the kind of split focus that comes from carrying a lot of projects and bad work habits. This time around I’m in a very different place: I can devote a large chunk of my day to this project without getting interrupted; I’ve spent the last few years working on the physical and mental problems; and I’ve spent the last five years getting much, much better at planning and process. It’s also a good point to flag that there’s a considerable amount of privilege behind my process, especially given that I’m now doing a PhD that directly ties to my writing. Which brings us to day two of the Hell Track sprint, where I set out to chase a minor milestone by the end of the day: having a rough sketch in place of all 15 scenes in the first sequence. I cleared a lot of action stuff off the decks yesterday, which means I’m not left with the plot-heavy talky scenes where character dynamics are established and fleshed out. SOME NOTES ON PRE-DRAFT PLOTTING A couple of people have noted that this project isn’t really starting at the beginning, what with me coming to it with something resembling a plan and a bunch of pre-writing. This is 100%

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06/02/2018 1 Comment
Works in Progress

Hell Track Project Diary: Day One

I recently mentioned my interest in applying the six-week project sprint/two-week admin and recovery model to my projects in my newsletter, figuring it would be a good way of combating the fragmentation that comes from having multiple projects splitting my attention between writing and exegetical work for my thesis. Basically, by focusing a six-week project sprint focused on achieving one goal, and alternating those between theoretical and creative writing, I carve out clearly defined time periods where I know what to focus on and finish. Today I started off the first of these, focused on a book that’s been kicking around my to-do list for a while: Since I’m trailing a new approach, I’m going to keep a public diary here on the blog where I track the process and the challenges. This a) keeps me a little more honest about my processes than I’m inclined to be if there’s no public consequence for taking a day off, and b) gives me a record to refer back to at the end that’ll help evaluate whether this process is working or not. The last time I tried this was five years ago amid the worst of the sleep apnea problems, and it was a project that didn’t end up in a good place, so I’m curious to see how it works this time around. All going well, I’ll hit the end of this six week sprint with a 90,000 words novel draft that’s finished. With my usual work schedule, writing Monday-through-Friday and

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05/02/2018 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 kicking off a six-week project sprint tomorrow morning, throwing the bulk of my focus into getting Hell Track finished and off my to-do list. I’ve set myself a benchmark of about fifteen scenes to get through over the next five days, which is more than I’m used to doing, but I’ve also cleared of most distractions until the sprint is over. What’s inspiring me this week? I spent some quality time with Matthew Rielly’s Hover Car Racer this week, taking notes about it’s structure and the way it builds tension in the racing scenes.

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04/02/2018 25 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? It’s been nearly six weeks since I’ve had serious time to devote to fiction rather than thesis drafting, but I’m finally at the point where all the urgent things have been submitted and the next wave is yet to hit. That means my schedule opens up to start prepping You Don’t Want To Be Published for release and familiarise myself with Hell Track once again. I’m going to spend a week working on one particular character’s scenes in the latter, trying to get the spine of their narrative down. What’s inspiring me this week? I’ve been re-watching

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28/01/2018 6 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 have to get all the confirmation documents into the university by 4:00 PM Monday, which means the rest of this week will be spent putting together the 20 minute presentation that’s due on the 31st of January and carefully proofreading You Don’t Want To Be Published. I’ll also be doing a little pre-planning on a couple of stories – throwing around ideas, thinking through the speculative elements and the consequences of putting them there. I’ll need a new story or two by the end of February, at this stage, so I’ll want some options

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21/01/2018 2 Comments
Works in Progress

What Would You Include in a Best Of PeterMBall.com Collection?

So I’m working on this book at the moment, You Don’t Want To Be Published. It’ll be finished and released in February, and it’s basically a collections of essays and posts I’ve pulled from this blog and other publications that you can get for free if you sign up for my newsletter. Basically, the stuff people have pointed to over the years and said it would be useful if this was in a book or something. Technically, I already had “or something” covered by the existence of the blog, so I’m doing the other half of that statement. There were fifteen essays/posts originally, but the incredibly smart Kate Eltham made the case for including a sixteenth after I wrote about Patreon and digital tools back in December. Kate’s considerably smarter than me, given that she has four brains and was thinking about digital publishing long before I got my shit together, so I listened to her and included the post she suggested (albeit rewritten, given that Petreon moved to change their policy very quickly after I wrote my post). But it did occur to me that there’s no reason I have to limit this at sixteen. I’ve been posting here for a few years now, and while I’ve got stats and my own gut telling me what people have found useful, there are also a whole bunch of you who have engaged with my writing over the last few years. Here’s the current Table of Contents: You Don’t Want to Be

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19/01/2018 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 doing rewrites of my thesis chapter ahead of my confirmation submission in 8 days, which looks like it’ll be taking up the bulk of my writing time this week. What’s inspiring me this week?  Mary Capallo’s Swallow, a history of people who swallow foreign objects and the doctor who pioneered their non-surgical removal. I had a lot of doubts about the book when I started it, but I kept hitting points where I was cringing as I read it and some of the lists of things people have swallowed is incredible reading. I ended

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14/01/2018 7 Comments
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

One Year of Writing (And Procrastination) Data

I’m a big fan of gathering data about my processes and productivity, particular when it doesn’t require any particular effort on my part. That’s why I pay for a yearly RescueTime subscription, giving me a week-by-week (or mont-by-month) snapshot of how much of my computer time is actually spent working versus goofing off on various projects. This year RescueTime rolled out a feature that gives me an entire year in review, breaking down my computer and phone usage across the entirety of 2017 based upon a number of categories. I know that I logged 1,496 digital hours across 2017 (that’s out of a possible 8760 hours available in a year), which means I’m spending about 4 hours on average logged onto a computer or using my phone. Of that 1,496 hours, 416 have been dubbed Productive, which is how RescueTime logs any computer or phone usage in which I’m working in Word or Scrivener. It’s not a purely accurate list, given that I also use that software for non-writing purposes, but I can get those breakdowns and pull them out if I want to get more specific. My goal for 2018 will be getting that up – from 1/4 of the hours spent at-the-computer being productive to 1/2 of my at-the-computer hours I also logged 292 Distracting hours, which is generally a measure of how long I spend on social media or playing computer games. This number is much lower than normal, and mostly social media driven, as I acquired a playstation

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11/01/2018 No Comments
Gaming

15 Things Learned About Superhero RPGs After Running 150 Sessions Of My Campaign

So back in 2012 I wrote up a list of 13 things I’d learned running a Superhero RPG campaign for thirty sessions, and it quickly became one of the most read posts I’ve ever done. Now, six years later, we’ve just played session #150 of the same campaign, which definitely makes this one of the longest RPG campaigns I’ve ever run. Over the last six years we’ve switched systems, going from 3rd Edition Mutants and Masterminds to Cortex’s Marvel Heroic RPG system, and accumulated three additional players (although session-by-session attendance varies). In game, the duo of Shock & Awesome have grown to a full-fledged superhero team dubbed SMAX. The two original characters have gone on hiatus so the players can bring in new heroes, and the team now includes an alien circuit acrobat, a rogue winged monkey from the parasitic demi-plane known as Oz, and a Mexican speedster/shadow-sorcerer whose powers stem from a number of gods. This post is a companion piece to my 2012 post, noting some of the ways my thinking about running superhero games have evolved or changed since the first write-up. 15 THINGS LEARNED ABOUT SUPERHERO RPGS AFTER RUNNING 150 SESSIONS OF MY CAMPAIGN 1) MOST SUPERHERO EXPERIENCE POINT SYSTEMS SCALE POORLY FOR LONG-TERM PLAY We kicked off this campaign in session one with PL8 Mutants and Masterminds characters, placing the PCS on roughly the level of your average teen-hero comic book character. If we’d followed the original experience point rules laid out in third edition

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08/01/2018 9 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 got my chapter draft away late last week, which means this week gets devoted to creative project rewrites and making the suggested changes to my prospectus document accompanying my confirmation submission. What’s inspiring me this week? I’ve been reading Chris Claremont’s run on X–Men from its beginning around issue #100, building towards the Dark Phoenix saga. It’s largely regarded as a genre-defining approach to comics in many ways – and you can definitely see the shift in approach from Stan Lee and Roy Thomases earlier issues – but reading it as an adult also

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07/01/2018 15 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 on the final 2,000 words of my PhD chapter, with three sections left to write. One is an overview of the way verisimultude shapes the way we interpret genre, one is the way in which genres shape reading communities, and one is looking at how the way series works are being published and read has shifted the poetics of series works. It’s a lot to fit into the space, but that’s better than having not enough. What’s inspiring me this week? The Good Place. I resisted watching this a lot over the past month

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31/12/2017 7 Comments

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