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

PeterMBall 21/01/2018
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

PeterMBall 19/01/2018
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? I’m doing rewrites of my

PeterMBall 14/01/2018
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

PeterMBall 11/01/2018
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

PeterMBall 08/01/2018
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? I got my chapter draft

PeterMBall 07/01/2018
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? I’m on the final 2,000

PeterMBall 31/12/2017
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 holiday season is upon

PeterMBall 24/12/2017
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 a third of the

PeterMBall 17/12/2017
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’ve just hit the period

PeterMBall 10/12/2017
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Patreon, Tools, Tactics, and Strategy

Patreon announced a change in its fee structure this morning, which has prompted an outpouring of tweets from a number of writers I follow who have been using the platform and want to process the implications. The change is being framed as a good thing for creators, ensuring they will take home exactly 95% of every pledge, but it does so by pushing the processing fee onto the donator and this has subtle knock-on effects for the assumptions surrounding the service. Passing the fee on to the pledger means a series of $1 pledges every month actually ends up costing a buck thirty-seven or so. Multiply that out over a year, and you’re looking at an extra $4.44 a year to kick a little change to the creators you patronise. This might not seem like a lot, but for a platform that is built itself on the concept of huge numbers of people making micro-transactions, that’s a pretty big shift.

PeterMBall 07/12/2017
News & Upcoming Events

Horn & Bleed on sale at Twelfth Planet Press

So I’d ordinarily show up here and talk up The Birdcage Heart and Other Strange Tales, given that it’s the new kid on the block right now, but we’re heading into the holiday season and ebooks aren’t particularly good presents to give people. On the other hand, I have written some print books and right now the publisher who backed Horn and Bleed is having a sale where you can pick up both novellas for $15 dollarydoos. If your’e still after a copy (or just want to traumatize your loved ones this Christmas), head on over to the Twelfth Planet Press website

PeterMBall 05/12/2017