Adventures in Lifestyle Hacking

When In Doubt, Start

I’m sitting at my desk thinking I should probably write something, but it is a chaotic kind of morning on a chaotic kind of day, and my brain is focusing on everything but the task at hand. I keep projecting into the future, looking at all the things that need to get done in order to finish off any given project. Even when I sit down and apply the various management tasks that are meant to stop you doing that – Getting Things Done, the Pomorodo Technique – I am still projecting forward and the resistance is building up and the subtle, low-key panic of so-much-to-do-and-I-am-not-enough builds up. My conversations with my psychologist often revolve around the fact that my brain is not my friend, and it’s surprising how often they’re the one telling me that despite the fact that get your fucking brain out of the process has been my writing mantra for years. I’m meant to take a

PeterMBall 17/08/2017
Stuff

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 still got a little

PeterMBall 13/08/2017
Works in Progress

Some Process Notes on the GenreCon Program

We’re aiming to get the full GenreCon program out by the end of the month, which means the first few weeks of August are dominated by putting panels together and then pulling them apart and putting new things in their place. It’s the most exciting part of the gig in many ways, which means it takes very little to flip the switch and transform that excitement into anxiety. I have spent the last week taking changes in my plans very poorly and being more irritable than normal. Part of it is because I made a mistake. We were aiming for major program announcements in the middle of August, which is a perfectly sensible date based upon the timeline for print production, but does mean we’re going to spend two weeks trying to confirm speakers when a sizable portion are in Helsinki for Worldcon or hitting Brisbane for the annual Romance Writers of Australia conference. The vast majority of people will

PeterMBall 09/08/2017
Journal

Cracking open a Fresh Bullet Journal

It’s 11:05 on a Monday morning and I have already packed far more useful work into my day that I fit into the whole of last week. It took almost a whole weekend of planning to get me to this point, revising processes and outlining project and sweeping notebooks, email, and projects for the unfinished tasks that have been creating drag on my subconscious. I’ve started a fresh bullet journal, having finally run out of space in the one I kicked off last September, and I’ve gone back to the cheap-as-dirt larger J. Burrows Journal  with 8mm rule after nearly a year using a Moleskin grid-rule. I loved the moleskin, but I’m juggling projects in nine different areas of my life at the moment and I planning a day so that I’ve got a clear idea of what’s necessary to gain ground in every area means dedicating two pages to a single day. That means burning through Bullet Journals faster and

PeterMBall 07/08/2017
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? Writing takes a back seat

PeterMBall 06/08/2017
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? Running a little late on

PeterMBall 30/07/2017
Big Thoughts

Some Things People Keep Asking About After Reading “To Dream of Stars: An Astronomer’s Lament”

Somewhere along the way, one of my stories got put on a HSC prep exam somewhere in Australia. On one hand, this is cool – I didn’t get into this gig to write things that do not get read. On the other hand, it also means I have reached that point where I get semi-regular emails between June and September asking questions about what is a fairly obtuse story. Some of these emails ask very smart questions, which is great, but they’ve they’ve now become common enough that I rarely have time to deliver anything meaningful as an answer. To that end, I figure it will be useful to have a stock response I point people towards/show up if they Google the story, so I’m throwing some story notes up here on the blog that I can refer people to. FIRST, SOME GENERAL CAVEATS In general, when it comes to these sorts of questions, I am entirely the wrong person to talk

PeterMBall 24/07/2017
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 still don’t have a

PeterMBall 23/07/2017
News & Upcoming Events

Next Friday: In Conversation With CS Pacat

Next Friday I’m doing an In Conversation with the writer behind The Captive Prince series, CS Pacat. Details and tickets can still be acquired up until 6:00 PM on the 28th. This is one of my rare public appearances in 2017, because I have been steadily saying no to teaching and presenting gigs for a little over a year now. I would have turned down this one as well, it not for two things: First, I’m there as a representative of the GenreCon Ninja team, and I will always make an exception when it comes to flying the GenreCon flag. Second, CS Pacat is incredibly fucking smart about genre and writing, and I would be an idiot to turn down the opportunity to pick her brain. Spend enough time around writers and you’ll quickly realise that a number of them are incredibly smart when it comes to matters of craft and business. The trick, once you’ve been around long enough, is

PeterMBall 21/07/2017
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Watching Deep Space Nine

I never really jelled with Star Trek. The SF of my childhood was always Star Wars and Buck Rodgers and Baker-era Dr Who, which eschewed the exploration narrative neatly captured in Trek’s boldly go approach to narrative. They were narratives that seemed faster-paced, so Trek always seemed slow, and I lived in places where SF fans were rare, so I never found a community to get me over the initial reluctance to dive in to Trek. When you start off with a reluctance to engage with Star Trek, it’s hard to get over it because Star Trek is omnipresent. In the same way that Tolkien’s fingerprints are prominently smudged over all forms of fantasy, Star Trek is the runaway cultural phenomenon that identifies SF in television land. For decades, “more like Trek” was regarded as a strength in a TV show, even when it wasn’t dramatically appropriate. If you made your show more like Trek, the SF fans would show up.

PeterMBall 19/07/2017
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? This week I’ll be doing

PeterMBall 16/07/2017
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Thinking Ahead

I just put a full slate of 2018 deadlines up on a whiteboard. With the first semester of my PhD over I’ve had a little time to start thinking about writing work again, and the presence of a significant other in my life has generated a lot more focus on my long-term strategies and short-term tactics than I’ve managed in a long while. There is something about having to tell someone else about your day that makes it easier to navigate the garden of forking paths that make up a writing career. Also, rule one, when you’re a writer in any kind of relationship: do not be a wanna-be heavy metal bassist sponging off a series of significant others. Which seems unfair to a number of heavy metal bassists who work incredibly hard at their art, but it’s John Scalzi’s metaphor, not mine. July is also a useful month for taking stock – looking at what’s worked for the past six months,

PeterMBall 13/07/2017