ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG
Journal

Sleep

I woke several times over the weekend and went to work on my thesis prospectus in the wee hours of the morning. Solutions to problems kept coming to me as I dozed off, found their way into the work in progress because I didn’t trust myself to remember them later. Going to bed at 11 PM quickly turned into working until 5 AM, then sleeping until later in the day. It was great. Incredibly great. It’s been nearly a decade since I worked those kind of hours. It happened all the time before I started working in offices, but the demands of being somewhere at a certain hour meant adapting to other people’s patterns. Getting up early has become such a habit that I’ve organised much of my life around it. I meet a friend for breakfast once a week, at an hour based on the fact I used to rise at 6 AM without fail. I have a certain degree of flexibility over when I go to the office and work on GenreCon, or agree to meet with my thesis supervisor, which would theoretically make it possible to start later in the day, yet I still default to starting at 9 where possible.   But for the first time in years, I can look at the fact that I prefer to work in the quiet hours of the morning and sleep late and see it as semi-regular possibility.

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22/05/2017 No Comments
Works in Progress

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? Two weeks until I have to hand in my thesis prospectus, and I’m about a third of the way through my draft at the time of posting. I’ve more-or-less admitted that nothing else is being done until I clear this as the major project that is stressing me out, which unfortunately includes drafting the short talk I’m meant to be doing Friday. Short version: if you need me this week, I’ll be hip-deep in genre theory and thesis planning. What’s inspiring me this week? A few weeks back I had a heated discussion with Kevin

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21/05/2017 5 Comments
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

What Writing An Offline Journal Taught Me About Writing My Thesis

I started writing a pen-and-paper journal for three reasons.First, because I spent months as a reasonably well-paid blogger and worked around the corner from a store with a wide range of notebooks. Then people started giving me notebooks as presents. And now my flat is overrun with blank Moleskins and Leuchtturm’s and Decomposition notebooks, and I’m working my way through them as quickly as I can (mostly, so I can buy new notebooks without guilt). Second, because I need a place to process things and make notes about what’s going on in my life in way that is not blogging, Facebook, or Twitter. The years I spent writing on Livejournal, and the early days of this site, have been incredibly valuable when looking back and figuring out yearly patterns, and occasionally I need a black-box which reminds me why I made certain decisions that look considerably worse in hindsight. Thirdly, and most importantly, I’d hit a point where various research into why things like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy works had convinced me that starting a gratitude journal was probably useful for my overall mental health, but I am severely adverse to the idea of gratitude journals and never maintained one for more than three or four days before getting irritated and pitching it aside. The goal of gratitude journals – hacking your brain so it gets used to scanning the landscape of your life and registering opportunity and positive events – made a lot of sense to me. The process usually attached to that

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20/05/2017 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? Catching up on the thesis prospectus after much of the last week was eaten up by a virus. I’ve worked out that I’m probably going to need to write a lot in order to get the 4,000 words I need, just because I process things as I go.. What’s inspiring me this week? There’s a lot of argument about Master of None season 2 on my friends list this week, with the general consensus being that it’s got moments of brilliance but the final episodes let it down with some really unpleasant character development. I don’t

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14/05/2017 15 Comments
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

On Aggressively Curating Facebook Feeds

I spent a hair over six hours on social media last week, which is considerably more extensive than usual courtesy of the extra time spent losing my mind over Riverdale with friends. And I used to think my approach to managing Facebook so it didn’t eat all my time was pretty goddamn tight. Then I read this post on Lifehacker about unfollowing everyone on your friends list to transform the default feed into a desolate wasteland and I was all, holy fuck, that’s genius.   I haven’t quite gone scorched earth yet, but did elect to get really, really aggressive. Yesterday I opened up the new Newsfeed Preference system which makes it far, far easier to see who you’re actively following and began to really, really ask myself if everyone on that list was posting stuff that I either a) wanted to engage with on a daily basis, or b) actually cared about on a daily basis. An hour later, my default feed only shows content from twenty-four friends, my two favourite authors, one of Australia’s best reviewers, two family members, the Facebook group we use to organise my weekly Superhero game, the Facebook page for my local cafe, and the two groups I have to follow for uni purposes. Everyone else is curated into lists – gaming friends, writer friends, editors,  family members – that I check into at specific times but don’t really care to see on a daily basis. Or, you know, I’ll search for them when I

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12/05/2017 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Reading Inhabitat Again

I started reading the Inhabitat blog eight or nine years ago, maybe. Not long after I’d started writing fiction after a long spell in the trenches of other writing work. I stopped reading back in 2013, because Habitat publishes a lot of content and there simply wasn’t time to read it while working a part-time day-job. That space was taken up by blogs about time management and productivity and how to internet better. I don’t work a part-time day-job anymore, and as as peeps who follow my twitter feed may have noticed, I’ve picked up the Inhabitat habit again. Their brief to sit at the intersections of architecture, design, and the environment is like crack if you’re interested in how the future may look, and they’ll occasionally bust out truly mind-blowing shit like plans these South Korean plans to build skyscrapers inside of Giant Sequoia’s to keep them from falling over. But as impressive as that particular idea is, it’s stuff like the tin-shed renovations that actually appeal to me. My comfort reading, this week, is Aaron Bestky’s Architecture Matters where the dean of the Frank Wright School of Architecture traces how architecture interacts with our daily life and why it matters. One of the thing he notes, early on, is architectural design’s tendency to be noticeable when it’s also monumental. It’s a discipline built around going big or going home. What’s noticeable in smaller places – homes, bars, restaurants, stores – is the province of designers, people who come into a functional

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11/05/2017 2 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? My check-in will be a little short this week, on account of a horrible cold that is making staring at a screen less fun than usual. But once I’m up and about again, this week will be about the thesis prospectus and a small pile of post-its full of instructions after talking to my supervisor on Friday. What’s inspiring me this week? The penultimate episode of Riverdale hit Netflix on Friday and I officially give up trying to predict what’s going on in that show. Their ability to ratchet up tension in slightly unexpected ways

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07/05/2017 13 Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

What I’m Reading: Dear Sweet Filthy World, Caitlin Kiernan

My copy of Caitlin Kiernan’s latest short story collection arrived in the mail last week. It’s a beautiful book full of beautiful, terrible stories in the old-school definition of terrible, meaning they are causing or likely to cause terror. The kind of stories that make Kant’s description of the sublime comprehensible, which is more than Kant manages to do when he writes on the subject. There are very few writers who are on my yes-I-will-by-everything-you-release list. Even fewer on the list where I will buy everything in fancy, beautifully produced hardcovers and special editions. Basically, there is one name on that list, and it’s largely because Caitlin Kiernan is the best short-story writer working today, doing things with language and story that most writers can barely dream of doing.  

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04/05/2017 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? Setting aside creative work entirely this week and focusing on getting the rough draft of my Thesis Prospectus written. It’s not a big document – just 4,000 words – but that’s a deceptively short amount given what I’m trying to pack into it (and my lack of familiarity with the format/voice required after nearly a decade away from academia). What’s inspiring me this week? As you can probably guess from Friday’s post, I’ve been enjoying James Ellroy’s Black Dahlia this week, and in particular the first four chapters. The write-up of the boxing match is

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30/04/2017 21 Comments
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

The Black Dahlia

The first major sequence in James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia revolves around a boxing match between the protagonist, beat-cop Bucky Bleichert and his soon-to-be-partner Lee Blanchard. The fight takes place at the end of the fourth chapter, and it’s loaded with stakes: personal stakes, for Bleichert and his father; professional stakes, given his advancement in the police department is dependent on this fight; social stakes, since the bout is a ploy to garner public support for a bill that will earn the police department money; and, ultimately, big emotional stakes, because everything is in balanced against each other. A win on the personal side of things means tanking his professional advancement. He can have one, at the cost of the other. So the entire fight is one big choice for Bleichert, where he figures out the kind of man he’s going to be for the rest of the book. It feels more intense than the climax of most novels, and you’re only 10% of the way through the book. It artisinal, in the old-school sense, where you can see the quality of the workmanship as a layperson, but you’re in awe of it if you know the details of what you’re looking at. You can see the labour that’s gone into the book. It does this so well I basically read it, had a lie down, and contemplated giving up writing because…damn.    

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28/04/2017 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 rebuilding the novella plan at the moment, after realizing that it’s somewhat counter-intuitive to have a stranger-comes-to-town story where the stranger leaves town in the second act. What’s inspiring me this week? I picked up Joan Didion’s South and West because it was basically raw notebook material rather than finished work. It’s basically daily notes as Didion travels through the American south, for a book that never never ended up getting written, followed by some short notes for a book about California. I’m a huge fan of Didion’s essays in general, and the clarity

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23/04/2017 31 Comments
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

Crazier, Faster, Better

I started April full of confidence. I had a plan for a novella. Nothing important, just a goofy 40,000 words about dinosaurs and apocalypse and super-intelligent battle-orangutans that’s mostly being written to amuse a friend of mine. I knew could hit two thousand words a day, so I figured I’d get through a rough draft in the space of thirty days. Now we’re nineteen days in and I’ve burned the entire draft to the ground so I can start over and build something better in the wreckage. Not that I’m getting rid of the any of the goofy elements – there will still be dinosaurs and apocalypse and orangutans – but I wasn’t happy with the draft I was writing and desperately needed to change it. The voice didn’t fit. The plot was wrong. My 40,000 word novella draft was up around 30,000 words, and I was only just getting out of the first act. The middle act belonged to a completely different story (and, now, can go become that story without being hampered by the first act that didn’t fit). I can usually tell when I’ve done something wrong with story structure because my entire life grinds to a halt. I get restless and anxious and eventually depressed. When I loose track of the plot, I literally lose the plot. That’s harder to navigate than it used to be, full of second-guessing. Am I junking this story because it’s not a good fit, or because my first response to a

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19/04/2017 No Comments

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