ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday is a collection of small things

For the first time in a long time, Fridays are a day where I’m primarily writing and researching. Here are some things that have been on my mind this week. Angela Slatter launched a Patreon this morning. It’s full of shiny options for supporting her career and getting cool things in return. You know what to do. Cat Rambo is doing a re-read of a whole bunch of Doc Savage novels and making notes about her thoughts as she goes along. The first of them covers Doc Savage: Quest of Qui, and I’m largely flagging this here for my friend Chris who is my designated person-I-talk-to-when-I-talk-about-pulps. Bloomberg has a guide to making incredible nachos that makes me excessively hungry and glad there’s a Guzmon and Gomez on campus. Chris Hemsworth continues to be an adorable Thor, who is,in turn, a terrible flatmate. Kat Mayo did an incredible piece on lazy journalism about feminism and romance fiction, to which I basically find myself nodding and going, yes, all of this, over and over. Sending off a story to beta readers about six seconds after I hit publish on this post. This is the first in a long time, but I’m quietly hoping I can finish a second story before next Friday. This weeks writing has primarily been done to the funkiest horn section in Metropolis.

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17/02/2017 No Comments
Stuff

Routines

My friend Allan has a useful theory about running weekly games when you’re in your all in your forties and people have lives: you don’t run the game for the people who aren’t there; you run the game for the people who show up. You don’t cancel because someone can’t attend, you game regardless and people will either start showing up or fall by the wayside. It works incredibly well when you are the one who shows up every week, less effectively when the person running the game is the one most prone to flaking out. Tonight, I’m running a session of my superhero campaign for the first time in about eight months. It fell off the weekly to-do list months ago, right about the time I started loosing grip on 2016, and by the time I was coherent enough to actually think about running sessions many of the players were doing other things with their Thursday nights. I kept waiting for a clear spot in everyone’s schedule to restart, but no such spot exists. Even now, multiple people are going to disappear on holidays before the month is out. One of them will move house. We will spend the first few weeks working around absences. Honestly, the only time February is good for is me, but… Look, this week has been the first where I felt like I’m settling into a new normal. I’ve gotten things done for GenreCon; I’m writing regularly for the first time in months; I’ve

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16/02/2017 No Comments
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Why I’m Using Scrivener as a Multi-Project Writing Workspace

I am surprisingly tolerant of cluttering in physical space. I take comfort in stacking books around me like a defensive wall, scatter notes across my coffee table along with errant mugs, and pile my laundry by the doorway leading from the bedroom to the balcony/laundry because I’ll remember to actually do it that way. I’m far less tolerant of clutter in digital systems, to the point where I actually feel excessively uneasy and reluctant to work when my email, RSS feeds, or work folders start to get out of control. Talking to people who leave thousands of emails in their inbox make me break out in a cold sweat, and I will say nothing of tab junkies who just keep opening a new page on their browser every time they want to add something to their to-read list. Dealing with any kind of shared server within a company or organisation, where files are often layered seven folders deep via arcane and confusion logic, is enough to make me weep. When it comes to writing, I used to maintain a pretty simple file architecture that looked a little like this: The drafft archive – I never got around to fixing the typo – housed all the half-finished works that I wasn’t currently working on. The current folder housed anything I was currently working on, from story drafts to novels to blogs in progress to PhD applications, while finished drafts sat in the revision folder until they were ready to move on to submission. It’s

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15/02/2017 3 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 working on short story that’s a slightly off-kilter portal fantasy where kids are sent to another world for the holidays. Having just made the very on-the-nose The Last Battle reference that will probably not survive to the final draft, I finally get to the bit where I get to engage in some fun secondary world hi-jinx. What’s inspiring me this week? So I wanted Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and– Nope. Can’t even finish that sentence as a joke. My dislike of Snyder films remains strong, even if I’m pretty sure I had a minor epiphany

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12/02/2017 28 Comments
Stuff

Transit

This was going to be a post about productivity systems and white boards, but I spent yesterday playing chess with my dad instead. Now I’m on a train, with the backpack that serves as my mobile office on my shoulder, pondering what the best use of the five hours a week that will now be spent on trains as I commute to and from uni or the QWC offices. Right now, the optimal use of this time is writing a blog post, so I can erase that off the to-do list. And, really, this is the point of productivity systems and white boards. They aren’t a magic trick that will make you especially awesome, even if the shiny allure that draws you in is the promise of being like yourself, but better.  They’re a tool for cutting down resistance that talks you out of doing things – oh, I won’t blog on the train, the phone keyboard isn’t built for it – and makes you aware of everything you’re trying to do and the time you’ve got available to get it done. It’s the latter that’s important. A to-do list gives you the former, but it doesn’t provide context. It doesn’t aknowledge the limitations of when things get done. Today, and in most weekdays on the horizon, I have a half hour commute to and from. That’s enough time to do things, if I stay aware of what can be done in those moments

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06/02/2017 No Comments
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? Still working on the short story for last week, after getting distracted by PhD research through most of last week (it took about eight hours after getting library access for me to revert to a person who paces the length of the house, arguing with theorists and gesturing wildly). I did manage to pull the story draft and identify the major issues I was having during write-club last week, which means there are core problems that need to be solved in this week’s writing time. What’s inspiring me this week? I went to see the

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05/02/2017 14 Comments
Journal

Trash Day

I’m cleaning up digital spaces this morning. Clearing out the current projects folder on the portable drive, which ceased holding current projects back in November and simply became the place where narrative detritus and applications gathered. Clearing out the RSS reader, assessing which feeds I’m going to keep and which I’m going to cut because they have ceased being useful. Clearing out writing systems, so I’m not randomly switching between Word, Google Docs, and Scrivener for various projects based upon whatever random thought I’ve had about “fixing” my process while in a state of high anxiety. And I keep streaming the film clip for Fiona Apple’s Not About Love, because Zach Galifianakis and his magnificent beard are hypnotic with their lip-syncing.

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03/02/2017 No Comments
Journal

Forward

On Monday night I finally sat down and rebuilt the white-board that tells me where I’m meant to be going and what I’m meant to be doing over the course of the week. I sat down and wrote out the long-term plan for the next three months, identifying all the commitments and distractions that will keep me away from work. I spent some quality time looking at the next month, identifying what needed to be done and who I needed to see. I spent four hours re-reading Work Clean, making notes and fleshing out ideas, figuring out what I can apply. Realised I’m now through the parts of the book that’s really useful, so I can skim-read the rest and move onto the next book. Some habits are like an engine you’re trying to start in mid-winter. It may take a few attempts to get the thing warmed up, but it’ll work fine once you’re up and running. Yesterday I went and enrolled at University, which means I’ve now officially given up my nice, well-paying blogging gig in exchange for a nice, much-less-well-paying gig where I get a lot more time to research and write things. Turns out the enrolment process is particularly slow, so I still can’t do useful things like borrow research books or go work at the RhD office or get discounted movies with my student card just yet. Today, I go write things. Wish me luck.

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01/02/2017 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? With my day-job contract finished up I am basically back in writing-land. I’ve got a short-story to redraft and some notes for one that’s following it, which should keep me busy as I get back into the swing of things. What’s inspiring me this week? So I basically inhaled the first season of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries in the space of twenty-four hours, which I’ve been meaning to do for ages and bumped up the viewing list after Theodora Goss’s post about Miss Fisher and the Female Gaze. It’s an extraordinarily charming show, but also incredibly clever,

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29/01/2017 17 Comments
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

What do my days look like now?

Yesterday was my final day at my blogging gig with Queensland Health, and I am not yet contracted for my GenreCon gig or have the details of my PhD scholarship set in place. I am, technically, unemployed and bereft of income until the two latter things get sorted in the coming week. Even after those are resolved, I will be a student who has a day-a-week contract gig. I do not know what my days look like now that I do not have to work around a day-job. Lots of people dream of quitting their job to write or read, but that often fails to take into account there is something comfortable about work that you don’t realise when it’s there. Even if you hate your job, there are decisions that do not need to be made: where will you be on a given day? What will you do? Who are you going to see? Your obligations as an employee provide an anchor to the rest of your activities, something that can be planned around. It provides context to otherwise arbitrary designations: Saturday ceases to be a day and becomes the first day of the weekend; Monday becomes the start of the working week. You know what success is, because you do your job well or you do not. All of this affects the way you plan your life, consciously or unconsciously. Work gives you an anchor you can build routines and processes around: write a thousand words before work starts;

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28/01/2017 No Comments
Journal

Reading and Annotating

My relationship to non-fiction reading changes immediately when I make a point of reading with a notepad and pen in close proximity. It slows down my reading, but I retain a lot more: core phrases and ideas; stray thoughts that come up in response to the content; ideas that will eventually become stories and blog posts. This morning I picked up William Woods The History of the Devil, which I read a few weeks back without annotating at all, and immediately realised I am going to end up re-reading it because all the dog-eared pages don’t actually mean anything anymore. There are too many bits, too little context. It’s a book that would have been far more enjoyable, had I actually read it right, but I was distracted by other things and it was read on trains, or over lunch, or in-between other things. Of all the things I’m looking forward to about doing a PhD, having the time to read things the way I like to read them is right at the top of the list.

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23/01/2017 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? Not a lot of writing for me in the coming week, as I’ll be wrapping up my blogging gig, getting back into the rhythm of GenreCon now I’m bac at QWC one day a week, and making sure I’ve got everything I need to get organised ahead of the PhD kicking off on January 31. What’s inspiring me this week? I’m compiling a list of stories set in the early nineteen hundreds as research for a coming project, which has led me back to to a re-watch Penny Dreadful and Luc Besson’s adaptation of The Extraordinary Adventures of

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22/01/2017 21 Comments

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