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Journal

Monday Notes, 19 December 2016

It is Monday morning and I am sitting on my balcony, listening to the trains and watching the greenery sway in the breeze and letting Brisbane warm up to its crazy Summer weather. There is a storm coming. Christmas is almost here, which means my local cafe will soon shut down for a few weeks, and I will be forced to eat breakfast at home like a monster. This would bother me less if my talent for coffee was better, and I had the patience to shave my own beetroot to go on my avocado on toast. It’s not the war on Christmas that bothers me. It’s that those fuckers on the Christmas side refuse to capitulate. Anyway. I have not blogged regularly for a long, long while. I spent a good chunk of last night stuck in traffic, waiting for the crowds to disperse around Woolloongabba stadium after the cricket was done, and I kept coming up with things I should probably mention while I started drafting this in my head. And so I’m going to cram a lot into this one. Personally, I blame sports. Things I am involved in that I should probably mention: The Things You Do When the War Breaks Out went live over on Daily Science Fiction, should you wish to see the kind of story I write I’m trying to weave together dinosaurs, space trains, the moon, and Kathleen Jennings’ post-it illustrations that occasionally roll past on Twitter. The link to the original

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19/12/2016 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? My goal for the coming week is to have a short story about spirit photography finished by Christmas and the next instalment of What Writers Ought to Know About Die Hard ready for the New Year, but they are very low-key target. Mostly, I plan on using the coming week to refill the well a little when it comes to creative work. I’ve got a small stack of books to read, and a small pile of movies to watch, and a notebook just waiting for the annotations to begin. What’s inspiring me this week? I’ve been

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18/12/2016 12 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? Toying with a short story and a couple of blog posts this week, but mostly I’m just trying to get back into a routine again. I spent the weekend revisiting my monthly and quarterly checkpoints, winnowing down the project list to a manageable number, and trying to get my apartment into a fit state of habitable living. What’s inspiring me this week? So I finally caught up with the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies movie after everyone recommended it earlier this year and, oh my, it is quite good. I loathed the book version of this,

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11/12/2016 21 Comments
Journal

7:01 AM

I’ve been sitting on my couch since 4:47 AM, waiting for Brisbane to raise the dial on the heat and the humidity. Now it’s nearly seven o’clock, and the muggy warmth has settled in with that jangly feeling you get after too much adrenaline. The skin prickles and the muscle is half-caught in fight or flight. It’s not yet hot enough that you recognise the cause, unless you’re paying attention to what’s going on. It has been a bad week. The gulf between what I wanted to achieve and what has actually been done is not too wide, but every failure feels like the failure when I’m in this particular mode. I am angry and I am frustrated and God, the awkwardness. Dealing with other human beings feels like a monumental task. I am performing triage on social obligations, trying to avoid anything that involves crowds or well-meaning acquaintances asking how I am. Two weeks until I find out what I’m doing next year. It’s proving to be a long wait.  

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09/12/2016 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 draft for Float, although after a slow week of writing I’m not entirely sure where I’m up to. Also trying to get a short story done. What’s inspiring me this week? I picked up a game called Inside for the Playstation, based on it showing up on some lists when I went and looked for seminal computer computer games that show what’s going on in gaming today. Inside is a remarkably simple game in terms of gameplay, but my god, the creators to manipulate mood and feed it into a fairly

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04/12/2016 14 Comments
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

Some Thoughts On Theatre, Set Design, and a Moment of Disconnection

I went to see the recent Queensland Theatre Company production of Tartuffe over the weekend, but this is not a review of that show. My review would run very simply: incredible work, great fun, go and fucking see it. Even if you have no idea what Tartuffe is and why Moliere is a big deal. Hell, especially if you don’t know why Moliere is a big deal. But what I’m still noodling about on a Tuesday morning, three days after I saw the show, is a very small slice of the overall show: set design. There’s been a run of QTC shows with incredible sets in the last twelve months. The set for last year’s The Odd Couple was an incredible piece of work, creating an apartment in the middle of the stage that allows for a lot of dynamic movement. The set for Tartuffe is equally incredible work: the rooms and balconies of a double-story mansion on a rotating stage, allowing for five different places where scenes can be set. A set that was rich in details, from the knick-knacks to the art hung up on t he walls, to placing of doors that allowed for multiple paths of entry and exit onto the stage. It was a fantastic set, bringing a sense of realism to the staging. Really nice work. And I spent the first half of the play wishing it wasn’t there. Back in ye olden days, when I taught a more diverse range of writing that

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30/11/2016 2 Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

So you’re the kind of vegetarian who only eats roses

I saw Leonard Cohen live a few years back. The concert was the same week my father had his heart attack, and I was meant to be going with my dad and my sister. Instead, my father was hospitalised and being prepared for surgery, and my sister stayed with my mum. I was encouraged to go Cohen anyway, find friends who could make use of the spare tickets. I did. We ate Indian food. Leonard Cohen wore a suit on stage, and he performed with the kind of serenity and poise you’ve got no choice but to envy. I was not in good shape before my dad’s heart attack, and things were considerably worse after it happened. Seeing Leonard Cohen was the only time that month it felt anything close to okay. Now it’s been three weeks since Cohen died and I’m seated on the balcony of my parent’s apartment, listening to my dad watch the cricket inside. It’s thirty-something goddamn degrees and Brisbane is hot and sweaty and still, and there’s a magpie on the far end of the balcony warbling with very little regard for nearby humans. I’ve been hitting Democracy on YouTube, day after day, for three weeks now. I don’t think I’m anywhere close to being done with that song yet. I came across Cohen as a poet long before I heard his music. I found a copy of his Selected Poems in a second-hand bookstores, one of the few single author collections among a poetry

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29/11/2016 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 starting to work through the draft of Float and weave in some of the secondary stories, adding in some new POV characters that flesh out the action and world where the main character isn’t present. What’s inspiring me this week? The most immediately useful thing I’ve seen this week is Ascension, an SF mini-series I found on netflix which packs of lot of story in six episodes. It’s premise starts simply enough – the life of a generation ship crew as they’re halfway through their 100 year journey to a distant star – but

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27/11/2016 12 Comments
Journal

Thirty-Eight Days

I am incredibly behind on everything. There are too man old things left undone, and too many new things that I want to get started on, so my procrastination of choice becomes tearing down old things and trying to build new things from the rubble. I’m revisiting plans, rebuilding systems. I have spent far to much time familiarising myself with Trello boards and adding projects to them, finding gaps in my planning systems. Trello is not my preferred solution for this, but I am out of places to hang whiteboards in my apartment. All this is trying to solve a single problem: 2017 is unknown terrain for me right now. There are too many things that I might be doing, depending on what happens in the next 30 days, and the ideal preparation for the two most likely options is very, very different. Certainty doesn’t arrive until December 23rd. It’s proving to be a very long wait. My notebook is full of entries that start: “When you’re blogging again, you should write about…” And my brain is full of: “you have thirty-seven and a half days left until the end of the year – what the fuck are you going to finish in all of those?”

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24/11/2016 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 loaded up on jobs-that-take-up-writing-time, but-aren’t-writing this week, so I’m trying to keep my goals pretty minimal: another three scenes on Float, some revision and fleshing out on the smaller scenes that have already been written that don’t feel weighty enough to keep in the book in their current form. What’s inspiring me this week? Zootopia. I meant to see this when it first came out, but somehow never got around to it. I regret that, a bit. I’m really interested in the way they construct their world when they’re not engaging in the obvious cartoon conceits

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20/11/2016 39 Comments
Journal

In Which My Brain Finally Accepts What Should Have Been Obvious

Eleven days ago I noticed something weird – I hit the end of the two hours I’d set aside for writing and I was a good 400 words short of the word-count I expected. Not a huge deal, all things considered, but I’d been writing at a pretty regular speed ever since I went back to typing manuscripts. I shrugged. It was just a weird thing, and a little surprising after being so regular in my productivity, but I hadn’t been sleeping well and I was feeling a little uneven that week. Ten days ago, I kicked off a mild depressive episode. My first since going on antidepressants back in August. First my sleep patterns went to shit, and then I found myself wanting to shout at strangers for the cardinal sin of sitting at the table next to mine at a cafe, and the next thing I knew I’d spent thirteen hours glued to the couch spamming my self-loathing’s greatest hits over and over and over. The echoes of that are still bouncing around my skull. I could hum you a few bars of I’m worthless; I should not want; I should just lie here until I decay without missing a beat. I keep having days where the task of maintaining a reasonable facade to present to the world is moderately tiring, and it’s harder to hold my shit together and write, or go hang out with friends, or go to work and produce blog posts. A few times over the last ten

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16/11/2016 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? I lost my way a little with the second act of Float over the last week. Lots of forward progress, but not a lot of direction. Will be spending today trying to re-plan a little, so that I can hit the ground running on the latter half of the second act when I head to write club on Monday. With luck, I an make it to the end of the second act. What’s inspiring me this week? I went to see La Boite’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire on Friday night and it copletely blew

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13/11/2016 37 Comments

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