Peter M. Ball

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? There’s a final major

PeterMBall 24/04/2016

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

The Living Daylights

I have been watching all the Bond films, in order, with my dad. Every Sunday, with the exception of the chaos that was March, I go round and eat lunch and we sit down for a couple of hours to watch the next thing on the list. We have done all the Connery films. We endured the brief reign of George Lazenby, who would have been an interesting Bond if he could have signed up for a longer period and worked with directors who were not the director of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. A few weeks back, we hit the Moore era. Moore was my Bond. When I was a kid, and the Bond films appeared on TV, he was always the man stuffed inside the tuxedo and ordering a martini. He defined Bond for me: the cheesy puns; the awkwardness that’s presented as charm; the ridiculous gadgets. I worked off the theory that I liked the Moore era.

PeterMBall 21/04/2016

Journal

Not Really the Thing I Was Thinking About This Morning, But It’s the Thing I’m Thinking About Now

I got nothing today. Well, actually, that’s not true, I got plenty of things on my mind, but a shortage of things that are suitable for sharing with the internet as a whole. So instead, I’m sitting here thinking about the course that I’m writing for work at the moment, which is unlike most courses that I write in that I don’t get to just stand there and talk from bullet points, but actually have to write everything out word-for-word. And how frustrating it is to be doing this, thinking through ideas in painstaking detail, working my way through examples, because it’s basically me figuring out a bunch of things I know about writing, but do not actually know about writing, simply because I do not internalise things properly until I have to explain them to someone else. All I really want to do is sit down and talk about the thing. Dialogue, rather than monologue (which is weird, ’cause man, I

PeterMBall 20/04/2016

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

On Algorithms, Authors, and How You Can Help

There is this meme that pops up on Facebook from time to time. It usually runs something like this: Authors do not earn a lot of money, really. If you’d like to help your favourite author, post a review on Amazon. Given enough reviews on Amazon, MAGIC THINGS WILL START TO HAPPEN IN THE AMAZON ALGORITHM. And every time I see it, I cringe a little. Don’t get me wrong – I like reviews. I would like more reviews of my work out there. But the focus here isn’t necessarily on reviews, it’s on manipulating the Amazon algorithms. The numbers change, as do the MAGIC THING, but the gist remains the same: get 50 reviews, and the book will start appearing in the recommendation algorithm; get 20 reviews, and you’ll be included in the “others like this book footer.” Amazon reviews = good things for your favourite book. I am not against Amazon. They are exceptionally good at what they do,

PeterMBall 19/04/2016

Stuff

Reacher Said Nothing is a damned weird thing to read

Andy Martin’s Reacher Said Nothing is an incredibly weird book to read. The premise is pure genius: Lee Child is writing the 20th Jack Reacher book, and he’s agreed to let Martin sit in on the process. Martin gets to observe the developing draft, ask questions about process and career, a literature professor studying the act of producing rather than the product at the end. And the book is at its best when it’s doing exactly that, the moments when Martin is reporting conversations and and offering glimpses of the process; or noticing a technique that’s started to appear in the rough drafts and expounding on it. The unevenness comes when it looses that focus: talks about other writers Martin has meet while in Child’s orbit, or contemplating the effect that his being there is having on the process. Thinking through what he is doing, talking about the lack of models and how it may continue in other forms. And I will grant that

PeterMBall 18/04/2016

Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

PeterMBall 17/04/2016

Journal

The Important Things in Life

I am teaching a whole bunch of writing courses in the coming months. This will roughly coincide with a two-month period where I am much more likely to show up at this blog and goof off, rather than talking about writing and publishing, because there is only so much writing and publishing talk I can take in a given week. And I largely hit that limit when I’m not talking about writing in general, and giving specific comments on work, which is a lot of what I’m doing at the moment. Critiquing work stresses me out. It also leads to a lot of goofing off, on twitter. Which has now developed into a weird daily twitter thing, with Conan references, that makes me extraordinarily happy. I am still extraordinarily proud of the October 3 entry. “Conan, what is best in life?” “…hugs. It’s hugs, right? Come on, hugs are awesome.” — Peter Ball (@Petermball) October 17, 2015 “Conan, what is

PeterMBall 15/04/2016

Writing Advice - Craft & Process

The Writer’s Mask

I’ve been re-reading Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse. This is one of those things that happens every couple of years. If you don’t understand the appeal of Barthes, go read Matt Ortile’s Why I ended A Perfectly Fine Relationship, which is cogent and gorgeous and perfectly captures the comfort that settles over me every time I read this book. This post is more a half-formed set of thoughts, as tends to happen every time I engage with a text on semiotics and literary theory. Especially this book. But god, I love it. Adore it. And it fucks me up every time I read it. In a good way. And a bad way. Look, it’s complicated. But I dog-ear the fuck out of my copy every time I read the book, tagging new favourite passages, and yet there’s always something new to be drawn from the experience.There is no book I’ve ever come across that quite captures the feeling of infatuation

PeterMBall 14/04/2016

Journal

A Morning, Thus Far

Things I have done today: Woke up. Listened to Welcome to the Jungle on Youtube. Showered. Breakfast (Porridge) Fucked around on Facebook. Made coffee. Drank coffee. Instagramed a photograph of comic books going into storage. A photo posted by Peter M Ball (@petermball) on Apr 12, 2016 at 2:59pm PDT Answered questions about said photograph on Facebook. Answered questions about my shoe collection on facebook. Assured people that I no longer own all these Chuck Taylors: A photo posted by Peter M Ball (@petermball) on Apr 12, 2016 at 12:11am PDT No, really. Made more coffee. Drank more coffee. Nick Cave videos on Youtube. Searched for a list of all the people in the Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow film clip, since it’s full of people I vaguely recognise and people I actually recognise, and the former is really starting to irritate me. Re-watched the Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow clip and thought: “What the fuck is going

PeterMBall 13/04/2016

Writing Advice - Craft & Process

I Must Not Fear. Fear is the Mind Killer.

Some days I reach for words and they’re just…not there. That’s it, I think, no writing today. But generally, that’s just a lie I tell myself in an effort to feel better. What I really mean by there are no words is that I do not have it in me to deliver words the way that I think they should be delivered. That there’s something I want to say that I cannot render adequately. There is something I want to say that is at odds with what I’m trying to say. Often, it is because I am scared of a scene, of a sequence, of a sentence. And that’s cool. When that happens, I don’t need to write a sentence. I can start with a word. Just one goddamn word. And, most days, if I’m willing to risk that much, everything else follows along. Not perfect, and not in the way I was thinking in the beginning, but there are words.

PeterMBall 11/04/2016

Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

PeterMBall 10/04/2016

Journal

In the Post: Flotsam Omnibus Hardcover

I visited my PO Box earlier today and discovered that lo, my author copy of the Flotsam Trilogy hard-cover has arrived. I have just gotten it home and begun coveting like it was the goddamn precious, because this book is so goddamn pretty. I mean, look, here it is, perched seductively on my brag shelf: Apocalypse Ink have produced a particularly handsome hard cover omnibus which gets pride of place on the shelf for a bit, and Mark Ferrari seriously knocked it out of the fucking park with the cover art. The image here really doesn’t do the book justice. Tonight I am a happy writer.

PeterMBall 08/04/2016