Peter M. Ball

Journal

Headache

Last night, I went to an after-hours forward planning meeting at work. I had a sinus headache when I went in that got worse as the evening went along. This is not uncommon: one of the side-effects of CPAP treatment is the occasional night where you throat and nasal passages are…well, insufficiently humidified. Then irritated. Then inflamed. And the moment my sinuses inflame, they tend to press down on the nerves on my already irritatingly-sensitive teeth. Instant headache. Pain shooting through the nerves right underneath my eye. Until I learned the ’cause of it – eventually pointed out by my dentist, after two straight years where I’d come in during heyfever season convinced I needed a root canal – I would spend some quality time in bed, wishing for death. I would avoid air-conditioning, which tended to trigger things. I would loathe the very world around me. After I learned the cause, I just drank warm cups of water to

PeterMBall 07/04/2016

Big Thoughts

It’s Complicated

Nothing is easy. Everything is complicated. And no, you’re probably not imagining it: things are more complicated than they used to be. Take writing. In the old days, before the internet, answering how do I become a writer was easy. There was the work, and there were publishers, and you did the work until you found a publisher and that was how your book went into the world. You, as the author, did not have to have a one-on-one relationship with your readers. The book-stores had that, with the folks in their local area, and you had a one-on-one relationship with your agent, your publisher, or the reps from your distributor. Today? It’s complicated. You can go with the traditional publishers, or you can work the proliferation of small presses that are springing up, or you can publish your book on your own and have access to distribution models that make self-publishing effective. Choices. Lots of choices. And none of

PeterMBall 06/04/2016

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

I Finally Got Around to Seeing Fury Road and I am…Conflicted

So a year ago, everyone on the planet was all You HAVE to see Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s brilliant. Over the weekend, I followed their advice. Settled in with a packet of chips and a few hours to kill, watched Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron drive some big-rigs and kill a whole bunch of war boys. And lo, it was… Okay? Good? I am, quite honestly, not entirely sure. I’ve heard the argument that we’re not yet equipped to really assess Fury Road, because it’s so far outside our experience of films thus far. It’s an incredible spectacle and an endless chase sequence and a monumental feat of world-building and the visual language is seriously fucking awesome. It also has the benefit of the most perfectly timed act transitions ever. Every half-hour, on the half-hour. In terms of studying structure, it’s great. But… Well, I spent most of the first act kinda…waiting for the story to start. Watching things in

PeterMBall 05/04/2016

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

A Writing Career Is Not One Fight (Unless You Want It To Be)

THE SHIT YOU WRITE AFTER TAKING A SERIES OF JABS TO THE FACE Some days, I get punchy. I sit down at this blog and I start writing, only to discover that there’s nothing new in my head. I’ve been fighting the fight too long, taken too many hits to the face, and I’ve got nothing left in the tank but a kind of dogged resolve to keep swinging and hope I get lucky. I’ll start drawing together ridiculous concepts, seeing what I can connect. I’ll throw words at the page and squint at them, wondering if there’s something there. Some days it works. Some days it doesn’t. But if you take most writing advice on the internet to its core principles, digging beneath the layers and seriously looking at the what is being said, it will generally come down to one of two things. One: the best thing you can do for your career is keep on fucking swinging. Two:

PeterMBall 04/04/2016

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? First draft of the article

PeterMBall 03/04/2016

Writing Advice - Craft & Process

Three Ways to Break Through the Not-Writing Habit

I have sixty minutes to write and edit this blog post. Fifty-nine minutes and twenty-seconds now. Even less, by the time you hit this sentence. I have sixty minutes because today is unexpected clear of distractions. The farewell I was meant to be attending this evening has been rescheduled. My usual Friday write-club buddy is currently interstate. I am on my own, in my apartment, trying to get shit done with no distractions, and that is bad for me. If there’s one thing I’m generally pretty good at, it’s getting shit done around other obligations. Give me an eight hour work day followed by three hours of gaming at a friend’s place, and I will bust out my minimum daily pages in record time then squeeze in a blog post for good measure. Give me twelve uninterrupted hours, and I will binge-watch shit on Netflix and watch interviews with wrestlers on Youtube. I can hold to schedules built around social obligation, but

PeterMBall 01/04/2016

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

This Is My Goddamn Mountain

I want to write a story that hits you like a shiv to the gut. I want to get inside your head and fuck with your shit. I want to take a thing that seems familiar and make it seem weird and new. I want to finish this story; this novella; this book. I want to do better, creatively, professionally, strategically. I want to figure out this blogging things and deliver better content here. I want to get more stuff out there. I want to do more with the stuff I’ve already written. I want to write a bunch of stuff I haven’t had a chance to write yet: a comic book; a short-story collection; a whole host of story ideas on my hard drive. A whole bunch of novels that I still don’t quite know how to pull off. I want to walk into a bookstore and see a bunch of books with my name on it on the

PeterMBall 31/03/2016

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

There Is Nothing Surprising About a Writer Getting Rejected (Even JK Rowling)

THE SET-UP STAGE ONE: JK Rowling releases some of her rejection letters from the Robert Galbrath books via twitter. STAGE TWO: Bloggers and journalists everywhere write articles and posts about this, because pretty much anything Rowling does is news these days. She’s JK-Fucking-Rowling, after all. STAGE THREE: Every fucker everywhere starts talking about extraordinary it is that JK-Fucking-Rowling – one of the best-selling novelists of all time – still collects rejection letters. STAGE FOUR: I lose my fucking mind and plots a world tour where I can visit every writer who used such a phrase and shake them by the neck while screaming “NO. IT. FUCKING. ISN’T.” until they swear they will never do it again. THE ARGUMENT: THERE IS NOTHING EXTRAORDINARY ABOUT REJECTION Not mine. Not yours. Not JK Rowling (particularly not when she’s writing as Robert Galbrath and no-one knows yet). We want it to be news because, as a culture, we’d like to believe that extraordinary talent will conquer

PeterMBall 30/03/2016

Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx

Technical Difficulties. Please Stand By.

I went to a con. My brain is not working. I have a presentation to the board of the Writers Centre tonight. I want to lie here and moan about sleep. I want to get up and write about the con. I want to finish a short story and go start rewriting my novel. I want to read all the books I acquired, which was comparatively little for me at a con, and it will still keep me going for the next year. I want to write follow-up emails for the unfinished conversations. I want to say thank-you to a bunch of excellent moderators who chaired panels I was on, and excellent moderators who chaired panels I went to see and really enjoyed. I want to talk about how important cons are, and how important they aren’t in the scheme of becoming an SF writer. I want to write big, detailed posts about SF and masculinity, and large-scale story structure,

PeterMBall 29/03/2016

Journal

Some Days, You’ve Just Got Nothing But The Books You Recommend

I wish I knew what to post about today. I would claim that my brain feels spectacularly empty, but that would be a lie. My brain is brimming with things I could write about, I just lack the confidence of articulating them well within the space I’ve got allotted before I head off to the final day of the Contact. I keep thinking of answers I should have given in panels, or things I could have explained better, but sitting down to write those out would mean giving context. I keep thinking about interesting questions and conversations I’ve had, but still haven’t had a lot of time to process. I keep thinking about the peeps I’ve run into, and the new folks I’ve met over the last three days. New authors, established authors, eager readers and fans. The folks I wish I could have talked too longer. None of that’s going to happen. My train arrives in ten minutes and

PeterMBall 28/03/2016

Sunday Circle

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

PeterMBall 27/03/2016

Works in Progress

#AmWriting

I’m off to Contact 2016 this morning. I expect I will see a large number of the folks who are usually reading this blog over there, at the Hotel Jen, but for the rest of you, a blog post. I am writing a story at the moment. Technically, I am rewriting a story, because the first draft already exists in a notebook that I’ve been carrying around for the last month. Originally I thought this would be more akin to editing, but it’s not. The story that goes into computer is mostly akin to the hand-written draft in terms of structure – everything else gets changed. Don’t get me wrong: editorial processes are useful, at this point. I’ve been working my way through all the planning suggestions in Charlotte Nash’s How to Edit a Novel, which provides an incredibly useful process for editing work, but my handwritten drafts are very spare and very messy and very, very wrong. And so I am

PeterMBall 25/03/2016