Still waiting on the laptop to come back from repairs, which means my internet access is largely dependent on an old desktop and the wifi hotspot on my phone. It’s been ten days, which means we’re heading into the outer limits of the time I was quoted. Were I the kind of guy who believed such quotes, I would estimate that I’m back online (and blogging regularly) towards the middle of next week. Because I know my history with computers, I figure it will be me and the phone for another week or two. at the very least. Still, one of the advantages of being laptop free is that I’m catching up on a whole bunch of reading. I spend a lot more time with a tablet while the computer is out of commission, which means it’s relatively easy to slip into the Kindle app and catch up on some of the ebooks I accumulate for travel reading. This week’s reading is

Around this time last week, I suggested rather strongly that if you were a SF type – and particularly an SF writer – you might want to consider registering for the Australian National Science Fiction Convention being held in Brisbane over the Easter long weekend. Some of you, being astute types, may have glanced at the website and wondered to yourself why, exactly, is this event full of fans useful to me as a writer? It’s basically just people getting together to talk about the books, films, and TV shows they love? How am I going to get something out of that to advance my writing career? Peeps, I’ve got your back. First, it’s important to understand how closely tied the writing and fandom community is in SF. A lot of great SF writers came out of the fan culture of the fifties, sixties, and seventies to become prominent names in the field. They’re still the place where new and

The Dancing Monkey 2016 request continues, with a topic that is near and dear to my heart: THE UNENVIABLE HELL OF A BAD BREAKFAST I am old enough to remember a time when Australia wasn’t a breakfast culture. ‘Course, I am old enough to remember a time when the arrival of McDonalds upon our shores was a big deal, and a time when a cappuccino was a fancy-ass coffee. We’ve grown up, in the last thirty years or so, and somewhere along the line we became the folks who are all about our goddamn breakfast. Try to get a group of friends together for dinner, in Australia, and you will have an endless array of maybes and alternate dates, everyone hedging their bets. Break out: “Meet me for breaky somewhere?” BOOM. Everyone is all fucking in. It helps that our cafes got really good at breakfast and coffee over the last twenty years. I can think of three cafes within walking distance

So, back on Monday, I was all thou shalt not be a dude who learns to play the opening of Stairway to Heaven. Go forth and finish your shit. That was in response to Elizabeth’s suggested topic for the 2016 Dancing Monkey series. Today we look at that idea in more detail, courtesy of a request from the inimitable Lois Spangler. Her requested topic: Finishing a thing (project, story, etc.) Right then, let’s get into the guts of it, and talk about actually finishing things. ONE: DEFINE “FINISHED” Not a facetious question, and I’m not trying to be cute. If you’re struggling to get things finished, perhaps it’s time to sit down and figure out what finished really means in this context. More importantly, whether your concept of “finished” is getting in your way. Here is the thing about creative-types: we have this tendency to take something minor that needs to be done, then subconsciously extrapolate outwards to a point