ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG
Works in Progress

I Do Believe in Syntax

And lo, it is Monday, and we continue the dancing monkey series wherein people ask me questions and I blog long, rambling answers in response. Once more into the breach and all that. Today, Peter Kerby offered up the following: Just to stir the pot; English is living language and all living things evolve, so how much licence should be tolerated when it comes to grammar and spelling, or does it depend on the intended audience. Verily, I am the wrong person to ask this sort of question, ’cause my response is invariably something along the lines of “so long as you can be understood, rock the fucking Kasbah, lolz, peace out, peeps.” Except, you know, not in so many words, and potentially in ways that make me sound less like an idiot and more like I have some understanding of what da kidz are speaking like with their crazy slang these days. I mean, hipsters, man, who gets them? (Hipsters are still a thing, right?) You want a license? No problem, I hereby give you a license to go forth and fuck up language’s shit as much as you want when it comes to the words themselves. I’m not a purist when it comes to word. Call it the side-effect of spending years and years and years teaching in a creative writing degree where people were really fond of semiotics. The important part isn’t really the words themselves, it’s making sure there’s a cohesive framework around the words that allows

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24/09/2012 1 Comment
Works in Progress

The Only Person I Have to Live With Is Me, So That’s Who I’m Going To Care About

So as part of the Dancing Monkey series, Chris Slee asked What have you always wanted to write but haven’t because a) it would never sell and b) it would be socially unacceptable? Okay, let me see if I can formulate an answer to this that doesn’t involve gleeful, if slightly diabolical, laughter. My track record is actually pretty good when it comes to finding a concept that seems utterly unsellable and still finding a way to make money out of it. I mean, let us look at the list of stories I thought were utterly unsalable that then went on to actually make me a fair chunk of change: Unicorns and underage pornography? Sold. Thinly veiled erotica about John Flamsteed saving the world by shagging aliens? Sold Werewolf stories with a meandering, non-werewolf plot? Sold. A convoluted story-within-a-story about a tragedy where nothing much happens? Sold, and reprinted in a year’s best to boot. I mean, Jesus, a story with a goddamn talking cat? Sold. I’ve actually hit a point where thinking “I can’t write this, it’ll never get published” is usually a sign that I should just get on with things and write the damn the story, since pretty much everything I’ve ever assumed would be unpublishable ended up seeing the light of day somewhere. As for the stuff that’s socially unacceptable…well, lets just say that anyone saying “you can’t publish this kind of work” is like waving a red flag at a bull. My first instinct is

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21/09/2012 No Comments
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Blogging

So I’m going to be polishing off the rest of the Dancing Monkey topics over the next week or so, ’cause I have partially completed costs about most of them and ’cause people asked for interesting topics that I actually enjoy blogging. With that in mind, I’m hitting up the next topic on the list, which came from the inimitable Steve D. What about a locum or an apprentice? On that topic, you could blog about what being a professional blogger is like, as a job, and where it leads, and who should consider it. Let’s set aside the first part of the question, since I’m assuming it was largely a suggestion based on the impetus of the Dancing Monkey posts – wanting to keep the blog active while I was travelling. In hindsight I can look at this and say, well, yes, that would have been a smart idea, but on the whole I rather like the idea of my blog staying my blog, and the idea of taking on an apprentice/guest poster just seems weird. At the dayjob, I have no such compunctions. Part of my dayjob is providing content for the Australian Writer’s Marketplace Speakeasy blog (in addition to facebook and twitter content), and it’s one of those hungry beasts that can never be satiated. When it was suggested I take on an editorial intern, I nodded and figured out what could be handed over and celebrated like it was Christmas. My current intern is a godsend,

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19/09/2012 No Comments
Journal

In Which I Discover That I Owe Kapowe An Apology

This past weekend I sat my arse on the coach and read comic books. When I was done with that, I watched some wrestling DVDs. And brother, let me tell, you it was a weekend of glorious brilliance the like I haven’t experienced lately. After two straight months where, more often than not, you’d find me on a plane or hanging out at a writers festival or otherwise engaged in day-job related hijinx, the realisation that I had not a goddamn thing that needed to be done was freeing. I mean, the travel, it defeated me. For years I’ve been talking with my friend Kevin about the debilitating effects of work travel, not quite getting his dislike of it, ’cause on the rare instances I’ve had to travel for work it’s either been a) rare, or b) not that far. I now feel like I need to buy Kevin several beers of apology ’cause I totally get it now. Even when you don’t mind travel – and I don’t – and the work trips come with little perks like catching up with friends, there’s a point where your brain just shuts down and says “bugger this for a game of soldiers, I want me own bed” and I hit that, oh, about three weeks back. Too much time away from home, too many interruptions to the routine, and no time to recharge. The exhaustion finally crept up on me and even during the week, when I was working, I’d find

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17/09/2012 3 Comments
News & Upcoming Events

Five Things

Hola! It’s the Brisbane Writers Festival this weekend – the final festival on the packed schedule of festivals and travel that have kept me away from the blog – which means it’s a little over a fortnight before I resume regular postings. In the meantime, I’m going to interrupt this period of non-posting with a handful of announcements that may interest you. ONE I’ve got a non-fiction piece in the latest Apex Magazine that distills writing advice from the rants of professional wrestler Al Snow. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Apex editor Lynne M. Thomas came across a blog post I did on the topic a few months ago and asked me to expand it into a full-fledged article. Being the type who is fond of getting paid to write things and the type who likes watching shoot interviews with pro-wrestlers, I immediately agreed and went into research mode. Now I just need to find someone who’ll pay me to write a series of essays titled “What Writers Can Learn From Watching Trashy Tuesday Movies” and my work here will be done. TWO Melinda Moore is one of those people who I’ve known online for years and one of the earliest people to become a regular poster here on petermball.com. She’s also had her first-ever short story published and kicked off her own website, Enchanted Spark, to celebrate. I recommend checking out both. THREE The Untitled Emergency Project I was writing a few weeks back? It’s now got a title – Tithes – and

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07/09/2012 1 Comment
Journal

5 Things I Know About Squid

1. Squid are cephalopods of the order Teuthida, which comprises around 300 species. Like all other cephalopods, squid have a distinct head, bilateral symmetry, a mantle, and arms. Squid, like cuttlefish, have eight arms arranged in pairs and two, usually longer, tentacles. Squid are strong swimmers and certain species can ‘fly’ for short distances out of the water. Admittedly, I didn’t know this, but in the age of the internet, it’s remarkably easy to find this stuff out. 2. If you haven’t read Kraken, in which a giant squid is stolen and the end of the world begins, you really should. It currently wages war with The City and the City as my favourite China Meiville novel. 3. I tried cooking with squid once. It didn’t go well. 4. “In her old firm they called her The Squid.” “The Squid?” “The only thing that can kill a shark.” Parker Posey’s run on Boston Legal was far too short. Although that can be said of Parker Posey’s run on pretty much everything. 5. Teuthida is a name I’m likely to steal for a D&D bad guy, one of these days.  

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20/08/2012 3 Comments
Journal

Something I’ve Never Written About

1. There’s a page in an old notebook of mine, written way back when I was young and stupid, where I put forward the closest thing I had to a creative philosophy at eighteen: I do not believe in silence. When I was eighteen I wanted to write stories that had weight. I wanted to create something that could be used to bludgeon the world into submission. 2. Things I have written about: bad relationships; unicorns; punk rock; pro-wrestling; shaved heads; the veneer of love; envy; sexual ambiguity; writing; aliens; poetry; indecision; growing up on the Gold Coast; living in Brisbane; my hatred of certain dayjobs. It seems such a limited list, on the surface, but in many respects that list contains everything. 3. Yes, I was a pretentious kid. I’m also a pretentious adult. Pretension is an underrated survival trait in the arts, as is an enormous capacity for self-deception. 4. I remember one of my lecturers gendering writing very early on: men wrote action, women wrote emotions. Reversing that, they said, attracted attention. They still seemed surprised when I did. I’m still wondering if I succeeded in the attempt. 5. How do you find the things you don’t write about? On one hand, it’s startlingly easy: I’ve never written about Desperate Housewives; the State of Origin; thumb tacks, erasers, twine. I’ve never held forth with my opinions on statuary or the state of the world economy. On the other hand, how do you write about that? What’s the

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17/08/2012 2 Comments
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

A Few More Ideas About Ideas

You know what’s handy when you pre-write a bunch of blog posts and set them to post while you’re away? Actually remembering to set them to post. Seems I forgot to hit the all-important Publish button in my rush to get ready for the Adelaide trip last week, which means we’re starting the dancing monkey series a little later than expected. If there’s a topic you’d like to throw into the mix, you can still do so by pitching it here.  A Few More Ideas About Ideas A few years ago I wrote a blog post that looked at the often-maligned question of where do your ideas come from. I wrote it ’cause I didn’t like the way most writers behaved when they were asked that question, and ’cause I kind of like understanding my process. Plus, as a guy whose occasionally asked to teach people how to write, it’s a useful thing to be able to talk about process without pulling all that form a little shop in Schenectady bullshit on students who are paying good money to learn things. I haven’t changed my approach much since I wrote that original post, but since then I’ve had a lot more opportunities to talk about process with some friends at the beginning of their writing careers. This is a slightly different experience to teaching classes, and I’ve found it changed the kind of advice I offered about ideas. So when Nathan Russel suggested where/how to find ideas to write about?

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15/08/2012 2 Comments
Journal

In which I offer to become your dancing monkey, metaphorically speaking

I’m going to be travelling a lot over the next three weeks. Mostly, this travelling takes place on the weekends. The weekends when I usually write my blog posts for the coming week.  I’m sure you can see the conundrum that’s coming along, any moment now, to serve as the point for this blog post. The good news is that it doesn’t actually take all that long to prep posts and set them up while I’m away. What usually takes me the better part of the weekend is figuring out what to blog about (you know, when I’m *not* blathering on about the new writing routine and the joy of getting stuff done). To this end, I’m going to turn to you, the readers of this blog, to help me out a little: Give me topics. Ask me questions. Set me challenges. Basically, fire stuff my way that you think would make for an interesting blog, even if it’s just one word, and I’ll take the list with me to help fill in those lonely hours spent in airport departure lounges waiting for planes to take me places. For the next few weeks I’m happy to be your dancing monkey, all you gotta do is hum the first few bars of the tune. I pitched a similar kind of question at twitter last week, and got the suggestion of Where/how to find ideas to write about? from Nathan Russel, so that’s going to be kicking things off on Friday. After that, I’m trusting

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08/08/2012 13 Comments
Works in Progress

Writing Notes, Saturday, August 4th

So Tuesday of last week I fired up my WiP, Wanton, and put in the dreaded numbering system I used when a story unexpectedly mutates into a novella. I didn’t want to do it – I was desperately trying to keep Wanton to novelette length – but after you hit 4,402 words of a story and you’ve only sketched out two-thirds of the first act, it’s a pretty good sign that you’re not going to be writing something that can be wrapped up in 10,000 words or less. The damn thing has chapters now, which usually means I need to back off and do some cursory planning so I have an overall structure. If you want to know what my internal monologue was like for most of Tuesday, it went something like this: Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. When I was done with that I actually started an internal debate about whether I should shelve Wanton for a bit and work on something else. Ordinarily I have no problem doing that. My work process is all about false-starts, abandoned drafts, and leaving behind fragments that I’ll come back to months or years later and transform into a completed story. This goes double for novellas, I think. Horn existed as a 5,000 word story in its first incarnation, which was basically a collection of key scenes, and over the years I’d revisit it and expand it out until I hit the finished state. On the other hand, the

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06/08/2012 2 Comments
Works in Progress

Process Notes

There is nothing more dangerous to a blog than a writer who has rediscovered writing, for all they want to do is run around going “look, look, check it out, I produce actual words,” and tell you about in exhaustive detail. I constantly have to resist the urge to be an over-excited writer-puppy and move on this week, purely because I’m still on a word-high from doing shit. I try to burn it off by slapping on some Goldfrapp and shimmying my ass around the office, but the word-high is still there. And, in truth, I don’t really want it to go away. I mean, cards on the table time, my real goal has always been to be a prolific writer rather than a good writer. Good’s something to aspire to, sure, but given the choice between writing one perfect story a year or eight stories that would be good enough to be published and enjoyed, I’d totally take the latter. On the occasions when I revisit my writing goals and plans, the phrase take over the damn world is always pretty damn high up the list. Not that I want to rule anything – that shit takes work, and there’s politics – but it’s a useful short-hand for my desire to be everywhere. When I make plans, I plan big – often far too big, all things considered, but there is so much I want to do, it’d be nice to have the opportunity to get it all done.

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03/08/2012 1 Comment
Journal

Haircut

I would be showing you a picture of my freshly-shorn scalp right now, but for the fact that instagram is being uncooperative. Instead I’ll have to link that shit and leave it up to you to be pro-active if you want to mock my new hair-do. Don’t be shy about that shit either – it’s quite a mockable haircut once you get started. The short version, for those who aren’t inclined to follow the link, is that I recently went from my long-haired grunge-kid do back to the “seriously, just pull out the clippers and shave my damn head” look that seems to bother the hell out of hairdressers when you walk in with hair longer than six inches. It’s a process I go through ever two years or so, whereupon I start growing my hair out again. Mostly I do it because my hair only works in these two states – in-between it’s a mess of kinks and spit-curls that are impossible to deal with – and because I never really got the hang of talking to hairdressers and getting the kind of haircut I actually wanted. This time around, though, holy shit, it was a new experience. I kinda did everything on the spur of the moment after work, which meant I walked into one of those male barber places where you sit on a bench with a bunch of other dudes until someone calls your name. No appointments, just sit your ass and wait your turn. I

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01/08/2012 No Comments

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