Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Provocation

I’m flying out to Rockhampton at six AM tomorrow morning, so I really should be in bed right now. And I will be soon, I swear, but for this: earlier today I learned the latest Review of Australian Fiction is out, featuring stories by Kim Wilkins and Meg Vann. Perhaps this requires some context. Let me start again. One of the nice things about being a writer is meeting people you find yourself liking. This isn’t one of those things that happens immediately. In fact, it starts quite slowly: you spend a year or two meeting people you kind of like, or don’t like at all, and then suddenly you’re are a writing event of some kind and you stumble over a reader or fellow writer who you get along with quite well. And then you keep going to writing events, or you start hanging out with other writers, and these same people keep showing up again and again. This

PeterMBall 20/03/2012
Journal

Week of Doom

So, the birthday. I got some good, solid slacking-off-with-an-arm-thrown-over-my face. I went and had dinner with my parents and my sister. There were new pairs of Converse sneakers (my secret vice), Crème brûlée, and a card from my mother that was covered in unicorns. They put a birthday candle in my crème brûlée, so I even blew out a candle for the first time in years. Then I went into work today and logged onto my facebook and found a wall timeline full of people wishing my happy birthday, which is one of those things about modern life and interconnectivity that I haven’t quite gotten the hang of. Plus, I always feel like I’m disappointing people by being so sedate  in my celebrating. To say nothing of the fact that I’m a horrible facebook user, what with being a convert to Twitter. Still, thank you all. I shall endeavour to celebrating harder next year, I swear. # Tomorrow will be the sole sane day in

PeterMBall 19/03/2012
Journal

and now we are thirty-five

It’s the morning of my 35th Birthday, which means two things. First, that it’s time to post the traditional morning-of-my-birthday-self-portrait-that-will-cause-my-parents-to-complain-about-the-things-I-put-up-on-the-internet. Not quite the grim visage of death I used for my thirty-third birthday, but I do plan on staying like this for most of the damn day. It’s Sunday, after all, and Sundays were meant for staying in bed with an arm thrown over your face, pretending the outside world doesn’t exist. Secondly, it means I should reread Haruki Murakami’s Birthday Stories anthology, ’cause that’s what I do on my birthday. Yes, I know, least exciting blog post ever, but hey – it’s tradition. And a Sunday.

PeterMBall 18/03/2012
Journal

Only Happy When It Rains

Commuting to work a few hours late. The Brisbane weather decided to remind me why I like living here.

PeterMBall 15/03/2012
Journal

Oops, Mae Maxima Culpa

Yesterday’s post seems to have come across a little gloomier than I’d intended. So much so that I actually went back and re-read what I’d written, trying to puzzle out why it was drawing the comments it was (which, don’t get me wrong, are thoroughly brilliant and affirming and my thanks go out to all of you) and the conversations I kept having today with people who thought that maybe I needed a hug and a pep talk. Which is nice, sure, but it kind of baffled me. Surely it’s not that bad? I thought. I mean, I did write that paragraph about my life being essentially awesome most of the time, right? Then I re-read the post and realised, yes, I’d written that paragraph, but I’d also deleted it from the final post. And yes, it was a post that came with a side of gloom cookies, and I probably did sound rather like I needed a hug at

PeterMBall 14/03/2012
Journal

BILDUNGSROMAN

ONE I was twenty-one when I first realised that writing wasn’t going to be easy. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. I was fresh out of my undergraduate, fresh out of home, and about to dive back into an honours year at University. I remember sitting on the balcony of my shitty share-house flat in the wee hours of the morning, nursing a cup of coffee and paging through one of the cheap, shitty poetry anthologies I’d picked up in a second hand book store. This is back when I lived on the Gold Coast, where even the best second hand book stores are fairly starved for poetry. At the time I still figured I’d grow up to be a poet, and I already knew there was no chance of making a living at that. So I drank my coffee and read poetry and thought about what I was going to do with my life, looking at

PeterMBall 14/03/2012
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Ticking Things Off the To-Do List

I’m having something of a catch-up evening this evening. One of those nights where long un-answered email is finally responded to and long ignored tasks finally get ticked off the to-do list. On tonight’s list: book flights to Melbourne in two weeks; write up an invoice or two that needs to get mailed out; write a blog post. Two of three are done, and once I click post I get to parade around the house in triumph, confident in the fact that I have rocked the kasbah. Sadly, the presence of my flatmate means I’m no longer being literal when I say that. Still to do: respond to unanswered email; line up places to stay while in Melbourne; crit things; write things that are not blog posts. It’s a busy, ramshackle kind of evening, but it’s been a ramshackle kind of month thus far, so all things considered that makes a kind of sense. # I watched Midnight in Paris yesterday. Only,

PeterMBall 12/03/2012
Gaming

There is always something bittersweet about a looming tide of sadness

1. Beginnings This happens five years back. I’m attending a barbecue at my friend Chris’s house, one of those semi-regular gathering of the geeks that used to occur in our neck of the woods before the social-group in question splintered. There were board-gamers, sword-swingers, and RPG players, all people who had gradually filtered into one-another’s lives through conventions and half-completed RPG campaigns and getting enough folks together to play Settler’s of Catan. I’m a RPG player, by and large, but I have a geeks weakness for games in all its forms. At one point in the afternoon I’m talking to a guy named Al, who I’ve gamed with a time or two. We’re talking about Call of C’Thulhu and how he’d love to run a weekly game. “You can’t do that anymore,” he says. “People don’t have the time.” “I dunno,” I say. “There’s a bunch of people here who’d kill to be part of a good Call of C’Thulhu game.

PeterMBall 04/03/2012
News & Upcoming Events

Me Teach You to Write Good, eh?

There’s a more substantive blog post coming, but I’m just dropping past to announce the following to anyone who may be interested in this writing course that’s kicking off next Wednesday Night. It’s an introductory course run as part of my dayjob at the Queensland Writers Centre. ‘Course, I’m a sucker for talking about writing, which is one of those reasons I regard the dayjob as one of the best-damn-dayjobs ever Details as follows: Introduction to Creative Writing Presented by Peter Ball If you’re the kind of person who loves books and films, who gets brilliant ideas for characters and plots while sitting on the bus, who scribbles in a journal or is just inspired to imagine and create stories… well, it’s quite likely you’re a writer! Take the plunge and join us for this four-week course where you will explore your unique writing voice, discover your own abilities and learn new tools and exercises to nurture that inner storyteller.

PeterMBall 28/02/2012
Journal

Today Was a Good Day

It’s a warm and humid night Brisbane. It feels like I’ve somehow found myself in a bowl of lukewarm soup, albeit the kind that has a hot and spicy aftertaste that digs in beneath the skin. Summer is almost over, but it’s slow to relinquish its grip. I’ve got the Jane Austen Argument on repeat because they’ve become a kind of soundtrack to the story I’m writing. I’m mostly making do with the songs from their various singles, although I suspect I’ll pre-order their album before the evening is done. I played the hell out of Bad Wine and Lemon Cake and Here in Melbourne on my MP3 player last year, and if the songs on the album are even half as good as what the group has released thus far, it’s going to be pretty spectacular. And slowly, very slowly, I’m producing new work.  

PeterMBall 27/02/2012
Works in Progress

Not Prophetic

Writing in a bathtub is far more uncomfortable than you’d think.

PeterMBall 23/02/2012