Journal

Right, a quick one.

I set myself three books to read this week, then promptly read two of them in the space of twenty-four hours. So I added another two books and promptly read one of those in the space of a few hours. I started August by doing a Patreon post about the relative dearth of reading as I hit the mid-year, but it seems I’m trying to solve that in a single weekend.

Then there was an upset stomach and the discovery of Episodes, a 2011 sitcom featuring Tamsin Grieg and Matt LeBlanc, which makes a great job of utilizing the strength of both actors. And yet, oddly weird, because it feels like it should be a BBC comedy, but it’s…not.

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I spent the start of Brisbane’s lockdown rescheduling a small stack of meetings. Now I’ve spent the end of lockdown rescheduling a small stack of meetings, because my stomach was iffy enough that sitting for an hour felt like a risk.

Did some submission reading for Brian Jar, scanned a bunch of contracts to mail out to the authors, and worked on some stuff for the Patreon and the current novella. Then the proof copies of Not Quite The End Of The World Just Yet arrived.

I was worried how this one would look, the whole way through putting the files together. Things that look good on screen always lose a bit of their vibrancy during the printing process, and it’s a book that relies on stark contrast and light.

Turns out I shouldn’t have worried. It’s a beautiful book. You can still preorder copies over at the Brain Jar Press website.

Now I go start work on the print edition of These Strange And Magic Things.

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Jathan Sadowski’s exhort to embrace being a Luddite isn’t the article you’re expecting if you’ve heard the term bandied around by folks who fumble with their phone. In fact, he mounts a pretty damn convincing case for re-igniting the movement in the face of the gig economy, engaging with technology critically and entrenching worker rights.

The contemporary usage of Luddite has the machine-smashing part correct — but that’s about all it gets right.

First, the Luddites were not indiscriminate. They were intentional and purposeful about which machines they smashed. They targeted those owned by manufacturers who were known to pay low wages, disregard workers’ safety, and/or speed up the pace of work. Even within a single factory — which would contain machines owned by different capitalists — some machines were destroyed and others pardoned depending on the business practices of their owners.

Second, the Luddites were not ignorant. Smashing machines was not a kneejerk reaction to new technology, but a tactical response by workers based on their understanding of how owners were using those machines to make labour conditions more exploitative. As historian David Noble puts it, they understood “technology in the present tense”, by analysing its immediate, material impacts and acting accordingly.

Luddism was a working-class movement opposed to the political consequences of industrial capitalism. The Luddites wanted technology to be deployed in ways that made work more humane and gave workers more autonomy. 

I’m A Luddite. You Should Be One Too (The Conversation)

It’s a beautiful little essay and worth checking out.

It’s been an odd kind of Saturday. I woke up at 5:30 — a terrifyingly regular occurance these days — and stumbled out to spend a few hours reading on the couch. The cat decided to hang out with me, so I spent a few hours devouring books at a terrifying rate of knots.

The last book on the pile was Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code, all about the role the myelin sheaths forming over nerves play in the acquisition and refinement of skills, and the factors that contribute to certain schools, towns, or movements spawning an astonishing number of world-class talents, whether it’s in the field of art, sport, or science. Fascinating, fascinating book that’s going to have me thinking incredibly hard about my practice, and about the logistics of writing careers. Many old, well-worn bits of writing advice — write every day! If you want to write, you must read! — can be contemplated in a new light after reading Coyle’s book.

It’s also contribubing to this weird idea that’s bubbling away in the back of my head, pondering whether all the rhetoric we absorb about writing being a terrible career choice is really all that accurate. For all that we like to joke that there’s no money in writing, and warn new writers not to quit their day job, I’m not actually sure it’s as terrible a career choice as it initially seems. Stressful, yes, and unlikely to earn you a stalbe income, but writing is oddly resilient as a career and the skills you develop are surprisingly valuable if you set aside the mythology about muses and creative genius and actually develop your craft.

It may not turn into a thing, but I keep tapping away at notes and jotting down quotes from recent reading that ties into the general theme.

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Another segue that’s just accored to me, based on Cole’s work.

The most astonishingly useful time-management tip I’ve encountered basically boils down to “DO LESS STUFF, DUMBASS.” The reason most people turn to time and project management books is typically because we’re massively overcommitted, and just like going all Marie Kondo on your home, the best way to get organised is to clear out the clutter and focus on the important stuff.

(The book that offered said advice Charlie Gilkey’s Start Finishing, which is both really useful and awkwardly written, so I often hesitate about recommending it)

I am failing to do less stuff at the moment. Rather spectacularly. I’ll have six big writing/publishing things to accomplish every day, and regularly tick off four of them. The other two will just sit there, getting bigger and scarier, which means I’ll soon have seven things to do on a daily task list and things will really get out of hand.

I was getting twitchy about that until I read Coyle’s book, and realised that a lot of what’s slowing me down at the moment is a lack of practice and refinement. Even the stuff I know how to do well — banging out words at a surprising speed — is a skill that’s laid fallow for much of the last year. I’m less than a week into trying to pick them up again, and it’s taking some time to fire up all the old mental pathways that allowed me to write at a certain speed. I’m both trying to awaken old skills and bed down new routines, both of which are going to take a little time to become routine.

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There were some non-reading things on the docket today. Laundry was folded, a cat was petted several times, and the second season of Miracle Workers was finished over lunch. We started on season three, were treated to the incredible sight of Daniel Radcliff doing a Rocky Horror inspired cover of “She’ll Be Coming Around The Mountain,” and largely figured there was no TV that was going to top that anytime soon.

This was our second attempt at watching Mircale Workers — we bounced off the first episode hard last year amid all the disaster (bush fires at the time — remember them? — rather than plague). I’m glad we gave it a second chance, especially since a bunch of friends mentioned having a similar issue. It’s definitely an absurd brand of humour, but worth persevering with. Radcliffe is absolutely incredible, remaining one of the most interesting of the Harry Potter kids in terms of the projects he takes on.

And now it’s ten o’clock, and I’ve not attempted any real writing yet. Time to rectify that before I turn in.