Journal

It’s 11:05 on a Monday morning and I have already packed far more useful work into my day that I fit into the whole of last week. It took almost a whole weekend of planning to get me to this point, revising processes and outlining project and sweeping notebooks, email, and projects for the unfinished tasks that have been creating drag on my subconscious.

I’ve started a fresh bullet journal, having finally run out of space in the one I kicked off last September, and I’ve gone back to the cheap-as-dirt larger J. Burrows Journal  with 8mm rule after nearly a year using a Moleskin grid-rule. I loved the moleskin, but I’m juggling projects in nine different areas of my life at the moment and I planning a day so that I’ve got a clear idea of what’s necessary to gain ground in every area means dedicating two pages to a single day. That means burning through Bullet Journals faster and it means the extra space is handy.

It’s nowhere near as neat and tidy, but that’s not why I bullet journal. The internet seems to have transformed it into an ongoing art project as much as an organisational tool, but I am primarily interested in cranking widgets and getting shit moving.

Thesis work. Writing work. GenreCon work. All three seem to involve a significant amount of scope creep if not carefully tended and outlined before the day begins, which means it’s easier to give up than chase the impossible-to-reach horizon. Some days you’re so focused on getting to Mordor that you forget the first step is getting the fuck out of the Shire before the ring wraiths arrive.

Me at 9 AM yesterday, a week after watching a trashy 80s movie: Goddamnit, Rad totally wasted a great name. Their Helltrack was totally not helltracky.

Me at 11 AM yesterday: You know what would be funny? A version of hell track that blends cyberpunk and occultism, where demonic corporations are fought by cyborg X-gamers in a bizarre race track.

Me at a 3:00 PM yesterday: Goddammit, so that’s going on the potential project list.

Me at 6:00 PM yesterday:

Me, this morning: I am totally not sold on Ragetrack, but I think I know how to make the others work as a series.

• It’s eight-thirty nine in the evening as I write this. It’s cold and I’m not wearing socks and my life is far, far better than I deserve right now.
• My brain is mushy as hell thanks to spending the last eight hours writing a plan for a novella so detailed that it’s approximately one-quarter of the novellas total word-count, because I will figure out this planning thing if it kills me.
• I also spent far more of my day researching the processes of dry cleaning than you would expect given how relevant it is to my overall story.
• Yesterday Roxanne Gay posted How to Be A Contemporary Writer over on Tumblr – a post about being a writer that is so on-point and common sense that it should be read by everyone, and will be ignored by all the people who should be paying the most attention.
• It’s been over a year since I taught a writing workshop or conducted a seminar, and it seems that I am unlikely to break this streak any time in the next six months. I am scheduled to host an In Conversation with CS Pacat on the 28th of July, though, and she’s running a two-day workshop on Writing Fantasy for Queensland Writers Centre starting on the 29th. Pacat is one of the smartest, most interesting writers I’ve come across in recent years and if you’re an aspiring fantasy writer in Brisbane I really recommend that workshop.
•  I asked people to speak about their GenreCon experience yesterday and lo, people spoke out. Thanks to everyone who did so – there was a nice healthy spike in registrations over the last twenty-four hours. To everyone who is still thinking about it – there is also a nice, healthy chunk of registrations still waiting to be sold, and the social proof of other people saying “yo, this con is great” definitely beats out me saying it.
• Angela Slatter’s book launch for Corpselight is this Friday. You should totally come.