Journal
The summary
Classes yesterday, meetings today, marking tonight, and marking tomorrow. With luck, I’ll be back on Thursday with some monkey dancing. ’til then…
PeterMBall
28/04/2009
Classes yesterday, meetings today, marking tonight, and marking tomorrow. With luck, I’ll be back on Thursday with some monkey dancing. ’til then…
Living in a culture of music sampling does very strange things to your head. I cannot, for example, help but get disappointed when the opening strains of Dusty Springfield’s Son of a Preacher Man *aren’t*, in fact, going to lead into Cyprus Hill’s Hits from the Bong. It used to drive me absolutely crazy the year Pulp Fiction came out and the Springfield song made a comeback. That’s nothing compared to today’s realisation, which is liable to get me lynched: The baseline for Under Pressure totally belongs to Ice, Ice, Baby in my head. Even when I’ve just spent twenty minutes listening to David Bowie beforehand and I know it’s coming, I just sit there waiting for the white-boy rap to start…
Today was full of busy-work: sending of short-story contracts; making a trip to the bank; doing some spot cleaning around the house (a futile effort); booking flights to Adelaide in June; putting together the final touches on a job application; followed by heading off for drinks this evening with the ever-awesome Angela Slatter and the mighty Jason Nahrung, upon which time there was discussion on the matter of writing, not writing, what might be written, not having time to read, procrastination, and other topics which tend to crop up when writer’s gather in one place. All in all, a fine day, albeit not the kind of day from which great blog posts are made; nor, for that matter, the kind of day that results in a satisfied writerly glow of contentment that comes from knowing one has done what’s necessary to produce words and such. Fortunately I felt so lazy after said chat that I came home and had a short burst of work
I am in two minds today. One part of me notes the general exhaustion that follows the Monday-of-Doom (aka the day I teach seven straight hours of classes, pacing like a maniac the entire time) and says “Seriously, man, just post something and worry about content tomorrow.” The other part of me looks at the long string of blog posts about nothing in particular and thinks it’s probably worth holding off until I’ve got something worthwhile to say. Given that I thought “shit, I look old today” when I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror a few minutes back, I think the first impulse is going to win. I am, however, going to go away and start putting together a more meaningful post for later 🙂
It’s been an inauspicious start to my April of getting things done – slept through the alarm this morning, managed to fritter away two hours without getting started on the (very low-key) to-do list of writing and cleaning-projects needed to make the house ready for the Dungeons and Dragons game on Sunday. Not a surprise, really – both brain and body are used to an afternoon start at the moment, working late into the evening, but I’m trying to break that habit over the coming month. Still, there is a list of six things that need doing today, and I have managed but one (and that one was basically checking a website). I will be rectifying that…well, not shortly, but sometime after 2 PM when I get back from renewing the lease on my flat, paying bills, and feeding a friend’s cats.
For a week now I’ve been sitting down at the computer thinking “must write a blog post soon” without ever getting around to it. I open a post, stare at it for a few seconds, then put it off until later. I can see only two ways out of this deadlock – youtube or lolcats. Thus, I choose youtube and Gilmore Girls references:
Just dropping past to say a very public thank you to all the folks who wished me a happy birthday via the internets yesterday (and to say a big happy birthday to Ben Francisco, with whom I share the birthday). Sadly, I wasn’t much for the interwebs on the day itself. I did something wonky to my shoulder sometime on Tuesday (probably a pulled muscle while lugging two bags of hardcover text books back to the library) and circumstances conspired to ensure that things to progressively worse over the following 48 hours. I spent most of yesterday propped up at a 45% degree angle watching Life on Mars & My So-Called Life and going through the supply of ibuprofen. Be back on schedule tomorrow. See you all then.
A very cool open-call for a fiction anthology, put together by clarion-peep Chris Lynch: This year marks 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin, and 150 years since the publication of The Origin of Species. To mark the anniversaries, submissions are invited for The Tangled Bank, an e-anthology of speculative fiction, artwork, poetry, and comics exploring the legacy of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. Illuminate — or obscure — the line between the real and the fantastic. The fiction may be of any speculative genre or cross-genre; demand to be included by the quality of your submission. Artwork and poetry need not be strictly speculative in nature, but must engage with Charles Darwin or evolution. Submissions for The Tangled Bank open May 1st and close June 30th, 2009. The Tangled Bank will be published by Tangled Bank Press in late 2009, and an advance on royalties of 20 per cent will be paid to all contributors. For
There is something about getting up early and writing that always makes me feel virtuous. I like the way it gets the guilt of not-writing out of the way early, the way it sets the tone for the rest of the day (in which I think about writing in moderation, rather than obsessing about the fact that I’m not writing to the exclusion of all else), and the excuse to drink inhuman amounts of coffee. If only I didn’t have to pay for these early starts later (say, around 3:30 when I crash out and need a nap) or actually wrote productively (this week, getting up at six and working for two and a half hours has netted me a paragraph of thesis work a day) it’d be an awesome habit to get into; sadly, I am not built for mornings and it’ll fall by the wayside once I have absolved myself of my latest bout of writer-guilt. Which I’m
I’ve sent off three four submissions in the past 48 hours. I’ve done a rewrite of an old story that I’ve kinda figured out how to finish. I’ve cooked meals. I’ve washed up. I’ve forced myself to query some submissions where responses have obviously gone awry (I hate querying; it makes me feel needlessly pushy). I’ve done pro-active things on a bunch of little projects. I’ve cleaned out my e-mail backlog until there’s only a handful of things left to answer. There are the beginnings of new stories. Tomorrow, if the small change in my bag blesses me with enough space to hit the laundromat, there will even be wishing. There is a groove, and I’ve almost got it back. Let’s see how I’m doing by this time tomorrow. Of course, in cleaning out the backlog I was reminded, yet again, that I hadn’t posted this all public-like. With that in mind: Due to a run of really bad luck,
First real day of classes today, which basically meant I spent seven hours running around like a mad rabbit trying to explain things without a break. Am now thoroughly exhausted and good for nothing, but feeling that warm accomplished glow that comes from returning to work. But, oh god, I forgot exactly how tiring first year classes are. I shall do very little tonight that is not television, reading, and picking up a meal from Subway.
My brain is full of much-ness today. As in there is much I want to blog about, but little time and space in which to achieve this, so things kind of bump up against each other and nothing gets written. As always, I blame the thesis – in some ways it feels like I’ve been talking about it for so long that the opportunity to talk about something else triggers this rush of “oh, and that…” (I shall stop that train of thought there, I think, lest I start rambling; rambling is the symptom of a brain full of much-ness). Okay, lets focus on the news in short form: On the writing front, some good news – I sold a story, Clockwork, Patchwork and Raven, to Apex Online. This was the source of much huzzah around the writing the desk, as one might imagine. Also on the writing front – the Black Dragon, White Dragon anthology is available now. It’s one