I’ve grown complacent about travelling in recent years. I went from doing very little of it, to doing a whole lot, and somewhere along the line I stopped fretting about the logistics of getting places and packing things. I paid for that, over the weekend. Three nights in Melbourne with antidepressants and a power chord […]
Towards the end of 2015 I sat down and wrote up a list of my current obsessions, which tend to inform my creative work and the types of things I end up blogging about here. By their very nature, obsessions are a short-term thing: they may stem from long-term interests, but I tend to follow […]
I blog for a living now. Not here, obviously, but in general – I go into the office and I boot up a computer and I write blog post after blog post. When I’m not writing a blog post, I’m researching a blog post or pitching a blog post or putting together a blogging schedule. […]
I woke up early this morning and sent off some writing emails. Discovered another couple of emails that really need to be dealt with, so they’ve been flagged for me to deal with tomorrow morning. I begin to see the benefits of the dedicated admin day, which Kathleen Jennings has mentioned on multiple Sunday Circles, […]
Today is my last day at Queensland Writers Centre. As of 5:00 PM this afternoon, I no longer have a job where people get to ask me questions about writing or publishing. Figure I may as well celebrating that by doing my favourite thing to do here on the blog: answering questions about writing and […]
This morning is coffee and Patti Smith and Lou Reed. This morning has been getting out of bed too late because I was reading Catherynne Valente’s The Bread We Eat in Dreams and falling in love with story after story, falling in love with each shiny little jewel of language that’s deployed. This morning is porridge and […]
Back in December I read Patti Smith’s M Train, a book that starts with (and frequently returns to) Smith’s daily ritual of heading to her local cafe for a coffee, toast, and a period of reflection where she writes in her notebook. M Train gets sold as a memoir, but that doesn’t feel like an adequate representation of […]
Planning out my week in Melbourne Airport. This Friday’s entry gave me a moment if pause Even when you know it’s coming, it sneaks up on you.
It’s a public holiday, here in Brisbane, which means my favourite cafe is closed and I have not had my morning coffee and Brisbane folks have a whole lot of extra time to get cranky about the Australian census today. And, going by the #CensusFail hashtag on Twitter, there is a lot of anger out […]
Awake at six AM today. Wandering around the house, listening to the Dresden Dolls covering War Pigs, falling back into the routine I left behind several months ago: shower; clothing; breakfast; Bullet Journal. Review the weekly checkpoint, get started on the urgent tasks for the day. Today’s urgent tasks: booking a doctor’s appointment so I can get […]
I spent the weekend finishing a story draft. Mostly, it should be said, to prove to myself that I still had the ability to write a story, ’cause the last few months have battered my process to the point where it’s unrecognisable. So my goal, in writing the story, was largely getting something written. It’s short, […]
Started with a new antidepressant over the weekend, on account of the original meds giving me uncontrolled teeth chattering for about five days straight as one of its side effects. This is irritating, because I’d more-or-less got to the point where the original meds weren’t making me restless and unable to focus, and now…well. Starting over. […]
