Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx Archives - Page 4 of 11

PSA: How to Contact Peter About GenreCon

PETERMBALL Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx January 20, 2017GenreCon, GenreCon 2017

I spent today back in the QWC offices, annoying friends on Twitter by vague-tweeting about the behind-the-scenes GenreCon stuff that was coming together. I also spent today fielding a bunch of queries about the conference…some via official channels, and some via Facebook, personal email, and in-person queries.

So, futile as it may be, I am going to strap on my grumpy pants and put this out there as a reminder: if you have queries about this year’s GenreCon, your best bet is emailing the shared GenreCon email address used by the whole ninja team (who are doing a lot more of the work this year) or my work email if you’re wanting to talk to me specifically.

I’ll admit the lines between writing-Peter and GenreCon-Peter are frequently blurred, but they do exist. GenreCon is a gig I do that requires a lot of putting aside me and working to advance the careers of other writers, so I rarely rationally and calmly when people ask me to keep doing that via communication streams that are basically used to manage my writing career.

The times when I’m happy to respond to queries via my personal email or, worse, via Facebook messenger basically come down to:

When the person asking the question is a really good friend. I know that seems kinda ambiguous, so here’s your rule of thumb: Have I drunk coffee at your house? Have you drunk coffee at mine? If the answer to either of these is no, you probably don’t know me well enough to ask about work stuff on non-work time without pissing me off a little.
When the questions are about running a con in general, rather than this con in particular. I am totally fine with people contacting me to ask questions about how I program conferences. Because those questions are about me, not the job or what you are hoping to get out of the con, and I am egocentric enough to like talking about me and find it a valuable use of my non-work hours.
When you are an agent/editor/publisher with whom I have (or want) a professional relationship. ‘Cause, yo, I ain’t stupid. I spend far more of my life writing than I spend running a conference, even if it’s GenreCon that gets the most attention throughout the year. Also, because anyone in this category usually has a pretty good instinct about crossing professional boundaries from their own experiences with writers.
When you are a current or former invited guest of GenreCon. ‘Cause, honestly, if you’ve been an invited guest of the conference you’ve worked your ass off to make me look good as an organiser, and you deserve to inconvenience me as much as you goddamn like. And if you’re a current guest, I’m largely counting on you making me look good come November, and the same logic applies.

Everyone else, honestly, use the email addresses linked to above instead of social media messaging or my personal email. You are more likely to get an answer, and I am less likely to dream of punting you into a vat of boiling magma and unleashing a swarm of ill-tempered bass with fricken’ laser beams on your ass.

And I will repeat my message from 2015: Facebook messenger is a damn stupid way to engage in any kind of professional correspondence. Particularly this year, where my social media time is minimal, at best, and shit is just going to be flat-out missed.

And for those who have read this far looking for updates or news about GenreCon…well, things will start moving pretty rapidly from this point on. Today was spent locking down budget, making final decisions, and writing the first few bits of marketing copy, so news should start hitting the internet over the next ten days.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go spend a few hours playing Batman: Arkham City.

Crazy Thoughts

PETERMBALL Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx August 16, 2016

Tomorrow it will be eight weeks since I started on antidepressants. Since then I’ve cycled through three different types, found one that seems to have manageable side-effects, and stuck with it long enough that I’ve actually had to go back and refill a prescription. This is, apparently, a good thing in terms of seeing the effects kick in and…well, yeah. While I’m not conscious of things being different, every now and then I’ll look up and realise things are different.

I also spent a lot of time catching up with friends I don’t see often over the weekend, which meant I found myself talking about the depression and the meds a bit more than usual. And I discovered that I’m extraordinarily bad at it, in a lot of respects, because I keep describing things that sound kind of terrible and being all, actually, it was awesome.

Case in point: there was two-week period at the beginning of July where I was on a set of meds that made things considerably worse rather than better. I started having panic attacks. I became very aware of self-harm, suicide, and property damage as the potential solutions to problems. I ceased to be in control of my internal monologue. For eight straight days a part of my brain would whisper things like: you cry every time you drive somewhere; this would stop if you didn’t have a car to drive anymore – you should set the fucker on fire. You keep curling up on your floor and shivering like a crazy fucker – if you put a knife through your palm, at least there would be reason. You forgot to do any writing today, and feel a little worthless – good thing you live beside a train line, huh?

I knew this wasn’t normal. I knew these were crazy solutions, induced by the meds, but my brain would loop back to them over and over. That line of thinking was the first cab off the rank when trying to deal with…well, anything. I knew better than to act on them, but finding myself back at those solutions over and over got tiring.

I spent much of that week desperately trying to hold conversations with people via the internet just so I didn’t have to listen to my subconscious suggest shit anymore. Or avoiding conversations with people, because I didn’t have the resources to hide the fact that this was going on in my internal dialogue.

And yes, it was horrible and not a lot of fun to go through, but…look, in hindsight, it was a useful thing . There was a part of me that still wondered if everyone around me had overreacted a bit, up until that point, and suddenly it was very clear that things were really not okay. I stopped fighting the idea that I might be depressed, and started putting the energy spent wondering look, what if it’s just mistake into well, this is a thing and I do not want to be back here. How do I start managing this better?

And that meant my habit of using work and writing to try and run away from the faulty wiring in my skull wasn’t really any viable anymore. There was no chance of running away anymore. The crazy had caught up. Amid the panic attacks and the desperate conversations and the quiet evenings where I’d remind myself not to go near the knife floor, there was also a sense of relief.

Over the weekend I got asked if antidepressants had affected my writing any. It’s probably too soon to say that for sure, given that I’ve only just hit a month on an antidepressant that isn’t fucking with my head or causing ridiculous amounts of side-effects.

But the last week and a bit have been kinda awesome, now that I’m settling in with my current meds, because it’s the first time in years that I feel like I’m working towards something with a writing project, rather than running away from something.

It seems like a small distinction, but it’s bigger than I could imagine eight weeks ago. I’m kinda curious to see how things come together in the coming months.

Technical Difficulties. Please Stand By.

PETERMBALL Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx March 29, 2016

I went to a con. My brain is not working. I have a presentation to the board of the Writers Centre tonight. I want to lie here and moan about sleep. I want to get up and write about the con. I want to finish a short story and go start rewriting my novel. I want to read all the books I acquired, which was comparatively little for me at a con, and it will still keep me going for the next year.

I want to write follow-up emails for the unfinished conversations. I want to say thank-you to a bunch of excellent moderators who chaired panels I was on, and excellent moderators who chaired panels I went to see and really enjoyed. I want to talk about how important cons are, and how important they aren’t in the scheme of becoming an SF writer. I want to write big, detailed posts about SF and masculinity, and large-scale story structure, and small-scale story structure, and Die Hard.

I want to do so many things. I’m not doing any of them. Instead, my morning is best summarised with this:

The Spokesbear is disappointed in me.

But then, he always is.

See you tomorrow, peeps.