Category: Works in Progress
Works in Progress

Black Dragon, White Dragon Review

I have been an unproductive sloth since finishing classes on Monday, so there’s little to report but the review of Black Dragon, White Dragon anthology over on The Fix. I give you the excerpt in which its all about me: Peter M. Ball’s “The Dragonkeeper’s Wife” is ostensibly about the dragon, but it is really the story of two people pulled apart by their beliefs. Anyone who has ever dated or been married to someone diametrically opposed to them philosophically or politically will feel the import of this tale. “The Dragonkeeper’s Wife” is sad, but it ends on a note of hope, and is well-wrought in a Gene Wolfe, Peter Beagle fashion. No, I’m not sure why Gene Wolf’s name is highlighted and Peter Beagle’s isn’t. I just nod and link and mention once again that the books available now in print and e-book. I would post more, but I slept through yesterday and that means I need to get

PeterMBall 11/03/2009
Works in Progress

The Thesis March, an update

Yesterday was the last full day I’d get to spend on the thesis for over a week, and by the time I collapsed into my bed in the wee hours of morning I remember feeling upset by how little I’d achieved. Today I feel pretty good about it; frustrated, to be sure, but object enough to recognise that yesterday’s wordcount was actually pretty good by my standards. The reason I stalled out around three AM is because I realised that while I could identify the function genre plays in the process of editing work, I wasn’t yet doing anything with the realisation except pointing out that it’s there – it’s an example in need of practical application and I’m not yet sure how to do so without actively editing a piece within the exegesis itself (and, I’ll be honest, I’ve already played that trick in the preface when addressing the genre of the exegesis). While I’m not quite at a

PeterMBall 25/02/2009
Works in Progress

Thesis Update

Just dropping in with the following reports: The official wordcount (aka words actually in draft documents, rather than random notes) just topped 10k. I have, for the first time since I started the damn thing, actually finished a chapter. I have, for the first time since I started the damn thing, actually got a plan for proceeding that seems workable. This, of course, just means I have to get 20,000 words written between now and Wednesday evening. That’s a far worse thing than it sounds, incidently; I could probably get 5000 words a day done in a pinch, but I’ll be utterly useless for anything else afterwards and that’s not a luxury I’m going to get anytime soon. I suspect there will be some measure of begging for mercy in my near future.

PeterMBall 23/02/2009
Works in Progress

The Day-to-Day Glamour of writing…

I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours in a line-edit quandary: should the word Frisbee be capitalised? Theoretically it probably should – Frisbee is a registered trademark of Wham-O toys – but I’m pretty sure that I’m not actually using Frisbee to refer to an actual Frisbee, instead using it as a common term for what should technically be called a flying disc (I didn’t even know it was a trademarked term prior to this, but there you go – apparently there’s even been a bit of a barney between Wham-O and other folks about this). Since I really do need to be making a call on sending this back sometime soon, I’ve just spent the last hour capitalising and de-capitalising the F’s when they appear in the story. Consider this a desperate plea for help if you want to weigh in on either side of the argument.

PeterMBall 19/02/2009
Works in Progress

Because this is all my brain is up for today…

The good thing about trying to hit a deadline and being behind: you start to figure out ways to fix stories and ideas that are broken, potentially unsaleable and not on deadline. Yesterday I took an hour away from the books to write up a plan of what I could do to transform all my second-person-present-tense-vaguely-cyberpunk vignettes into a solid-ish mosiac novella. I just spent the last half-hour writing notes about the way to expand and fix the problems on the zombie novella I wrote as part of the AHWA mentorship in 2007. It’s all distraction to draw me away from the work that really needs doing, but at least the notes will be waiting for me once I get the thesis draft down.

PeterMBall 18/02/2009
Works in Progress

The theory of relativity as it applies to writing

The difference between a good days work and a bad days work can depend entirely on how close you are to meeting a deadline. Or, in other words, 1500 words of thesis draftage today. A month ago this would have been cause for celebration; today it is met with the soul-crushing knowledge  that I haven’t yet done enough to earn myself a few hours sleep 🙂

PeterMBall 17/02/2009
Works in Progress

On diving well and failing to swim

So Chris Lynch has posted a more-or-less up-to-date bibliography of things achieved by our Clarion South class since the 2007 workshop. He’s put this together, along with some thoughts, because the two of us are scheduled to go have a chat with the current crop of Clarion South participants about what it’s like to finish the workshop and go back to the real world. I have to admit that my first response to Chris’s bibliography was a panicked that can’t be right, but it is. The only thing he’s missed is the 100 word story I had in Brimstone Press’s Black Box e-anthology, although I start to feel a little better when I factor in the three forthcoming stories that don’t appear on Chris’s summary. Even taking into account the kind of low-key achievements that occurred around the publications, it seems like so little for two years of work once it’s listed like that, and its started me thinking about the

PeterMBall 10/02/2009
Works in Progress

Claw

The problem with writing a thesis is that it’s just no fun to talk about. The novella, on the other hand, creates the kinds of problems that I find interesting . And thus there is nattering on about it on the blog. The nifty thing about getting back to this story is that I’ve had the first scene in my head for a long while now – Miriam Aster holding a gun to a cat’s head, threatening it for information on the sly while the owner is off in the kitchen making some tea. The details around that image have shifted a bit since I first came up with it – originally she’d gone there looking for the cat, forcing her to bluff her way past the owner, but now seeing the cat is a by-product of showing up to talk to someone else. On the whole it’s lots of fun – both because Aster is the kind of character who

PeterMBall 07/02/2009
Works in Progress

Writing Sequels – it’s weird.

So today I resumed work on the novella draft that was once laboured with the working title The Girl Who Loathed Cats* but now has the working title Claw** and is probably better known as the follow-up to Horn which pits our protagonist against a talking cat and evil foetii***.  This novella is, officially, the weirdest thing to work on as far as process goes  – I’ve never really written a story that follows-up on a character or world I’ve already written, and it seems to involve a lot of time sitting around and wandering what makes a re-appearance and what doesn’t (There’s also a lot of time spent trying to reconcile how the world works, since Horn is all fairies & unicorns while a large chunk of this plot is driven by a magic cat and a deranged fan-boy/scientist). The nice part is that the process is going to be pretty leisurely – I’ve made a self-imposed deadline of March 31st to get this

PeterMBall 06/02/2009
Works in Progress

Oh baby, here comes the fear again

It starts with what may well be the most dangerous question in the world right now: “So Peter, what happens after you finish your thesis?”  Were I the melodramatic type, or at least the type in the mood for a different kind of melodrama than I’m running on right now, today’s entry would consist entirely of a you-tube clip of Pulp singing The Fear in answer to the question. It may yet come down to that – it’s been that kind of day, and The Fear is feeling very soundtrack-of-my-life right now, but with brave abandon I’m going to press on and risk letting some of the gloopy inner workings of my paranoia seep onto the web. The answer: I don’t know. It scares the hell out of me. That’s probably why I’m procrastinating. It’s not entirely true – I know, more or less, what I plan to start writing the day the thesis is off the plate. Hell, I know what I

PeterMBall 03/02/2009
Works in Progress

Today

I’ve done a short guest-post over at Lee Battersby’s blog to kick off a short retrospective about Clarion South 2007. I talk a little bit about what makes clarion great and a lot about the influence one of my classmates had on the first draft of what would eventually become Horn (formerly known around these parts as the untitled Unicorn novella). Go check it out, if you’re so inclined. The rest of the day was pretty busy, by my standards. A trip to the Gold Coast to discuss a subject I start co-teaching in a couple of weeks, a brief fight with the university library about fines for books I’ve already paid fines on, and a trip out to the movies to see The Wrestler. The latter really deserves a post all on its own, since it’s a solid and enjoyable movie (and I say that rarely), but suffice to say that I’d recommend it. Micky Rourke is as good as you’ve

PeterMBall 28/01/2009
Works in Progress

28 Days of Thesis Updates: Day Twelve

Minimal writing yesterday (50 or so words), but that was intentional. While I’m still behind, I now feel like a rational human being who lives in a nice flat in which things are clean, rather than an angst-written PhD student who lives in a hovel in which dishes pile up in the sink. Some random stuff, not really thesis-related, from the last few days: –  New review of Dreaming Again in Locus (Jan ’09), courtesy of Gardner Dozois; I actually scored a short mention among the discussion: Straightforward fantasy (as opposed to horror, although sometimes the line is hard to draw) is best represented by “Twilight in Caeli-Amur” by Rjurik Davidson, “The Last Great House of Isla Tortuga” by Peter A. Ball (another zombie story, but a considerably more subtle and elegant one), and “Manannan’s Children” By Russel Blackford… –  The Fantasy Magazine best story of 2008 poll/comment contest is still running – have you voted yet? They’ve named the top five stories in the

PeterMBall 16/01/2009

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