Search Results for: sleep – Page 14
Journal

Pints

The text message hits after ten PM, but I answer it ’cause I’m still awake and ’cause that’s what I do. It says, pub?, and I’m all, hell yes, but instead I text back about putting on clothes, ’cause I’m in bed, in my pajamas, just futzing around on the internet, and the possibility of hitting the pub at this hour seems more attractive than continuing to write emails I don’t feel like writing anymore. The pub isn’t really a pub at this hour of the evening. They’ve shut down the public bar, the outside areas. Reduced the venue down to the gambling lounge full of pokies, open ’til late for the folks who can’t stay away, but we ignore the rows of brightly coloured machines and make our beeline for the bar, ordering pints and taking them outside so you can smoke and I can sit there, watching the empty car-park that’s only really empty when we show up

PeterMBall 30/07/2013
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

Four Things Writers Can Learn From The Josh Kirby Films

So we spent a couple of weeks making our way through the first few films in the Josh Kirby, Time Warrior series for the #TrashyTuesdayMovie. After the first week I more-or-less swore I wouldn’t do a Trashy Tuesday Writing School post about this series until we hit the end, but the contrast between the first film (which was dull and awful) and the second film (which was an batshit crazy and awful) was marked enough that I kinda changed my mind. The first Josh Kirby film, Planet of the Dino-Knights, probably ranks among the most god-awful films we’ve watched on a Tuesday night thus far. It’s not quite bad enough to slip into my bottom five, but it’d certainly earn its spot in the bottom ten. The second film, The Human Pets, is better, but it’s greatest strength is being not-quite-as-poorly-made as its predecessor. In this respect, they’re actually an interesting duology in terms of the lessons they hold for

PeterMBall 02/07/2013
News & Upcoming Events

4 Things: GenreCon, Novella Diary, Upcoming Workshop, A Reminder

NEW GENRECON GUESTS Wait up, I’m going to deploy the banner, ’cause I *really* love our banner this year: We made some pretty big announcements over on the GenreCon site yesterday, all in the form of names being added to the conference guest list. I won’t belabour the point here, except to just post some names: John-freakin’-Connolly (best-selling Irish crime novelist who understands a thing or two about other genres); Kathryn-freakin’-Fox (best-selling Australian thriller writer who knocked the Da Vinci Code off a bunch of best-seller lists a few years back); John-freakin’-Birmingham (my family will know him for He Died With a Felafel in His Hand; everyone else should get to know his Weapons of Choice series which have been taking over bookshops over the last couple of years). Add those names to Chuck Wendig, Anne Gracie, Anita Heiss and Kate Cuthbert and I start to get really excited about programming this year’s conference. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a

PeterMBall 30/05/2013
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

Why King’s “On Writing” Can be Dangerous to New Writers

So my boss caught up on the Novella Dairy yesterday and commented on the fact that I was crapping on Stephen King in my post asking for feedback about the future of the project. “I crapped on Stephen King?” I said. “I don’t remember doing that.” “Sure you do,” she said. “You basically quote him and then talk about all the ways he’s wrong. You’re all It’s all very well for Stephen King to write about sitting in the chair until he hits 2K a day, but some of us have day jobs…” I’ll admit, at this point, that my record of this conversation probably isn’t 100% accurate, but it captures the gist. It refers back to an ongoing conversation we’ve had at work, where I’ve brought up the fact that I think On Writing has the potential to be a dangerous resource for some new writers and it bothers me that it’s so…omnipresent, I guess, as a source of advice.

PeterMBall 22/05/2013
Works in Progress

Novella Diary, Claw, Days 10 to 13

So I didn’t get online a lot between Friday and Sunday, for a whole variety of reasons, so this is going to be a pretty truncated entry that covers the last four days. Strap yourselves in. Day 10 Things I did today: woke up on the Gold Coast and had breakfast with my parents; drove to Brisbane and worked for a few hours in the QWC office; had lunch with co-workers; came home and went through a couple of options for the Tooth and Claw Whispers reading on Saturday; do some prep work for the next Year of the Author Platform course I’m teaching in a few weeks; watched NXT with the Flatmate. Things I didn’t do today: write anything on the novella. Total Daily Writing Time: 0 Daily Word Count Total: 0 Day 11 Session 11.1 (11:43 PM – 12:28 AM) Word Count: 600  Mostly revision on the first chapter.  Trying to streamline things a bit. Total Daily Writing Time: 45 minutes Daily

PeterMBall 13/05/2013
Works in Progress

Novella Diary, Claw, Day Nine

I hate this chapter. I hate this book. I hate this blog series and wish I’d never started it. I hate the mornings. I hate the fact that I have to the Gold Coast this evening. I hate the fact that there is so much of the book left to go. I hate the fact that it’s getting longer. I hate the fact that I’m not able to just finish this fucker and go on to the next thing. I hate the fact that I didn’t finish my PhD. I hate the fact that I’m behind on pretty much everything at my day-job. I hate the fact that I slept badly and woke up late. I hate the fact that I’m already behind. I hate…I hate…I hate… And really, all that happens more or less on time. Nine days in and this is no longer fun. Must ignore that and keep writing. Session 9.1 (8:15 AM – 8:49 PM) Word

PeterMBall 10/05/2013
Works in Progress

Novella Diary, Claw, Day Seven

Really? A week in already? It doesn’t feel like I’ve been at this for a week. Two chapters down. Chapter three about two-thirds done now. By rough word count I’m about a quarter of the way through the book at the point I’m writing this (after session 7.1 below); but narrative points, I’m a little behind. Experience says this means the novella will be longer than 30,000 words in this draft and I’m going to spend some quality time with the flensing knife afterwards. I more or less decided to track the process of writing this novella after reading Dean Wesley Smith’s recent blog posts about writing a novel in ten days. I’m a pretty frequent reader of Smith’s blog – I don’t always agree with him, but I’m always interested in what he has to say. Plus I’m interested in gathering data about writing that’s immediately useful, and I really had no clue how I went about writing something or what

PeterMBall 07/05/2013
Journal

And now we are thirty-six

And we start this post with the traditional Morning-of-my-birthday-self-portrait-that-will-cause-my-parents-to-complain-about-the-things-I-put-up-on-the-internet (except I think I kind of broke them of that habit after six years of doing this).   This year is going to be pretty low-key, even given the relatively muted standards I use to celebrate my birthday. My plan, such as it is, consists of sleeping, hanging out with the Spokesbear, and collecting mail from my PO Box. At some point, I should go get groceries. And do the post-travel washing, so I don’t spend the rest of the week surrounded a travel-induced fugue.

PeterMBall 18/03/2013
Journal

Leaving, on a Jet Plane

It’s been about twenty years since I went on holidays with the rest of my family, but it seems we’ll be breaking that streak on Tuesday when all four of us gather and fly down to Adelaide to spend five days at the Fringe Festival. We fly back Sunday night. And on Monday, I turn thirty-six.  It wasn’t until tonight, looking at a calendar and planning my work week after I get home, that I realised that last bit. Birthdays are weird. I expect, this year, I’ll be reducing my celebrations down to the absolute minimum: sleeping in, re-reading Murakami’s Birthday Stories anthology, getting on with things. I mean, what little celebratory energy I usually have is going to be burned out by five days of awesomeness as the Fringe, and any reserves are going to be needed to get me through the week that follows at the day-job. In theory, the coming week is a holiday. I want to

PeterMBall 10/03/2013
Works in Progress

Projects Du Jour

It’s been a while since I talked about up-coming projects on the blog. Partially this is because there weren’t many upcoming projects over the last two years. Partially this is because I’ve become more reclusive in my old age, unwilling to throw things out there until they’re more-or-less done. I write slow, you see, and occasionally it struck me as faintly absurd that I’d mention writing a short story and it’d be another two years before I finished it. Longer, in the case of some projects, since we do not talk about the novel (or, for that matter, the third Aster novella, or at least one story that people occasionally ask me about that I still haven’t got ’round to finishing). It’s not that these things go away – I still have all of them in my active projects folder. I’m just, you know, slow. Today, at write club, I did some work on a story I started in 2007.

PeterMBall 04/03/2013
News & Upcoming Events

New Fiction: “On the Arrival of the Paddle-Steamer on the Docks of V–”

So, news: my latest story, On the Arrival of the Paddle-Steamer on the Docks of V–, is now free to read on Eclipse Online with a particularly lovely Kathleen Jennings illustration accompanying it (I’m not saying I submitted to Eclipse just ’cause they had Kathleen illustrating all the stories, but it didn’t hurt. Kathleen is kinda awesome). So I’m psyched. I mean, I’m really psyched. It’s been a long while since I had a story out there people could read without buying a book. Or, for that matter, a story out there at all. I’m going to be spending the rest of the day being all writing things FTW!, but for now I’ll just offer up this free taste-test of what’s on the far side of the link: Our tiny hotel room is boiling, even now, but heat doesn’t bother Patrick and he sleeps, shirtless, with the thin sheet coiled round him like a loving serpent. It’s a trick for him, nodding

PeterMBall 25/02/2013
Journal

Not in Melbourne

So I’m not in Melbourne anymore and that makes me kinda sad. For the last four days I’ve been aimlessly wandering the city, catching up with friends I don’t get to see too often, eating good food and exercising my low-key superpower of being the only person in the world who goes to Melbourne and drinks bad coffee. I’ve returned to Brisbane fatter and happier than I left. Now I’m warming up for the pre-work writing shift and a day that’s looking…well, kind of crazy, to be honest. There’s going to be a lot packed into the next three days of day-jobbery, from opening the next iteration of GenreCon through to shepherding a complete redesign of the website I’m managing. More importantly, I shaved this morning. I don’t know what it is without me and Melbourne and not-shaving, but it always seems to happen and it never drives me crazy until I’m halfway home and sporting the kind of bum-fluff

PeterMBall 05/02/2013

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