One of my favourite pages from Raymond Chandler’s notebooks, where he plans out a list of similes and descriptions that will later find their way into books. There’s similar lists scattered through the notebooks where he describes outfits, makes a note of potential titles, or golden comebacks for his dialogue. Once used, he’d go back and make a note on each list, so he wouldn’t repeat it in a later story or book.
It’s easy to forget that writing is a multi-stage process involving ideation, actually putting the raw components of plot on the page, then layering in details like voice and tone that make the work unique. Often, writers approach this as a single task, sitting down at the keyboard and hammering words until a scene feels right.
Reading through Chandler’s notebooks and realising you didn’t have to do all three at the same time was a revelation for me as a young writer.
Putting on my editor hat for a moment: The latest release at Brain Jar Press is Matthew R. Davis’ Bites Eyes, a deliciously disturbing assemblage of thirteen flash fictions and short horror vignettes. Available now through the Brain Jar Press store or all good bookshops. Editing short story collections is one of my favourite things to do, and there’s a deceptive amount of depth you can bring to the process to the editor. Probably the most fun I’ve had designing a cover in the last year as well.
ON THE DOCKET
Thursdays are usually my meeting-free day each week, but today is all about seeing folks. I’m catching up with an old friend via Zoom in the morning and have a rescheduled mentee meeting in the afternoon.
This is very much a notebook week on the writing front. I recently doubled down on bullet journaling as my default organisational system, and it’s working moderately well, and the natural next step is doing all my planning and drafting away from the computer. I’ve got about three-quarters of a truly terrible short story draft down over the last two days, after nearly a week of trying to write it in scrivener and stalling out. The redrafting process for this one will be brutal, but that’s what tomorrow’s for.
There’s also a bunch of design work on deck, and a little catch-up on the Brain Jar admin I didn’t get to yesterday. It’s nearly five months since I lost my job and went back to being the primary on-deck person running the press, but I’m finally hitting the point where it’s feeling like I’m almost caught up and ready to get things running smoothly.
(The gods will, of course, smite me for saying that, but let’s celerate the win, eh?)
PETER M. BALL INBOX: 15
BRAIN JAR INBOX: 13
BRAIN JAR SUBMISSION QUEUE: 6
I read Tiago Forte’s One Touch Email system yesterday and immediately applied it to my personal email, and the results were pretty extreme. It helps a lot that I already had the infrastructure he talks about between my journal, my Evernote set-up, and my tasks manager, so it was mostly a reminder that system that I typically think of as a waste of time to learn how to use (‘Email to’ functions, keyboard shortcuts) typically have a big effect when you figure out how to use them properly.
Not going to lie: creating a “Task” and “Reference” email that forwards things to the appropriate system did a lot of the heavy listing in cutting down my inbox of doom.
An off-hand comment from my beloved wife and a weekly vegetable box delivery has sent me down a rabbit hole of experimenting with my method of cooking roast potatoes, looking for techniques I can use to level up my roasties. Yesterday, I experimented with par-boiling the potatoes in slightly acidic water before roasting, then brushing them with a little melted butter to add some flavour as they roasted. The results were deliciously crisp potatoes with a fluffy core when eaten hot, but the texture of the leftovers was disappointing when eaten cold the following day.
Leftovers are important to us, given the haphazard balance between deadlines and spoons that runs our household, so figuring out the perfect tater roast now has a dedicated project page in my bullet journal to track future experiments and their results.
I did a long podcast taping with the PratChat folks last night – my first real “be a writer in public” thing in over a year, and only my second since the pandemic started, and I’m feeling it today. I’ve got a definite out in public hangover today – reserves a low, and largely diverted to wrangling the brain weasels my social anxiety throws my way after any public appearance or teaching gig. There shall be many cups of tea in my future.
GO READ
Cory Doctrow’s recent Wired article on the enshittification of technology spaces is also available to read on his website, and it’s highly recommended reading for anyone working in the arts/publishing/social media space. Indie publishing is often highly enamoured of these spaces and lean into tactics that work best when the spaces are new and not-yet-enshittified, which leads to a lot of folks throwing energy at making things work post-enshittification and wondering why they’re not getting results.
Far better to go in with your eyes open and assume that enshittification is coming. Yes, TikTok was great for organic reach once, but they’re past the period where they’re courting users and starting to figure out how to monetize, and with monetization comes shittiness and the desire to make you pay for reach. This isn’t new either — Amazon and Facebook have both played this game, and coaxed us all into throwing money their way for reach that used to be free — and it’s worth being aware of these things before you go all in on a particular marketing tactic.
And, not for nothing, it’s one of the reasons I’m reverting to the rather outdated technology of blogging instead of leaning into a major social media platform.
Rare day without meetings or commitments, which means I’m diving into a bunch of design commissions and moving them forward. I’m also about to upload some new Brain Jar Press books to various distribution points so we can start marketing the pre-orders next week.
Still wading through two thousand fraudulent orders on the Brain Jar Press store, which means my email will periodically go insane as notifications come through. Thankfully, it seems the orders have halted for a stretch, which is especially useful given a new book launched yesterday and we need to double check every order that comes in.
PETER M. BALL INBOX: 83 (with the sword of Damocles looming overhead)
