Search Results for: write club – Page 3
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Current Mission: Redesign, Rebuild, Reclaim

One of the things I like about working a day job is its tendency to provide nice, clean habit triggers. When 7:30 rolls around and I know that I need to be on a train by 8:30, its an immediate flag that I should sit down and write things. When I get into the office at 9:00 AM on a Monday morning, it’s a trigger that I need to sit down and do my weekly checkpoint while all the information I need is right in front of me. And when I get home from work, three days of the week, it triggers that little habit where I check my writing email and do a hundred words or so, just so it’s fresh in my mind that I’m meant to be writing things before I go cook dinner or do evening things. And I know, three days a week, this is when I put down the rough drafts for blog posts. I

PeterMBall 08/08/2016
Works in Progress

40 Day Rush: Day 15

Went to write club today and wrote things, on Float, for the first time since posting last Friday. Not a huge amount – 600 words – but today it felt like a victory just opening a document and peering at the ignored bits of story. Everything after that was a bonus. This is, by and large, what Write Club is for. It’s the break in my routines that allows for a reset, when the usual triggers for sitting down and writing get washed away by circumstances or stress or rising tides of sorrow. Also handy about today: realising that any time I do any kind time-based word-tracking project on the blog, it’s usually a sign that I’m really struggling with what’s going on in other parts of my life. The last month has been ridiculous on a whole bunch of levels. Thankfully, it is time to start taking my foot of the accelerator. PROGRESS ON FLOAT

PeterMBall 15/06/2016
Works in Progress

40 Day Rush: Day 7

One week down. Things progress at the pace I need them too. After spending most of 2015 trying to write insane numbers of words a day, maintaining the 1,000 words a day I need to hit target on Float is easier than I expected. The interesting part about this particular project is that it’s the first that I’ve done 100% on a computer since installing RescueTime, which means I can start collecting some data on what my writing process actually looks like rather than what I assume it’s going to be like. For instance, I have spent 8 hours and 20 minutes working on Float thus far this month. I’ve spent far more time sitting at the computer, ostensibly “writing,” but RescueTime only counts the minutes where the file is active and I am paying attention to it. If I spend an hour at the computer, but spend thirty-four minutes checking Facebook, then there’s only twenty-six minutes getting attributed to Float.

PeterMBall 07/06/2016
Works in Progress

40 Day Rush

So my exceptionally ordered routine spiralled into chaos about two months back. And, being me, I did what I always do when chaos ends up visiting – I stepped back, re-evaluated my priorities, and started adjusting my schedule to meet the demands being placed on me. Eventually, I figured, things will return to normal. I will find the new equilibrium and learn to plan around that. My writing suffered, as that happened, ’cause other work impinged on writing time. Lots of other things suffered too, ’cause the last two months have been crazy in good ways and in bad ways, but when I sit down and try to figure out why I’m stressing out, the lack of writing is always a big part of it. Writing workshops and applications are not an adequate replacement for creative work, in terms of keeping me sane and focused on what matters. And, since it been two months and the chaos shows no sign of leaving,

PeterMBall 01/06/2016
Journal

Winged Monkeys of Death on Stand-By

I am doing things on top of my usual work schedule this week. For instance, tomorrow night I am off to Logan Library to do a seminar about some of the myths about getting published. On Wednesday, I will be giving up my weekly write club in the name of working on workshop content for next week. Then, on Thursday, I will be back at QWC talking about Hard and Soft Launches as part of the Business of Books series. Spots are still available, if you’re inclined to come hear me talk about such things. By Friday, I will be disappearing into a bunker and trying very hard not to hate the world. ‘Cause I love doing this stuff, but holy shit-balls there has been a lot of it in recent weeks, there is only so much time I can spend around people before my urge to unleash the winged monkeys of death becomes overwhelming. A photo posted by Peter M Ball

PeterMBall 23/05/2016
Stuff

The Important Things in Life

I am teaching a whole bunch of writing courses in the coming months. This will roughly coincide with a two-month period where I am much more likely to show up at this blog and goof off, rather than talking about writing and publishing, because there is only so much writing and publishing talk I can take in a given week. And I largely hit that limit when I’m not talking about writing in general, and giving specific comments on work, which is a lot of what I’m doing at the moment. Critiquing work stresses me out. It also leads to a lot of goofing off, on twitter. Which has now developed into a weird daily twitter thing, with Conan references, that makes me extraordinarily happy. I am still extraordinarily proud of the October 3 entry. “Conan, what is best in life?” “…hugs. It’s hugs, right? Come on, hugs are awesome.” — Peter Ball (@Petermball) October 17, 2015 “Conan, what is

PeterMBall 15/04/2016
Journal

You Toy With My Natural Emotions

By the time you read this, I will be on the doorstep of my local computer repair place, anxiously waiting for them to open so I can picking up goddamn laptop. They assure me it is fixed. And only two days outside their initial projections, which is something of a miracle given the way technology fails tend to creep up on me. Assuming they are right about the fix – please, gods, let them be right – I will give them money and cart the laptop to Write Club where I will promptly WRITE ALL THE GODDAMN THINGS. I do not like it when my technology fails me. It will be good to be back. In the event this proves to be a cruel taunt on the part of the fates…well, we shan’t consider that.

PeterMBall 23/03/2016
Journal

And Now We Are Thirty-Nine

I turn thirty-nine today. As is traditional, I am posting the first-thing-I-Do-On-My-Birthday-Ugly-Selfie, because no birthday is complete until my parents ring wondering why in hell I would put such a thing on the internet. This year, we celebrate the new reality of me and sleep: Occasionally, just for the hell of it, I will wake up and say Luke, I am your Father, just ’cause the breathing effects are right. It was about this point, last year, that I fell asleep while driving and finally got to the point that my doctor to thought hmmm, maybe sleep apnea? We should send you for tests. It took a really long time to get to that point, but I’m incredibly happy that shit got sorted out. Years of feeling like I was somehow broken, and suddenly there was a fix. Thirty-eight was a pretty good year, as a result. I look forward to thirty-nine. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I shall go and celebrate my birthday

PeterMBall 18/03/2016
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Let Us Talk About The Ways You Finish Your Stories

So, back on Monday, I was all thou shalt not be a dude who learns to play the opening of Stairway to Heaven. Go forth and finish your shit. That was in response to Elizabeth’s suggested topic for the 2016 Dancing Monkey series. Today we look at that idea in more detail, courtesy of a request from the inimitable Lois Spangler. Her requested topic: Finishing a thing (project, story, etc.) Right then, let’s get into the guts of it, and talk about actually finishing things. ONE: DEFINE “FINISHED” Not a facetious question, and I’m not trying to be cute. If you’re struggling to get things finished, perhaps it’s time to sit down and figure out what finished really means in this context. More importantly, whether your concept of “finished” is getting in your way. Here is the thing about creative-types: we have this tendency to take something minor that needs to be done, then subconsciously extrapolate outwards to a point

PeterMBall 02/03/2016
Journal

Benched

Back in the early days of blogging, we all learned an important lesson: do not produce content directly on the platform. Draft on reliable software and transfer it over, for your blog will break down or fail to post, and when that happens you will lose all that work. Then the blogs grew more advanced and the mysterious failures of the software grew infrequent. We grew complacent and went with the easy option. Or, at least, I did. And so, with a great deal of nostalgia, I must admit this was not the post I intended to write this morning. I had another one, longer and carefully crafted, full of witty insight that would change your life for the better. And, as I finished and went to post, the mysteries of the internet reared their head and exiled my post into the ether. I do not have time to recreate it. There is write club today, and an article deadline,

PeterMBall 10/02/2016
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

Tips for Getting Analogue With Your Writing

If you take a quick gander at my Instagram feed, it should be pretty obvious that I am now an unapologetic notebook guy these days. A good 90% of my posts are basically me doing the pictorial equivalent of posting word-counts in a blog – tracking progress through a project by photographing page numbers. I do it there because, quite honestly, I have a pretty minimal number of Instagram followers and it’s less likely to piss people off, but also because I’ve come to appreciate the value of focusing on my process, rather than my goals. Occasionally I feel bad about doing this, but over the last week I’ve talked to a handful of people who have been inspired to the rock the analogue approach to their writing. And, since this wasn’t exactly a natural progression for me, I figured I’d put down a little advice. First, some background: I spent about fifteen years failing to write in notebooks prior to

PeterMBall 04/02/2016
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

Avocado, Toast, and What They Make Me Think About Writing

I had breakfast at my local cafe this morning. It’s a habit I’m cultivating this year, on Write Club days, after realising that breakfast at my local cafe makes me extraordinarily happy and it becomes affordable within my budget if I stop buying Coke Zero. Giving up Coke Zero for something that makes me extraordinary happy is an easy trade, and so, twice a week, I trot down to the Low Road Cafe and order their avocado on toast for breakfast. There are two things I love about the Low Road’s avocado breakfast. The first is that it’s a production. It’s thick slices of doorstop toast, avocado, three different types of nuts, little slices of radish and radish flowers. Lemon juice. Freshly chopped herbs laid over the whole thing like a winter blanket. The kind of food put together by a chef who isn’t regarding their vegetarian menu as an afterthought, and enjoys the process of making tasty things. Avocado on

PeterMBall 03/02/2016

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