Random Observations

Two things, with a final statement (Actually, three things, I’m just forgetful)

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Yesterday I went to the PO Box and discovered three copies of the latest One Book, Many Brisbanes anthologies waiting for me.

Naturally, my first response was sweet, free books, cause books that arrive in my PO Box are always free books by virtue of the fact that I’ve already paid for them and forgotten about it. It’s one of the more pleasant aspects of ordering books via the internet, especially if you have the same inclinations towards pre-ordering things that I do.

Except this time they actually were free books, I think, presumably because I was tangentially involved in the workshop put on for the finalists in the One Book, Many Brisbane’s competition, where, basically, I showed up and talked about writing for an hour or so with Cat Sparks and an editor for Overland whose name currently eludes me

Every now and then writers like to talk about how writing is a remarkably poor career choice, or at least a remarkably hard one, but the plus side is that every now and then someone will pay you to show up, talk about something you love, meet some new people who are generally interesting, and then hang-out with your friends for a bit afterwards.

And very occasionally you get sent free books, which is the sort of thing I’d hoped actually happened to writers back when I was ten and decided writing seemed like an interesting sort of job to spend the rest of my life pursuing.

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Today is my last class out at UQ. Given that the assignments are all done and the class was remarkably small to begin with (7 people), I have a small bet with myself regarding how many people will actually show up for a Friday afternoon writing class on the last day of the semester.

I will be sad that the writing classes are done for the year. I rather miss teaching writing, for a variety of reasons, but the last few weeks have really brought home how useful it is to go back to basics. It’s no coincidence that we get to the tail end of the semester, with the marking and the what-do-you-do-when-this-story-is-done style questions, and there are suddenly stories being submitted again.

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There is no third part to this entry.

Edit: Actually, no, just remembered, there is – Happy Birthday to JJ Irwin, who is one of the more talented writers I know who continues to not be published enough by virtue of the fact she goes off to do things like getting Master’s degrees. I recommend going back a few years and rereading her story, Still Living, over at Strange Horizons. Or checking out her story, Haniver, in the latest issue of Shimmer.

Un-Moroccan Chicken and Un Lun Dun

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It’s Monday morning here, but due to the vagaries of international timezones I suspect there will not be much of Monday left by the time Say Zucchini, and Mean It arrives in my in-box. Such are the drawbacks of living on the other side of the world, I suspect.

Tonight I shall make the most un-Moroccan Moroccan chicken imaginable, given that it will consist primarily of pumpkin soup with chickpeas and bits of chicken in it, spread over a layer of couscous. The couscous, by and large, is probably going to be the best bit. Possibly also the only bit that qualifies as Moroccan.

It will, at least, be healthy un-Moroccan chicken, if the Australian Heart Foundation website is to be believed, and that’s probably a good thing after the week of pizza that occurred when I was last chasing a deadline.

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There’s a rather nice review of both Horn and Bleed over on the Living in SIN blog, which is  not the kind of blog you’d expect it to be from the title and entirely safe for work. I keep meaning to point people towards reviews of my story in Eclipse 4 as well, but every time I think about it I’m writing a bit of the blog during a coffee break at the dayjob, far away from the bookmarks where I group such things together and keep them handy for linkage.

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I kept trying to disappear into the bunker over the weekend, but somehow events conspired to ensure I never really made it there. I kept being distracted by, say, dinner with my sister and our friend VillainousMog who was visiting from London for the first time in two years and made for some excellent company.

On Sunday I was distracted by sleep and goodreads and the search for a good hotdog and the usual Sunday night gaming session, which meant I hit the end of the weekend feeling oddly relaxed and socialised and in possession of about three thousand words to account for two days work.

Which isn’t bad, I’ll grant you that, but isn’t really the stuff of a heroic effort in the word-bunker either. Still, the novel has a shape forming that’s actually novel-like, and the short story I’m working on hit a point where I figured out what it wanted to do, and I suspect that this afternoon I’ll get back hitting 2,500 words in a day, if only because I’ve run out of distractions and large portions of my house are now clean.

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I started reading China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun over the weekened, which was going swimmingly until such time as I hit one of those things that makes me go “oh, really? We’re doing that? Okay, I guess,” and then suddenly be much less interested in the book.

It’s the sort of thing that happens to me and books all the time. I’ll be enjoying myself immensely and then, out of nowhere, there’s be a parenthetical aside in a third-person narration, and I’ll find my enjoyment deflated and listless from there on. Un Lun Dun doesn’t do the parenthetical aside thing, but it introduces a concept and bit of wordplay that’s distracting enough that I can’t get back into the story.

It’s like that moment when you’re at a party, having a good time, then you realise that you’re actually quite drunk and you can’t get your equilibrium back once that realisation happens.

Still, I persevere, slightly less enthused than I was before, but still enjoying myself. And because The City and The City was brilliant and full of words that didn’t alienate me, and so I’ll trust in pretty much anything Miéville does after that.

And because, more often than not,  Miéville manages the opposite thing, where the right word or concept is introduced at exactly the right time, and thus there is a moment of joy to be had.

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So yesterday there was dayjobbery and tutoring and writing, oh my, with a side of doing the page proofs for Say Zucchini, and Mean It so I can mail them back to the folks at Daily SF and fix the various muddle-headed things I’ve done in the story.

Usually there’s something painful about the proofing process, mixing, as it does,   a multitude of how-could-I-be-so-stupid typos and syntax errors with the larger, more consuming fear that the story itself isn’t any good because so-much-time-has-passed-since-you-submitted-it-and-you’ve-become-a-better-writer-than-you-were-and-would-do-things-so-very-differently-now.

The latter part didn’t really happen this time around. I’m still fond the story and think it does all the things I wanted it to do, and the bits I’d do differently I probably wouldn’t do that much better, so they don’t bother me quite so much.

I’m not sure whether this bodes ill for the story or not, once it’s out in the world, but I guess we’ll see next week when it’s sent out to Daily SF’s subscribers.

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Last night’s writing? The skeleton for the first half of Chapter Three for Black Candy – I know how the scenes begin and end, I just have to write the middles – and some more work on Waiting for the Steamer on the Docks of V—, which is heading off in its own little direction and getting longer every time I work on it. About 1,500 words of writing all up, which is less than I wanted by more than I expected given I didn’t get home from work until 8-ish.

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This morning I woke up an hour or so before my alarm, and it was cold and dark and I wasn’t all that sleepy anymore, so I stayed up and idled away the time for a bit, just enjoying the warmth of my bed and the slow shift of light on the curtains and the occasional checking of email on my phone.

Eventually the world woke up around me, so I climbed out of bed and went into the routine. I danced around the bedroom to the Sisters of Mercy’s Temple of Love. I showered and I shaved. I ate breakfast and ironed a shirt to wear to the dayjob. And since I was up early, and more awake than I generally am, I finished all those things much earlier than expected, so by seven thirty I was standing around my living room trying to work out what I’d do to fill the next three quarters of an hour before I drove to work.

So I started reading The Girl With No Hands and Other Tales, since it’s one of the things that was handy on my living room shelves  that I haven’t also read in its entirety, largely because I’ve read a large majority of the stories in other locations.

I’d forgotten just how good Angela Slatter actually is. I mean, obviously I’d remembered that she’s a very, very good writer and I’ve recommended her to people constantly, but I’d forgotten that moment where, say, you read Bluebeard for  and go “oh, sodding hell, this is  brilliant” and go give up on writing for a while because there’s no chance you’ll ever manage something that precise and intricate and resonant. I know this because, the first time I read this, just after Angela and I met and before we were actually friends, I wandered off and tried very hard to do what she did in that story and ended up somewhere very different and nowhere near as good.

But that’s one of the ways writing works, I think. You just keep having conversations with writers who are better than you, except you do it through  fiction because telephones are scary and you’re too damn lazy to email people you don’t really know.

And now I go to talk about writing with undergraduates, whereupon I will try to explain writing in a far less esoteric – but potentially more useful – manner.