This morning I watched a TED Talk by the bright and enthusiastic (at least from this one talk) Derek Sivers. Like every other TED talk I’ve watched, it spoke very immediately to a practise that I’ve been guilty of, but never quite realised I was doing: telling people my goals and then completely failing to achieve them.

According to Sivers (and psychological research stretching back to the 1920s) the act of telling people about something you are planning to do greatly decreases the chance of you doing it. The reason is simple once you think about it. By telling people what you are planning to do, you are already receiving some positive social feedback regarding that activity. Your friends are already enthusiastic and congratulatory*: “Wow, that’s great/good on you/good luck!” Some of the satisfaction in being recognised as a success by your peers has already been transferred to you, and you feel less inclined to actually do whatever it was you’ve planned.

While Sivers’ example is that of, say, losing weight, I think it applies equally to creative projects. While I acknowledge that the support of a writing group or artistic collective can be a great thing (my own output has certainly increased since joining one), it can also be dangerous in that here are people that really want to hear your ideas**. They want to see you succeed, and spilling the beans can be awfully tempting. I recently did something really dumb: I had two seeds of stories half-drafted for Twelfth Planet Press’ Speakeasy anthology and I announced this fact at my writing group, and then again on Twitter. Congratulations and admiration all ‘round, except then I didn’t feel like finishing them. There was no real reason why at the time, just a sudden lack of motivation. I’m fairly certain that what I experienced was exactly what Sivers is talking about, and looking back I can see a lot of points in time where I’ve boasted things and then failed to follow through. Conversely, recent occasions where I have decided to do something and just got on with it have proved to be very fruitful (the most recent examples of which I can’t tell you about, as they are ongoing and I don’t want to jinx myself).

So in the future, I’m going to try and maintain a balance in my goal-setting. I’m going to get as far as I can on the back of my own motivation, and if I run out of steam that way, I can always rely on my friends and peers to give me a pick-me-up (or a ‘put this down and walk away’, if it’s truly awful).

Oh, wait. Damn it! |:

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*If your friends aren’t dicks.
**Again, if your peers aren’t arseholes.

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(all photos are homage to Mark‘s style)

A week or so ago, I purchased a couple of grab bags from the Bird in the Hand zine shop. BitH started as a passionate endeavour of Susy Pow! (exclamation mark required, just like Malki!) but was given further legs by the great Renew Newcastle project run by Marcus Westbury which allowed it to move into a real-life retail space. How great is that? Anyway, today I woke up with the great idea of liveblogging my opening of the package and reading of all the zines within. And that’s just what I did. Read on McGuff.

2010/8/29–01:08 pm
Sketchbook No. 4 by Brendan Halyday — $4
Starts with a disclaimer about how long it took for the z to be made, compared to the previous 3 sketchbooks. First few pages are kind of observational humour one-shots. Love Brendan’s line control, various thicknesses, etc. The picture of the man spitting out his teeth in a mess of ink is pretty great. A lot of the latter half of the z is personal, mostly to do with how Brendan feels about a recent break up, I think? The first few sketches of the girl in question are rough and half-finished, she hasn’t a face in a couple of them. Later, they become more defined as Brendan comes to term with it. z finishes with Brendan realising that this sketchbook has become a way of saying goodbye to the woman he loved. Very touching piece of work, I hope Brendan is getting on okay.

2010/8/29–01:17 pm
Stairway To Nowhere by Leigh Rigozzi (2nd printing, 54/100) — $5
Gorgeous cover, love ‘Birds in the wind’ (after a relative?). The inside back and front covers are cool as well; old photos of landscapes painted over with ghosts and clouds. Mainly mixed media throughout—I’m not good at talking art, so I won’t try here. Fav would probably be the repainted, anthropomorphised ‘Northenmost petrol station’.

2010/8/29–01:21 pm
I <3 Poor Spelling & Bad Grammar by Amanda — $1
Very cute. Amanda can’t spell and doesn’t use proper grammar. Favourite part of the rant/story was the line ‘I wish I could cover all my mistakes with a picture of a reindeer’. Also, the anecdote about the ‘lost dobby’ was so very true; sometimes it takes that kind of innocent laying bare to make us want to sit up and help.

2010/8/29–01:28 pm
I am my cats keeper & other miscomunications by George — $7
A collection of 12 fine-lined (not the pen, just the thinness of the lines) designs that could easily find a place on a person’s skin, or one of those crazy cool design blogs or tumblrs. Love the hand-stitching and the better=than-average grade paper.

2010/8/29–01:31 pm
Disposable Camera by Vanessa Berry — $3
It’s surprising me how personal some of these z are. This one is kind of a wander around the skull of Vanessa; she tells us how her mind is layered. Love the supermarket analogy, very appropriate. After a clever ‘Thought Map’ foldout, there’s a couple of tales about rabbits, finishing with a fervent hope of urban rabbit guerilla warfare. Nice.

2010/8/29–01:44 pm
Night Of A Thousand Tears by Pasquale Barilla (illustrated by Mechelle B) — $2.50
Now this is a z I can identify with. A charming tale of the rediscovery of Mario All Stars on the Super Nintendo, and the brother/sisterhood that formed when trying to finish the insanely difficult Lost Levels. Again, love the hand-stitched paper, and the statistics of the game were great.

2010/8/29–01:48 pm
Make out with Louise on the couch for a few minutes.
Break to go hang out my washing and make a coffee.

2010/8/29–02:01 pm
Just quit it. by Amanda (again) — $0.50
A memoir of jobs written as a reminder to Amanda and a piece of advice to others that it is totally okay to quit a job. They’ll get over it. You’ll get over it. Especially liked the shredded tax return design of this one. The fact that this was the cheapest z of all of them means something as well, I think.

2010/8/29–02:05 pm
Crimes to the Face! #1 by Ive Sorocuk (I think, that was his email) — $2
Not really one for me, I don’t think. Kind of a weird Johnny/Zim thing going on here, except not quiiite as well done.

2010/8/29–02:11 pm
Stopped to check email/sites, have a small nap, and some make snacks.

2010/8/29–02:46 pm
Next Stop Adventure! #one by Matt Gauck — $4
The story of a man who decided to go for a bike ride. Actually the story of a man who raced his friend to a place called Coward. On a bike made for an 11 year-old. Really the story of how a man discovered a love for adventure after 400 miles and $4. Well-written, funny, and thoughtful with charming little illustrations throughout.

2010/8/29–02:49 pm

Basic Wage Kids by Owen Hietmann — $4

Damn it, laptop battery almost dead. Gonna charge it for a half hour and come back.

2010/8/29–03:37 pm

And we’re back.

A collection of comic strips from the Basic Wage Kids webcomic. It’s not bad. I prefer my webcomics to be about gaming and/or dinosaurs, so some of the jokes likely went over my head. But it’s got a clean style and vaguely interesting characters. Probably better for someone who’s been in a college band before.

2010/8/29–03:40 pm
July 25th by Amanda (again again) — $1
Well now, this is interesting. This z is written about a year or so before the ‘Just quit it’ z, and starts by explaining that Amanda has just found her friend a job as a designer, while she herself is in her dream job of 3 years. Interesting then that ‘Just quit it’ finds them both hating their jobs and making a pact to quit the next July. A year from this z being made. How coincidentally lovely. The z itself is about Amanda trying to write the z for International Zine Day. So make that meta and coincidentally lovely.

2010/8/29–03:47 pm
The Garbage Truck Failures by James Andre, Bobby N, and Brendan Halyday (again) — $4
A series of a mixture of graphically designed shorts, poems, comics and graphics. Easy to see where Brendan has done the graphics, but I also like the new guy’s style. The words are kind of beat meets grit. I like it, reminds me of nonculture’s words. I can imagine it being great for spoken word.

2010/8/29–03:54 pm
Nanoworks by a whole bunch of people from the TINA workshops — $?
Don’t really have time to read through this entire thing, but the overall impression was one of tht kind of sketchy, vignette-ey writing that comes from writing workshops. I like that kind of thing, for the record. With a bit of backing money also comes better quality of print and cover design. Remembered how much I fucking love brown cardboard while reading this.

2010/8/29–03:58 pm
Sing Me To Sleep: An annotated bibliography of sad boy songs by Pauli Bryon (I think) — $4 (with bonus CD)
A collection of reviews of songs (a bibliography) with the common theme of being sung mostly by sad boys, and the introspection of the author when it coems to his tendency towards them. Some killer tunes in here, including Triffids, Smiths, Editors, Arcade Fire, etc. The author has shown some serious music chops in my eyes. Shall have to read this properly when I have time to pop the CD into a player. Shall have to buy a player too, else I’ll have to be reading in my car.

2010/8/29–04:02 pm
You, You, and You by someone — $?
These are an interesting trio. They are alternately sealed with staples, tape, and saliva, so the act of opening them destroys them to more or less of an extent. I think I’ll save them for when I have a truly quiet moment. I like the fact that such a simple thing—sealing the piece of writing—can have such a profound effect on my treatment of them. Says something about the value we place on objects.

2010/8/29–04:04 pm
And that about wraps it up. Total monetary value of the z collections was $46 + $? + $? + an afternoon of peeking into people’s lives + a bunch of email addresses of interesting people = great value for the $40 outlay. And I can pass them on at Christmas and birthday times. Highly recommend ordering a grab bag for yourself and doing the same; it’s a gentle kind of voyeurism.

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photo credit: futureatlas.com

Meanjin has a stellar essay up at their online editions section by Kate Crawford on the pervasiveness of noise in our society. I had a couple of thoughts regarding it that I thought I’d jot down quickly on my lunchbreak. No guarantees that they are at all coherent:

• The dismissal of Clay Shirky’s quote ‘There is no such thing as information overload, there’s only filter failure’ as a ‘merely prosthetic’ one is interesting. It’s true that this is an individualistic view–an end-user way of dealing with the problem. But the alternative suggested, that a dialogue be opened up between users and producers of technology such that some modicum of silence, some distance can be maintained from the torrent of digital stimuli that assault us daily, seems naive to the extreme. Especially given my experience that most of the people that use these services such as 4square, facebook, and Twitter like using them. They like seeing their friends mundane status updates. They like finding out if they have visited a place often enough to become its virtual mayor. They like playing Farm owner on a digital piece of real estate. Fucked if I know why, but they enjoy the noise. To say that they will ‘grow out’ of this stage and need some societal code of conduct in place to live by when that happens seems a bit presumptuous.

• On the other hand, I agree with Kate that the conversation needs to be had. While the only active proponents might be a small subset of those using the technologies, historically it has never been a good idea to ignore minorities. However, at this point in time, translating conversation into societal action will be one hell of a tough gig while everyone is still so enamoured with the technology. It seems like a case of laying the groundwork now and waiting for the right time to spring it.

• As such, it does seem, presently, to fall to the individual user to set up his or her defences against the noise. As someone who uses their computer to write, I used to use a methods such as Leechblock and other Firefox plugins. I’ve since come to the conclusion that the best option is just to have a laptop that hasn’t got a network card, and lie in bed away from any other distractions. It’s a simple hack, but it works.

• On the other hand, if the responsibility of artists is to provide new insight into the world around them, then isn’t it their responsibility to be ‘plugged in’ to some extent? Writing about being in a society that is connected requires that we be connected ourselves. Of course, Kate doesn’t suggest we unplug entirely so the consideration of spaces of disconnect wouldn’t be mutually exclusive to the plugging in of artists to the zeitgeist. On that note, what is the best analogue to the Fermi cage cafe mentioned, do you think? I’d hazard a guess at libraries, as long as you left your phone at home and ripped out your network card.

Anyway, like I said, absolutely stellar stuff from Kate Crawford. And if you like that, be sure to subscribe to Meanjin, it’s worth it.

I would also like to add that the delayed release of these essays and articles that Meanjin practises is a really great way to get people to engage with them. While I am sitting on my couch reading my hard copy of each edition, I’m not likely to jump up and run to my computer to respond to the articles. But by re-releasing them online and linking them from their blog, they remind me of what I was thinking about while I am in front of a computer screen and therefore in a state that is apt for reply.

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photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar

If you’re not reading this in Google Reader, you may have noticed a change in my WordPress theme. It’s brought to you by a good friend of mine, Jon McRae, whose blog you can find here and his design page here. There’s still a few tweaks to come, but I think it’s a nice new look, a change from the incredibly minimalist Manifest theme I was using previously.

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photo credit: Un ragazzo chiamato Bi

Complete list of prompts:

stagnant/clown/train & seesaw/terracotta/snarl — Emma and Sam

purple/apocalyptic/tortoise & periodic/hunchback/slalom — Josh and Dan

man/swims/upstream & raptor/carnation/JC Denton — Jon and Johannes

insane/lapel/augury & water/comets/Cambridge — Aditi and Dino

platypus/starving/vintage & mekons/sunset/pines — Irene and Zak

potential/consider/light & Byzantine/refrigerator/alley –  Jaime and Matt

Tunguska/detrimental/vacillate & silver/scarecrow/eat — Todd and Lucy

nebulous tenacity birthplace & falling man/closed room/two-heads — Steph and Amber

And now for the motto-of-the-story/things I learned section:

• It’s fun to riff. All of these were written on the fly, after a minute or two of thinking about roughly what the story should be about. I don’t have any intention of expanding any of them, and I don’t believe they will ever find publication anywhere. But if I spent my life only writing things I thought would get published, I’d be bored as fuck.
• That said, vignettes are not really writing. I mean, they are, but they’re not. They’re not because I don’t have to justify anything in any of these, not to any appreciable degree anyway. As a friend asked me in a discussion about the set, `Why do I care about the hunchback? What’s the point?’ The answers to those questions being `You don’t, unless you’re very empathic’ and `There is none, other than the painting of a fleetingly pretty picture’ respectively. The definition of a vignette is, according to the free online dictionary, `A short, usually descriptive, literary sketch.’ And while I don’t want to claim that what I’ve written is at all literary, they are kind of descriptive and very sketchy.
• I often love the process of coming up with ideas more than the act of writing them out. It’s a classic symptom of too much imagination. As a kid I used to get very frustrated with the fact that I couldn’t draw very well in art class, and all these images I had in my head were never represented anywhere near what they should have been on paper. The act of forcing myself to take these wild ideas and try and put them into words was very illuminating.
• Also illuminating was the fact that I could come up with (what I think are) serviceable story plots in an incredibly short space of time with only minimal input. I guess it made me feel a bit more confident about my ability to continue coming up with ideas for stories. Obviously the vignette form is easy to hack things into, but still.
• Finally, I’m still able to write. That’s reassuring. Even more reassuring was the fact that a whole bunch of people that have never seen my writing before came along and participated, which was really encouraging. Even A.Dick (you know who you are) despite not writing your story (oh come on, ‘moist, woody, climax’? I’m not a Mills and Boone novelist) it means a lot, so thank you all.

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