tooth soup

photo credit: s myers 

[Pre(r)amble: This post is pretty much all over the place. I've tried to distil the main points/questions as I go along, but it's not exactly a complete, ordered thought process. Consider yourself warned. ;)]

I have been

writing now for very nearly seven years. The real figure is obviously a lot longer than that–my Mum’s carefully maintained boxes would testify to support this fact–but I’ve been using writing as my main form of creative expression for seven years. In that time I’ve had some hits with publications and more than enough misses to counterbalance them. I’ve met people whose writing I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving, and people whom I consider to be great friends even though I have never met them.

Bloody hell, so far this is reading like a eulogy. Let me start again.

Lately I’ve been thinking about my writing. More specifically I’ve been thinking about my writing in the context of my main pursuit, that of science. As has been pointed out by me elsewhere, I’ve just finished my PhD in chemistry, and so the time has come (the Walrus said) to talk of many things. Or at least think about them obsessively until I feel obliged to externalise them in a blog post.
The things I’ve been thinking about are things like where my writing will fit in my future career, how I’m going to balance work and life and writing, whether I want to continue to take writing ‘seriously’ or relax my expectations of myself; y’know, all that fun stuff. So I guess that’s what this blog post is going to be about: thinking about and planning how I might continue my hobby without killing myself doing it.

The fun factor

Hobbies are meant to be fun. Challenging, but fun. I think it is safe to say that following the path to becoming a respected, known writer in Australia doesn’t always tick those boxes. And the main offender is the submission cycle. I joked to a friend the other day that we had to start a support group for people who were submitting just to stop us all from getting too depressed (The Subcommittee, a Facebook group that I reckon is the best thing to come out of my writing this year). There’s the fretting over drafts, the imagining of intended audiences, the guessing at when a rejection email will come back. Of course there are good aspects as well, the most noteable of which is the coveted acceptance.

But for a person whose career isn’t determined from his publication record (well, at least not his literary one–scientific publication is another matter entirely), why should I go through that stress? Why should I be placing that pressure on myself? I’ve found that over the last couple of years, writing has stopped being about fun and play and more like work. I want to change that. Which I think is a nice place to wrap this part up and pop out my first conclusion:

1) I want writing to be fun again. Or if not fun, exactly, then at least for it not to feel like work.

Audience

Okay, so I want writing to be fun. But I also want my writing to be read. Because as much as I love playing with myself (ahem–purely in a metaphorical sense), I get a lot out of interacting with readers and other writers. But then I have to ask myself: who is my audience, and how does that audience change the way I write? Well, I want to get my stories out there and read by people whose opinions I respect. In other words, those people whom I have read and whose work I admire, or whom I have met and think are ace, or both! And I’m not sure that submitting to literary journals really does that. Sure, I might nab a few new readers; not a bad outcome. But do I really care if Jane or John Critic think my story is cool? Not really. It’s flattering, for sure, but on the other hand if someone I knew and was into came up to me and told me they liked my work, I’d be over the fucking moon! So. Second conclusion:

2) Having my contemporaries (and more specifically, people who I know and respect) reading and enjoying my work is more important to me than praise from an unknown.

Distribution

Speaking of journals has reminded me of another line of thinking, concerning their readership and their reach. The main question being how many of my contemporaries read literary journals? For at least the last year or two, I am the only person I know who subscribes to Meanjin. I have also heard through the grapevine of the absolutely dismal figures for subscribers to both the Westerly and, to a certain extent given its age, the Southerly. I dare say those figures don’t even compare on the same scale to the numbers of people that read the online components of literary journals (in the sense that the online compenents probably get hundreds of visitors per day). In the absence of hard statistical data, I’m unable to make any concrete assertions, but if we are evaluating distribution purely on the number of people that read your work, then online means must be considered suprior. Similarly they are more advantageous in the terms of my second conclusion, in that I can guarantee that more of my contemporaries are reading thins online than they are in journals that they subscribe to. Of course, there is always the factor of quality assurance in Australian literary journals. Australian journals produce absolutely top notch stuff in both design and content. Every single journal I subscribe to (of which there are many) is a joy to read. But couched in the context of a non-professional writer who just wants to share his stories, there isn’t much to persuade me against posting stories on Facebook rather than submitting them to a journal.

I’ve been dabbling in online distribution in various forms for quite a while now. And by ‘online distribution’, I mean posting my writing on an art website (deviantART) and maintaining this here blog. Not the most professional of options, but then that kind of fits with the theme of this post. Nevertheless, there’s some surprising statistics to be had from looking at it. On the deviantART side of things, I’ve accumulated a bunch of friends and followers who read and comment on my work, and have influenced me in a profoundly positive way. The pieces that have been featured as a ‘daily deviation’ (a daily showcase of artwork and writing that community volunteers think is worth featuring) have accrued almost 26,000 views between them. While this doesn’t mean that 26,000 people have read things that I have written–only around 800 of those actually responded with a comment–it is still a heck of a lot of people to be looking, however briefly, at my writing.

(I should hastily note at this stage that I am not looking to burn bridges. It’s highly likely that I will continue to submit stories and articles to journals for publication, but I won’t be putting pressure on myself to do so. Editors please don’t hate me.)

What does all that mean? In a sentence:

3) I’m equally keen on seeing my work in print or digital, but seeming as though digital has already resulted in my stories being read by a bunch of people, I’m leaning that way as a first destination.

Conclusions

Alright, so after all that, maybe I can come to some kind of conclusion as to what might be the shape of future writerly self. Now what the heck were my points again? Oh right:

1) I want writing to be fun again. Or if not fun, exactly, then at least for it not to feel like work.

2) Having my contemporaries (and more specifically, people who I know and respect) reading and enjoying my work is more important to me than praise from an unknown.

3) I’m equally keen on seeing my work in print or digital, but seeming as though digital has already resulted in my stories being read by a bunch of people, I’m leaning that way as a first destination.

So what does the combination of these point towards in terms of what I’ll be doing with my writing in the future? Here I think I’ll switch to bullets, since they’re easier to think in:

• Maintain a formal distribution space for stories that I think are publication quality. This could be a well-designed website, or choosing a platform such as Smashwords or Amazon Singles to put together some 99c wonderpackages.
• Share these stories with friends and followers via deviantART and places like Twitter. Given my glacial writing pace, I don’t think there’s any risk of spamming people.
• Continue to send some stories off to more traditional markets such as journals and competitions when I feel that they fit, but don’t put any pressure on myself to accumulate publication credits.

Keep in mind that this should all be considered with the fact that I hope to start a career in science research in the new year. This will effectively (discounting the four mind-numbing months at my temp job) be the first time I work a full-time 9-5 job. So time will become even more of a premium, and I want to be ready for that. I don’t want to burn myself out and end up hating writing. I also don’t want to neglect the other important things in my life (i.e. Louise, friends, exercise, etc.). But as you can see, devoting this amount of time to roundabout thinking to how I’m going to make sure I don’t kill my writing hobby shows how much it means to me. I think that for folks such as myself who are looking to keep up a creative output while working, it’s important to have some kind of idea about how to go about it.

Anyway, if you’ve made it this far thanks for sticking it through. If you had any comments with regards to anything I’ve said here I’d love to hear it. I’m still a little up in the air, so any advice would be really appreciated.

photo credit: doug88888

I’m sitting in

a cafe on Newcastle’s Hunter St., listening to a symphony of bakehouse clatter and the bubble of excited voices as they discuss performances, panels, and workshops. It’s absolutely hammering it outside, but I’m dry and warm and filled with delicious satay chicken pie, and more than a few cups of coffee.

The train ride here was fairly uneventful; two and a bit hours of gorgeous landscapes scored by a group of Indian pensioners singing the songs of their country. Not quite as romantic as it sounds, and I tended towards bumping up the volume on my music whenever they reached a particularly boisterous chorus. But harmless, certainly.

When I first arrived in Newcastle, I wandered the suburbs near the hostel that Sam Twyford-Moore had kindly agreed to put me up in. I should take the time out now to give my sincere, heartfelt thanks to Sam, who has been the perfect host through Sydney’s writing community. Ever since first inviting me to the writing centre at which he works, he has ensured I felt at home and introduced me to the vibrant group of writers and creators here that are producing amazing stuff. Thanks Sam.

We checked in at the hostel and Alex–a lovely girl who is working on an absolutely fascinating account of trying to reconcile a sword her grandfather found in WW2 with its owner–gave Sam, Jacqui, Jess, and I a lift out to the heart of Newcastle where TiNA was/is being held. Picked up a guide, grabbed a coffee and then went off to meet up with Amber and part of the Voiceworks crew (Brad, Beth(?), Christie(?)). Was really good to finally meet Amber, given we’ve known each other through deviantART for well over four years now. Meeting people I knew from the Internet was a constant theme throughout the day, as I caught up with various Twitter peeps (JoJo, madiecrofts, jodiekinnersley, booktuner, etc.) and found them all to be kind and inviting and lovely (and sometimes incredibly enthusiastic). The Voiceworks peeps were running a great workshop about editing your own work, and asked us to produce a story or poem or something by censoring out words in a newspaper article. Mine ended up transforming an article about the effect of India’s burgeoning skilled worker set resulting in a greater number of luxury items being bought for households, into a small fiction about dicks:

“India plays with Margaret on the concrete floor. Daniela is happily unaware of India’s massive bulge, the largest in the world. India’s rising, he earns five times what his father does, but it feels like less, because everything costs more. Toys scatter the floor. India’s asking which of them they own. ’40-inch like mine, 10 neighbours would come to your house to watch it.’ He will limit himself to two children.”

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a news story about capitalism could very easily be converted into soft erotica. Thankfully I didn’t have to read it out. The editorial went on to discuss the main mistakes made in self-editing, how to distance yourself from your work, and all sorts of other useful stuff. Unfortunately I had to leave a bit early to catch a panel by Sam on the Sydney writing scene. That one was really interesting, with a varied panel discussing where they have come from and how the interpret the Sydney creative scene which (it was said) has really begun to bloom in the last five years. The discussion ranged widely, from the Sydney vs. Melbourne rivalry (being from Perth, I was an enthusiastic neutral), to writing from place, to philanthropy, to the concept of embracing all of Australian writing in one big happy community. I was a little bit absent from much of the discussion about writing from place, given that the majority of my fiction doesn’t occur in a specific geography. The issue of place seems to be rather prominent in Australian fiction, and I’m not sure why; perhaps it’s due to the Miles Franklin and that idea of the ‘unique Australian voice’. In any case, it was very well moderated by Sam, and a lot of the questions were answered at length and with a lot of consideration given to the nuance inherent in the dynamics of creative communities.

After that, we went back to the TiNA headquarters for drinks, and pretty much stayed there until the Big Top party. I was initially bamboozled at the bar by my insistence on ordering pints rather than schooners, but I got the hang of it eventually. All went really well and I had a blast meeting people like Ronnie (Scott, who produces The Lifted Brow and shares my enthusiasm for China Mieville), Nicci who I chatted to extensively about books and music (she runs The Booktuner, which is a great mashup initiative of matching album soundtracks to books–in my experience she’s spot on every single time), Pip Smith (who runs Penguin Plays Rough), and a whole bunch of other people (Ben, Connor, Luke, Rebecca, Maddie, Rosie, Brad, Amber, Jodie, etc. etc. etc.) who ate, drank, and were very, very merry.

I ended up leaving a bit early, exhausted as I was by two weeks of consistently interruptive dorm-mates at the hostel. The room that Sam had booked me into had a double bed, and I luxuriated in the feeling of crashing drunkenly into a bed that was actually big enough for me, falling blissfully asleep. Until, that is, I woke up at four in the morning to discover that my window had been open, and it had absolutely hosed it down during the night. Needless to say, when we left the next morning, I was careful to inform the manager of absolutely nothing, pocketing my $20 key deposit without so much as a chipper warning that she may want to look at the curtains. I am a terrible person.

Jacqui and I got out into the depressing weather that had rolled in overnight and traipsed down to catch the bus into town. We then proceeded to wander around a bit before finding a bakery for breakfast. Can’t recommend the Newcastle Bakehouse enough; perfectly cooked bacon, soft eggs, rough-cut mushrooms, and fresh-baked bread. I was in heaven.

The zine fair was up next, and while it took us far longer than is really acceptable to find it (in a multi-storey carpark up the steepest bloody hill in Newcastle), the trek was worth it. Awesome books and zines lined every stall. I may or may not have burned through pretty much all the cash in my wallet buying zines from the dotdotdash folk and grabbing the very lovely Penguin Plays Rough collection. After tagging in for Voiceworks and helping sell a couple of issues, and having a coffee and an excellent chat with ex-dotdotdasher Steph, I came down here.

And now I’m about to go and see a discussion on story in video games, before catching the long train back to Sydney. It’s been a really fantastic festival, both for the panels (although they have all been great) but more to see the enthusiasm and up-for-it, inclusive attitude that everyone involved possessed. I never felt like I was on the outside looking in to a clique, which was something I was afraid might happen. But from the first cup of coffee to the last pint schooner of beer, it was a blast. So a final thank you to all those I spoke with, and to the organisers of TiNA for a great event.

List of TiNA Twitterfolk (feel free to comment with more):

@samtwyfordmoore @jacquident @maddie_crofts @jojojakob @velvetbrownfox @RosannaBeatrice @rebeccagiggs @WritesFiona @JodieKinnersley @theliftedbrow @booktuner

photo credit: c@rljones

The end of

the first week of my internship at COSMOS, and I’m feeling pretty good! I’ve had two articles go up on the COSMOS website–one on HIV and the other on the CERN faster-than-light thingo–and I’ve learned a lot about how an editorial team operates. It’s an interesting ecosystem of writing stories, scouting reports, outreach to schools and business, and design. Everyone kind of pitches in on everything, and there’s often overlap between writers when getting interviews and such. Like I said, it’s an ecosystem; very natural.

Outside of the office, I’ve been reading quite a bit. I finally got around to reading The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (or, ‘bag a loopy’ as it sounds in my head). I enjoyed it, it’s obvious why it won a bunch of awards. It’s that kind of novel, like China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station, which divides its time between multiple protagonsits, each with their own political and personal motivations. They’re all very well-realised, and the backdrop of a post-energy crisis Thailand is as novel as a different planet.Recommended if you’re after satisfying a sci-fi craving. EDIT: I’ve since had multiple conversations with others who have read this, and I think there are definitely flaws in the book (some weak characters, and a certain amount of predictability). I still think it’s worth reading as a result of the unique Asian world it presents, but it’s certainly not as good as Mieville.

I moved off that and into J.G. Ballard’s Crash. I’ve been meaning to read more of Ballard ever since being impressed by Hello, America. But woah, pretty different works. I’m enjoying it, it’s probably the closest to erotica I’ve ever read, so it’s certainly a new experience. If I had to sum it up in five words or less, they’d probably be ‘chromium, pubis, penis, mucus, semen’. But it seems to be a bit more than just an erotic novel, exploring the relationship we have with our industrial evolution. I think once I’m done with it I’ll pick up something slightly less uncomfortable to read on a bus.

Despite my vows to stay clear of video games while I’m over here, I may or may not have found a copy of Chrono Trigger staring at me with puppy eyes. Goddamnit, technological luxury. At least it makes for something different to do in my dorm. Alrighty, back to trying to get some writing done while I have a spare day.

photo credit: _Max-B

At the risk

of this blog becoming primarily concerned with my major life changes, I have some more awesome news to announce. I passed my thesis! I managed to scrape in with only minor corrections to be made, and some really nice comments from the examiners regarding the overall structure and presentation. I’m really glad of the fact that it’s only minor corrections, as that means that I don’t have to send the thesis out to the examiners again. Instead, I’m able to just do what they suggest and hand it in. I think the news is taking its time to sink into the date-entry-addled quagmire that is my brain at the moment. A small favour to ask of people that read this blog: if you happen upon me standing in the middle of the street, smiling inanely at the sky, could you give Lou a call and get her to come pick me up? I’ll keep her number in my front pocket. Thanks.

At the same time as getting that awesome piece of news, everything else continues to happen at the usual breakneck pace that comes with trying to finalise things before a long period of absence. Our rental agency finally got its act together and let us know that it’s cool for Lou’s sister and her peeps to take over the lease when Louise and I move out. So that’s a relief that I won’t be leaving them in the lurch when I go to Sydney. And Sydney! I’ve decided to go with a hostel for the first two weeks, and hopefully I can leech a couple of nights of rooms/couches off people at the magazine to sustain me for the rest of the time there. A few friends of mine have also scouted around for me and given some cautious nods of one-night sleepovers, contingent on me not being, I dunno, a murderer. For the record: I’m not a murderer.

…There really is no way of saying that–even over the internet–that doesn’t make you sound like you are actually a murderer, is there? Anyway, hopefully I can knit together a tattered quilt of nightly stays* so I have a bit more cash going into Thailand andohmyGEEZELEPHANTS. I WANT TO MEET SOME ELEPHANTS. Seriously. Cheap beer and beaches can go hang, I really want to meet an elephant while I’m over there, all thanks to Lou’s friend Pam who has totally psyched them up for us. But! Elephants will have to wait until I’ve worked my arse off at COSMOS (the #1 science magazine [hi Cian]) for the five weeks I’m there.

Alright! I think that’s about everything. Thesis, internship, Thailand. Oh! Actually, I think I’m allowed to say that I am going to have a piece of mine appear in the ‘Gambit’ issue of dotdotdash magazine, available in December, I believe. I’ll post links up when the release happens. Okay, definitely time for soup and then packing up all my books into boxes for tranport to my convenient maternal storage unit. Stay safe all! (:

—

*That knitting-related metaphor goes directly out to Sheralynn, who hopefully still reads this blog. Hi Sheralynn, I’m done now!

photo credit: jared

It’s been a

while since I posted a proper post here, having gotten caught up with the thrill of uploading my jabbering mug onto the intertubes. However, if I’m going to keep calling this a blog, I need to keep up with the writing aspect or else risk losing my very limited ‘net cred altogether. In my defense, not a whole lot has been happening lately, so there hasn’t been too much to report on. The jury of two is still out on the assessment of my thesis; a fact that, astonishingly, fails to dumbfound or enrage me. I guess I’ve resigned myself to a lengthy trial, although the preoccupation with my temporary occupation at Synergy has contributed a great deal to the ease with which I have found myself forgetting exactly what it was I used to do with all those fairly leisurely hours I used to enjoy.

Anyway, that’s not news (in fact, I already wrote about it at length a couple of entries ago). What is news is that I have secured an (unpaid) internship at the Australian science magazine COSMOS.

*ahem* If I may? SQQQQQQQQQQQUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I’ll be flying to Sydney on the 17th of September, and spending 5 weeks learning the tools and tricks of the science journalism trade. I think if I had to name my top five dream jobs, writing for a science magazine would be right up the top there, so I’m hoping I can work hard and make a good impression. It’s a pretty hectic time for me, as while I’m over there I’ll be living on savings, but when I get back I’ll be hopping on a flight to Thailand for a holiday that Louise and I have been planning and looking forward to for the last six months. So I need to save as much as I possibly can, move out of my rental, and secure cheap accommodation while I’m in Sydney in order to make sure I have enough money to survive. Oh well, better get used to the taste of noodles.

In other news, I have been deaf in my left ear for the past week, as a result of wax build-up. Bet you wanted to know about that, huh? I am also, as of this morning, coming down with a cold. So it’s not exactly a wondrous time to be my head at the moment. I’ve been to a nurse practitioner for the ear thing, but two lots of syringing haven’t done much good yet, and I’m really getting sick of the sound of my own voice.

I think that’s about it. Work, internship, and a stupid ear. Huzzah! Now to go see if the chemist has some wondrous solution that can cure me.