tooth soup

Throughout our trip

in Thailand I endeavoured to keep a diary of our experiences, so that when we returned to Perth and reality descended on us with all its myriad demands, we could remember all the things we did and people we met. There were times when I failed to do so as a direct result of things that we were doing, but I count that as an indication that we were doing it right. Since I have a few days respite before my supervisor returns and I can round out the graduation forms with his signature, I figured I’d reproduce that diary here. It was kept in shorthand at the start, mostly with bullet points, so I may add some commentary from memory in italics. The rest is verbatim: @s, smiley faces, bad grammar and all. Hope you enjoy it, and I’ll try and get some of the better photos, and a rough-cut movie up sometime soon.

Chiang Mai

28/10

• Arrived, checked in @3Sis
• Huen Phen, Northern Thai for dinner.
• sweet, sweet sleep.

29/10

• visited temples: funeral celebrations at Wat Chedi Luang; teak-made Wat Pan Tao; main one, Wat Pha Singh.
• visited 3 Kings monument
• mastered riding in red bustaxis!
• visited icon plaza and central department store: huge!
• Dinner @ Bierstube, German food + 2 x Chang King Browns = sleepy.

30/10

• Blind masseuse in the morning. Pretty much died.
• Was lead on wild goose chase by 2 (TWO!) red taxi drivers;
• had lunch @ pizza hut in defiance. >:D Shall try again to get to the lunch bar (or not).
• came back to hotel, cooled down and planned/booked some courses.
• Went to Sunday walking markets, got rained on, went back to hotel, back out, bought stuff & ate vendor food. :)
• witnessed first national anthem stop.
• came back to get some sleep before cooking class.

31/10

• up early for cooking class!
• cooking class was awesome! Very long day of eating, ended up being very full, didn’t even need dinner. :)
• coffee and ice cream did happen though.
• relaxed in the evening with a beer and some premier league.

1/11

• ELEPHANTS! Went to elephant nature park and spent the day feeding, washing, and interacting with the elephants. Absolutely amazing! Only got back to hotel @ 6pm. Totally knackered!
• Dinner at Huen Phen again, convenient. Then back to sleep our final night in Chiang Mai.

The elephant reserve that we went to was called ‘Elephant Nature Park’ and was aimed at educating visitors with regards to the cruelties the elephants had endured. All the elephants had been rescued, which meant that a lot of them were blind in at least one eye, or had limbs that had been cut off or blown off with landmines. We didn’t ride the elephants or get them to do tricks, but we were able to feed them a lot and wash them in the local river.

Pai

2/11

• Caught minibus from Chiang Mai -> Pai. Pick up in red bus-like. Thought at first this was minibus but only transport to station.
• minibus to Pai was bit cramped, great views, incredibly curvy! Minivan driver was mental, overtaking around corners, hammering it.
• arrived in Pai, called Run to pick us up, he told us to hire a motorbike! We ended up getting a scooter — best. thing. ever. After shaky start, got the hang.
• Went into town on scooter to Beer Cafe, then back to bungalows.

3/11

• spent day bombing around on scooter, saw waterfall, canyon, markets, awesome fun! Ate at Ban Jarong great food! Accidentally drove thru night markets.

Cave Lodge

4/11

• had to return scooter :( before catching the bus to Soppong. even more rough + ready than minivan.
• we got it to drop us off at Tham Lot where we thought it was a ‘short walk’ (from LP guide) but after an hour of walking we hadn’t got anywhere. Eventually caught a lift the rest of the way (4km!) to get to Cave Lodge.
• Got straight into it thanks to Dave, Sam + Adrian. went to Lod Cave for an hour, amazingly huge caverns; the guide kept pointing to formations + telling us what they look like.
• came back and drank with the other residents. then sleep :) (despite there having been a spider in our room)

5/11

• got up with the intention to go to village walk with Jack + Sarah — Sarah had a wee bit too much to drink. So took a while. We swapped rooms while we waited.
• Sarah ended up being too sick to do much so we signed up for a kayak tour w/4 American girls/women. Super fun! I was on my own + Lou was with the guide. Went through Lod cave plus rapids and over two dams. Awesome.
• At the end some local kids jumped all over our kayaks and tried to pull us away, v.cheeky.
• Back to the lodge, had some lunch and wished the manchester boys luck in their quest to climb and sleep in a huge fig tree near the exit to Lod cave. They had ordered a huge pizza to eat up there :)
• We waited + then convinced Adrian (really nice Perth guy who was into nature and caves) to go down to the exit to see the swifts’ nightly migration into the nests there. It was pretty spectacular, until we almost got brained by rocks falling from where Sam + Dave (the british tree lads) were climbing. Decided to head back shortly after that, but Adrian detoured us to Hair Cave.
• Hair Cave was a push in the dusk, neither Lou or I were really dressed for it (Lou spelunked in a skirt!). But was very cool once we got down there. Amazing formations, and no guide to push you. Eventually got back out with slipping + swearing and went back to cave lodge for a rare warm shower.

6/11

• Night before we got convinced by John to do the (2) caving experience — serious caving! he told us it was just a bit of crawling + some short climbs. We had to wait a little bit for Adrian + Brad to get back from Soppong after dropping Jack + Sarah off. A new couple joined up, Angus + Lucy, and we took off on the hour drive up to the drop point for the walk.
• We then walked down to the cave. That sentence is contained a punishing up and down trek over mud and making a path through dense undergrowth (this was the first time the tour had been run in over a year!). Lou + I had a fun time getting down the hill, in our completely gripless shoes. Fell over about six or seven times! Eventually got down to the cave. Trek inside was awesome. Some highlights:
• Bats! Really tiny ones as well.
• 20m crawl through water
• huge house centipedes
• amazing formations (sparkly! pure white, etc.)
• a banana tree, pale green, growing a couple of kms in the cave – from a seed, amazing.
• white fungus growing from every piece of wood in beautiful arcs.
• pure white slaters.
• A moment at the end of the trek where we turned off our headlamps – pitch blackness. Total except for two specks of light that appeared (luminescent) fungus? after a long time of eye adjustment.
• 2 hours 20 there, 1 hour or so back.
• Oh, and 2x snakes!
• We then trekked all the way back up, incredibly sore, and took the van back up. Happy, tired, in desperate need of a shower :)
• Saw a man with blood streaming into a tin cup, and Adrian found a straw hand.
• Showered and drank with the other peeps until we went to bed!

7/11

• Bit of a relaxing day, we got up late, did some washing (including our shoes, which took some scrubbing).
• Lou went for a massage while I snoozed; when I woke up I discovered she had locked me in! Oh well, more snoozing :)
• When she came back she convinced us to go for a trek to ‘Tortoise Cave’. I groaned a bit (a lot).
• A black limpy dog accompanied us the entire way, going ahead + then looking back to see if we were coming – our own personal guide dog. We later learned that he had done the same to the earlier group (Adrian, Sam + Dave). What a trooper!
• To get to the cave we had to pass through a family’s front yard, only the lady was home but she was very friendly and lead us through her fields – pointed out the fact she had cleared the whole field in 2 days by herself. Crazy.
• The cave itself was hard to get into + it was getting dark so we took some photos and trudged back out. Lou squee’d at the little piglets in their pen and the lady came out and gave us a papaya + a cucumber (huge!) to take with us. We thanked her profusely + went back to the lodge. The dog stopped at the same place it had started following us, presumably to guide another farang :)
• We had dinner (Nung cut us up the fruit and cucumber, shan eat it with salt) and crashed early, with an offer from Angus and Lucy to give us a ride to Mae Hong Son in the morning.

Mae Hong Son

8/11

• We had breakfast, packed + left Cave Lodge in a rush — Angus + Lucy had promised a ride to Sam + Dave as well, + they needed to be there by 10AM! S, D + I all crammed into the back of the pickup while Angus gunned it into town, Thai style! (i.e. never ever take your foot off the accelerator). We dropped off S + D, said our goodbyes, and careened off on a route that would take us up to the Myanmar border before down to Mae Hong Son.
• The constant twists and turns of the drive made me feel a bit sick, and by the time we got to Mae Aw (a Chinese village on the Thai side of the Myanmar border – go figure) I was feeling pretty dreadful. Lou was totally fine thankfully – I don’t hink Angus or Lucy would have appreciated two carsick travellers. At Mae Aw we had samples of tea, and a totally Farang can of coke for me that settled my stomach a bit.
• There was a wooden, handpowered ferris wheel (seriously) that Angus and I cranked for the two girls plus three other Thai tourists that were there (bit harder getting the westerners up :P)
• After that effort we wound down to a waterfall, lingering for a while to enjoy it before heading towards a long-neck Karen village. It was a bit weird, and I felt a predictable Westerner guilt for taking their photo etc. Still we bout a bunch of stuff :/
• Oh! Before we got to the village we got stuck due to the 2WD going down a shelf of rocks near a river. Thankfully a few locals showed up and we managed to lift the chasis up and jam some rocks under the tires so they had some grip, although as it lurched forward the rocks fired out and smashed my shin, giving me a lovely cut + bruise. :(
• Anyway, after the village we went down more twisty roads and ended up in Mae Hong Son where A+ L dropped us off after some lunch. We checked in, organised ourselves, then went to the lake to see the markets, where we caught up with A + L and also Alana and Sam (different Sam who went on caving tour with us), 2 Canadian Cave Lodgers. We all had drinks then Pad Thai, then said our goodbyes + went to bed.

9/11

• Bit of a rest day planned, as we were exhausted by the pace of the previous days. Still, we hired a scooter and decided to head south Pha Bong Hot Springs. After going back and forth through Pha Bong, we gave up looking and decided to keep going south as it was a great day for riding. Eventually we stopped for lunch @ a road residence/restaurant where the owner chatted to us and asked us to sign his guestbook (Lou drew koalas, kangaroo + a happy Australia). He advised us of some amazing sunflower fields further on, but said it was up steep hills. The confidence in our scooter was low — its brakes barely worked — so we decided to head back. We still had a couple of hairy moments ( I shaved an inch or so off my thongs using them as rubber brake pads) but got back to town safely.
• We used the arvo to rest up and went up to the temple for some photos before lazing at the hotel + booking Phuket accommodation.
• The night was similarly lazy, with us going to the night market + eating and drinking while watching some preliminary lanterns go up. The Chang is starting to affect us a bit; even after just one King Brown of 6.4% mix we’re hit hard.

10/11

• Scooter ride
• Festival
• Mae Hong Son
• Lanterns, boats, fireworks, Muay Thai, beauty pageant

The festival mentioned here was Loi Krathong, which involves people getting little floating decorations with candles and incense and letting them go onto the lake. There is also a simultaneous festival known as Yi Peng where lanterns are released into the sky. You can read more at the wiki, but for us it was a pretty amazing night. There were lights floating all over the lake, lights heading into the sky at regular intervals, and fireworks and flames going off constantly. Also, there was the rather bizarre combination of a beauty pageant going on right next to a Muay Thai boxing ring. Something for everyone, I guess.

Phuket

11/11 + 12/11

• Gross
• Stayed mainly in hotel + read
• Dino Park minigolf
• Got out of there fast

Phuket is just…I dunno. I guess if you like staying in those kinds of massive hotels, but Lou and I were just horrified by the commercialism and the–well, is ‘rape’ too strong a word? Let’s go with ‘abuse’ then. The abuse of the coastline with deckchairs as far as the eye could see. That and we felt more harassed here than we had in weeks up North. Do not recommend.

Ko Lanta

13/11

• Transit to Ko Lanta via 4 hr stop in Phi Phi. Also kind of gross but found spots to sit + enjoy a bit of quiet.
• Organised diving when got to Baan Phu Lae — much better, way less people on the beach :D

14/11 — 18/11

• Diving!!! Koh Ha. Corinna/Natalie @ Scubafish
• Transit to Krabi/Rai Leh to hopefully meet up with Angus + Lucy on their boat! And do some rock climbing.

It seems a lot to skip over with just the phrase ‘Diving!!!’, but we completed our PADI 4-day Open Water Scuba Diving course while in Ko Lanta. It was pretty full-on, with DVD sessions followed by pool instruction, before having two separate days out under the open water. Lou and I both got a wee bit seasick on the first day, which lead to Lou getting slightly panicky before she went under, but other than that it was fine. We dived off the coast at Ko Ha, which has a lagoon perfect for viewing coral and fish. We ended up seeing some fairly rare specimens of Sea Moths; tiny, fragile looking ground dwelling fish. As well as hundreds of other species of tropical fish in all their dazzling colour. Well worth the cost, and now we have another activity that we can enjoy back on the Aussie coast.

Rai Leh

19/11

• Rai Leh is incredibly hot + humid — we slept in after a bucket + chang night at Chillout Bar and ended up finishing breakfast just in time for the mid-morning heat. Accordingly our goals for the day were modest: find an ATM + Internet cafe. To do that we walked down Ton Sai beach, though we had to stop once to refresh ourselves with lassies and shakes and a heavenly breeze. We decided to go back to our room to get our bathers on so that the water could cool us when we made it to Rai Leh West beach.
• Round two saw us out in the middle of the day, and we felt it. The sand glowed with heat and the humidity was near 100% with no breeze forthcoming. We had wasted the low tide, so rather than climbing around the chunk of rock that separates Ton Sai from Rai Leh West we were pointed up the ‘jungle route’ by some helpful Americans. And a jungle it was, steep and steamy, and slippery in thongs. Eventually we made it down, found a spot of shade and had a swim to cool off.
• While we sat and air dried, we watched two dogs have a nasty fight (requiring beating with shore detritus to break them up) and a big ghost crab digging his hole — cute!
• After our swim we found a computer and were happy to find A + L on their way — hoping to see them tomorrow. Lunch and some new sunnies for me, and then the trek back to our hotel. A couple of hours of reading, punctuated by showers to cool off, and now it’s time for dinner and drinks :)

20/11

• Woke to msgs from A + L, saying they were in the Ko Hong region + we should come out. LP had no mention of the place so we went down to the long tails and asked how much it would be — 3500 baht each! Way too expensive, so we msg’d A+L and went with our original plan — lunch and visiting princess cave on Rai Leh East.
• After getting guidance from two German couples, we made it through to the East, and wandered in the rough direction of a restaurant near the cave. However, before we could find it amongst the developed mangrove front, the heavens opened and we got mighty soaked. The only option was to duck in a nearby restaurant and commiserate with some ultra-farang burgers.
• Eventually the rain stopped and we decided to have another crack at finding the cave. Did finally find the road that lead up to it and trekked there, to find a really nice, very large cave. It wasn’t as well preserved as those we saw @ cave lodge — not as pristine, with stalactites snapped off and walkways installed. But still pretty cool.
• Spent the next couple of hours meandering back to our hotel, stopping for a shake when the rain came down too hard, then scrambling over the muddy jungle route back to the room.
• Ended up back at the Chillout Bar, drinking White Russians and listening to the local acoustic band. Good night to finish off our time in Tonsai :)

Trang

21/11

photo credit: tochis

This is a

pre-emptive farewell as I’ll be away for four weeks starting Friday, tramping around Thailand with Louise. You may have heard about the floods over there that have displaced over 2.5 million people, although there’s an equal chance that you haven’t given the media’s obsession with the Queen, CHOGM, and sharks at the moment. We’ve had to skip Bangkok in our plans for the moment, heading North to escape the encroaching waters that are reported to be the worst in 50 years. Not exactly the environment we were looking to land ourselves in, but there’s a most to be made.

So the toothsoup will stagnate for the next month or so, but I promise I’ll be back with lots of amazing photos and tales to tell once I return. Wish us luck and solid land.

photo credit: Patrick Hoesly

Yesterday, I had

the singular pleasure of reading a book in its entirety, start to finish. That book, Cian will be happy to note, was Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett. It was the first time in many, many years that I’ve been able to nom down a novel in one sitting. The act itself evoked memories of when I was a kid and Mum had driven us up to the library to borrow a big bagful of books. We’d come back and be eager — really, terribly eager — to sit down and read the stash of novels we’d nabbed. Made me want to join up at a library again (and also reminded me of Ray Bradbury’s excellent short story “Exchange“).

But apart from memories, the thing that really struck me was that of my much deeper emotional involvement with the story. Now I admit that I’m already very familiar with Pratchett’s work, having been a fan since I was only a wee little dude reading Truckers and Diggers and Wings. But taking that into account, I think it was the actual process of sitting down and reading for a long period of time that allowed me to strip off the various critical reading hats and really just read to be entertained.

And it’s reading as entertainment that I would also like to get back into. I appreciate that (like the ‘whole writing as fun’ thing that I mentioned a couple of posts ago) it’s wishful thinking to want to go back to my original, untainted-by-critical-knowledge self, but I also think that I sometimes approach reading books like a scoring board. To be ticked off when I finish them and to be analysed while I read them. It was really nice to forget that for a while and just get caught up in the adventures of Polly and her crew. I’m going to try and recapture that feeling in the future.

Anyway, apologies for yet another blog post about reassessing the way I do this whole writing and reading thing. In less esoteric news, I had a wonderful time yesterday recording a podcast for the lovely JOMADdogs, which will be up sometime soon (earlier than some other podcasts I’ve done, eh Tim? :P). I also finally go home tomorrow, after spending 5 weeks away from Perth. I honestly can’t wait.

photo credit: Mourner

This week, I’ve

had nothing to do. Nothing! I finished my Cosmos internship last Friday*, flying out to Albury to visit my Uncle and Aunt at their farm. They have around fourteen horses, beautiful creatures, and I accompanied my Aunt as she took one of the pacers around to a trainer’s place to be worked. I hung out with the trainer’s three ancient dogs while they saddled the horses and ran them around the sandy track. After we dropped the horses back off, we travelled around the paddocks, stopping off to chase a calf back to the right field before travelling up to the top hill to get a good view. I may have sneezed several thousand times, but it was worth it; it’s truly beautiful country.

Caught up with my other Aunt over coffee before heading out for nine holes of golf. My driving game was absolutely horrendous, but I had a couple of nice short set-up shots.  Had dinner and a chat with my Uncle, then watched the Wales vs. France rugby game. I haven’t really ever followed rugby, but now that I know some of the basic rules of play it’s fairly enjoyable to watch. Plus, y’know, it’s a field of green with a small white object being moved around. I’m pretty much genetically obliged to follow it with an intensity completely independent of any actual interest in the game it represents. Anyway, it was an absolutely lovely time, and I came away a lot more relaxed than I went in.

So now I’m in Melbourne, enjoying the fine company of Mark and his lovely fiancée Monique. They are. Amazing. Cooks. And I’m sleeping in a double bed for the first time since leaving Perth (albeit on the ground, but honest-to-snoozeness I do not even. It’s heavenly). Melbourne is just as great as I remembered (the coffee, oh my the coffee), though I haven’t gotten out as much as I might’ve if I’d come straight here. As it stands I’m quite content to spend most of the day snoozing and having the occasional wander down the streets.

Louise and I surpassed our six year anniversary yesterday. Apparently this is supposed to be celebrated by candy and iron. The former is kind of impractical to send through the post, and the latter, well. Iron? Really? Anyway, she’ll just have to be happy with the little gift I picked out in Sydney. All of which is besides the point, that point being that she is the best ever and I’m glad she’s put up with me for this long. Our next year is going to be amazing, I’m sure of it.

And with that, it’s time to enjoy some kind of unbelievably delicious dessert that Mon is currently putting together in the kitchen and kick back with a cider. You may start your envy…now.

—

*I’ve listed the articles that appeared at COSMOS online news on my Articles page. I’ll have a few things in the next magazine as well! :D

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.