Musings – Page 3 – markwebb.name

General ramblings – Part 1

I find myself a little devoid of topics to wax lyrical about this week. My reading is at a low ebb, as the time pressures of a new job and other activities take my focus away from more word-based pursuits. I am without sensible comment to make about any other pieces of popular culture that I have consumed. No topic raging across the internet is grabbing my attention.

I like my new writing group, but there isn’t really a lot to say about it. I got a chance to beta-read for one of the authors this week, which was a good experience (the writing was good – thank goodness! – and I made a few suggestions, but there is always that slight nervousness when you provide feedback to someone for the first time. Will they find it valuable? Will I be dead to them from now on because of a poorly worded critique? Who knows, or dares to dream).

With less commuting time, I find myself listening to less podcasts these days. It is interesting to see which ones survive the war of attrition. The Coode St Podcast remains on the list, as does Galactic Suburbia, The Writer and the Critic and Tea and Jeopardy. New comer Sheep Might Fly has managed to worm its way in there. I’ve also got quite a back catalogue of Writing Excuses to catch up on, which I find a useful way of getting me into a writing mood. Because I create the eBooks for the Antipodean SF web-magazine, I tend to read the fiction that way, so haven’t kept up with the Anti-SF podcast.

I haven’t updated my Podcast page on the website for a while – perhaps I should add that to my to do list.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned before that the fantastic Rivqa Rafael won the Best New Talent Ditmar this year. I met Rivqa at GenreCon last year, and she was the one who was kind enough to invite me to pop along to her writing group, which I’ve enjoyed. It was an enormously well deserved award.

Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure there is something else interesting to say, but I cannot bludgeon it out of the slightly headache-y brain. That will have to do for this week, Internet. Rest assured, I feel that I owe you a significantly improved post for next week. I shall begin work on it at once (*).

(*) that is, technically, a lie. OK, it may actually move the dial from “technical lie” to “outright fabrication”. But there is at least a 34% chance that I will start work on next week’s post earlier than late Sunday night.

Writing update – April 2016

So, it’s been a little while since I put together a post on my own writing progress. What have I been doing over the last little while? Why no short stories ? Have the critics finally got to me? Has writers block descended with savage fury? Has the urge to write been purged from my soul with almost biblical ferocity?

Nah.

I have, however, had some trouble maintaining some consistency in my writing. Work has been hectic (and I start a new job tomorrow, which I’m not expecting will be any easier). I’ve been trying to make more time for family. And writing has suffered as a result. However, I have been making a few changes lately that I think will be positive.

First up, I joined a writing group. Not a critiquing group, but a group dedicated to getting some writers together in a room so we can write. And that is exactly what I needed. Sitting around, listening to what other people are working on, talking in the breaks – it all helps recharge my creative batteries. The group itself is excellent, I felt really comfortable very quickly and there are some fantastic authors whose work I admire attached to the group. I’ve only been once, but even that was a big boost for me. Looking forward to future meetings.

Long term readers might recall that I finished the first draft of a novel, Unaligned, a while back. I’ve been having real problems with the editing process. When writing the first draft, I could set myself modest daily targets (most often one handwritten page per day at a minimum) and I made steady, incremental progress. With editing, I couldn’t find the equivalent rhythm and pretty much all last year I struggled to even get started. Over the last month or so, I’ve been trying a few different things and some of them seem to be working. I was trying to do big, structural edits but the size of the task stopped me getting started. So, I’ve decided to do a run through the manuscript just doing line edits and looking for glaring inconsistencies. This is much more manageable, and I’ve been able to make some progress. I’m hoping that this approach will be more sustainable. I’ll keep notes on any major issues I come across that I just can’t fix in the line editing process, and that might form the basis of a structural review down the track.

I’m also thinking about writing some short stories based on secondary characters in the novel. One of the issues I’ve found is that the secondary characters feel a little too one dimensional. I’ve always struggled with creating “dossiers” on my characters, I’m hoping that a more narrative approach will help. These stories won’t be for publication necessarily (unless one turns out really well). Rather, they will be my way of making the characters a bit more fully realised in my own head. I’ll use jumping off points as I do the line edit of the manuscript to set up the side stories.

And finally, I’ve started work on a couple of very short, flash fiction length pieces. When I was publishing a few flash pieces a couple of years back, it gave me a sense of momentum that I seem to have lost since I started to focus on the novel. I’d like to get that momentum back!

So, that’s me. What have you been up to, writers? Who else is trying something new in the pursuit of better craft?

How to Market Your Book Online by Nicola Hardy – a promotion

Now, disclaimers out of the way first up. I’ve known Nicola Hardy (the author of How to Market Your Book Online) for many years, and she is one of my longest standing and closest friends. As such, I’m not going to be able to give an unbiased discussion of her book. Hence the “a promotion” tagline, instead of my normal “a review”.

How to Market Your Book Online is a practical guide to setting up aspects of an author platform online. The book focuses primarily on Facebook and Twitter, but also briefly covers Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn and blogging in general.

There is a heavy emphasis on the practical – Nicola draws on her experience helping authors to get into the nitty gritty. There are screen shots, and hints and tips that go beyond the mechanics of the various platforms, to include issues of etiquette and protocol.

There are two editions – a global one, and an Australian/New Zealand version that has some customised content for the local region.

If you’re an experienced author who has been promoting yourself through social media for years, this probably isn’t the book for you. But if you’re just getting started, and considering how to establish your “author platform”, the book is a great way to get going with the basics.

Editors note: apologies to regular readers for missing last week, I’m afraid family time over Easter got in the way. Back to regularly scheduled programming now.

Antipodean SF

It’s been a while since I mentioned my friend Ion “Nuke” Newcombe, and the excellent publication he edits and produces, Antipodean SF. Antipodean SF has been running online since February 1998, meaning its 18th birthday has just come and gone. And given the publication is now old enough to drink, I thought it was well worth celebrating with a little shout out.

I’ve had ten or so flash fiction pieces published at AntiSF over the years, and I’m not the only Australian writer to get early publication credits with Ion. I’m always amazed to look back and see how many of my favourite Australian speculative fiction authors got their start with AntiSF.

There have been 212 issues of AntiSF since 1998, each issues publishing between 6 and 10 flash fiction pieces of around 500 words (sometimes longer, sometimes shorter). By my calculations, averaging 8 stories at 500 words for 212 issues equals approximately 850,000 words of flash fiction, a large portion of which has been from Australians.

Ion is very generous with his time, and considering he is not making any money out of the publication, he gives a very generous amount of editorial feedback to his authors. He cares deeply about the Australian SF field and is well worth a chat if you ever see this man at the bar at a convention somewhere.

nuke-at-mic-100-2

So, if you fancy writing a short piece, you could do a lot worse than submitting to Antipodean SF. Who knows, you could be the next great talent that Nuke discovers!

Some things I liked in 2014 that didn’t make the Ditmar ballot

I recently posted that the Ditmar ballot had been released, and focused in on some of the items that I really liked that were on the list. I’ve been subsequently dwelling on a few things that I would have liked to see represented in the shortlist. This takes nothing away from the nominees – they are all fine human beings and worthy selections to a woman/man. But if there had been an extra voting slot available in a few categories, there are a few endeavours I would have liked to see represented.

Coode St podcast. Seriously, when are these guys going to win a Ditmar? Jonathan and Gary come together week in and week out to bring some of the most in depth discussion of the speculative fiction genre there is, but as far as I can tell they haven’t ever got a Ditmar gong. Perhaps with their recent move to Tor.com they might get more recognition.

AntipodeanSF had its 200th issue recently and has been a stalwart of the Australian speculative fiction scene for so long, it would be great to see Nuke’s work recognised again. Maybe next year!

Horizon a science fiction novel by Keith Stevenson, mainly ’cause I liked it.

Ian Mond – I like his current project reading and reviewing award shortlists, with some emphasis on genre fiction. Maybe that will get him up on the nomination list next year.

So, what did you like that didn’t make the shortlist this year? Feel free to signal boost in the comments below.

Australian Women Writers Challenge 2014 – wrap up

Well, another year another Australian Women Writers challenge. In 2014 I read 10 books by Australian women and reviewed all 10. The reviews can be found here in all, and individually:

In previous years I found it relatively easy to complete the challenge, whereas this year I was reading right up until Christmas, and had to post the last 6 reviews into January. I’ve been reflecting on why I had more trouble this year with the challenge.

First up, it can’t be denied that I don’t actually get time to read very many books in a year. 10 books actually represents a not insignificant percentage of my total reading for the year.

Secondly, due to my work and home schedule, I did find myself diving into some less challenging “comfort reading” of series that didn’t tax my brain too much. This included reading a set of Star Wars novels and revisiting one of my reading loves of my teenage years, the Wild Card series. While these novels had a mixture of female and male authors, none of them were by Australians. This took out a fair chunk of my reading time between about July and October in 2014 – and didn’t help me contribute to the challenge at all.

But when I strip out these “time poor” excuses, I also noted another trend. Over the last couple of years I have been reading more women (and Australian women) authors. However, I’ve continued to buy books by a mixture of men and women, but just not reading a lot of the books by men. As a result, my “to be read” shelf has become weighted towards male authors. So when I started to feel guilty about the to-be-read shelf and decided to try and reduce it a bit before buying more books, I found myself reading mostly male authors. This seemed to hit a bit of a critical mass during 2014. Something to keep an eye on in the future.

What else have I noted about my 2014 reading? Six of my ten novels were made up of two trilogies. Reviewing books in trilogies so close to each other was challenging – my reviews felt repetitive to me and I found myself without many interesting things to say.

I also cheated a bit in this years challenge. One of my reviews was of a work in progress by Tansy Rayner Roberts, who is releasing Musketeer Space as a serialised novel. So the book isn’t actually finished yet. I also reviewed Kaleidoscope, which is an anthology made up of many writers, only a few of which were Australian. However it was co-edited and published by an Australian woman, so I decided to stretch the definition a little.

In both cases, including the reviews was partly to help me hit the target, but was also because each endeavour represented something innovative and a bit different creatively, showing Australian women at the cutting edge of what the speculative fiction scene is doing at the moment. I’ll leave it to others to judge whether those reviews were “really” part of the AWW challenge – I’m still claiming a challenge “win”!

I also realised that I’ve leaned pretty heavily on the Twelve Planets series published out of Twelfth Planet Press, and that The Female Factory (my last review of the year) was book 11 of a 12 book series (although I believe a “13th planet” may have been added to the lineup). So, I’ll have to look a bit further afield in 2015!

Once again, the AWW challenge has pushed me to seek out and read more books by Australian women. I’m definitely signing up for the 2015 challenge – and if you’re reading this, you should too!

Rabbits, turtles and binge TV watching

Does anyone else remember the time in the 90s when commercial TV wasn’t showing Star Trek: TNG or Deep Space 9 in any kind of consistent order, and you suddenly discovered that your local Video Ezy was bringing VHS tapes in a couple of episodes at a time? There was a glorious period where you realised that the video stores were a good couple of years ahead of what you’d been watching on TV, and you were able to gorge yourself renting out videos and watching as many episodes as your sleep deprived brain could cram in each night.

It was a feast. A fiesta. A good time was had by all. Right up until the time when you caught up, and then suddenly you were finding excuses to pop into the store every few days on the off chance they had the next tape.

There’s a word for that. Rhymes with pladdiction.

Now, of course, we engage with TV series this way as a matter of course. They build up on our Foxtel until our hard drives groan with their weight. I recently bought my wife series 1 and 2 of Orphan Black. The actual heart of the gift was not the DVDs themselves, rather it was the sensation of relief she felt when she was able to delete all those episodes from our IQ hard drive and get our “percentage free” figure up into double figures.

And then you find yourself tearing through a season, watching a couple of episodes each evening, having debates about whether you should head off to bed at 10:45 or whether you could fit just one more slice of Walking Dead action in. And it is excellent, consumerism at its best. A constant sugar rush high.

But – and I grant you this may be old age setting in – but…. do you remember any of it?

I enjoy watching series that way. I know I do. I remember enjoying myself. But the episodes all blur together and 6 months later I’ll catch 5 minutes of something while I’m channel surfing, and be struggling to remember whether I’ve seen it before or not.

Recently, I’ve been watching a few shows where I’m seeing the episodes week to week. And, while the shows haven’t necessarily been the highest quality in and of themselves, I’m finding my recall of them is much better. I spend a small amount of time each week wondering what’s going to happen next, testing out particular scenarios in my mind. I’m engaging with them better.

So, culture vultures I’m wondering – is your experience of a TV series changed by the manner in which you consume it? And do you think this will have an impact on future fandom? Will the next generation of fans be as across the detail (“No, I didn’t spend a week obsessing over what happened to the bump on the eye of the lead actress in Continuum. I just pressed play on the next episode”)? Or will they engage utterly differently with the material?

Go on. Be honest. This is a safe space.

I promise.

Continuum 10 – There and Back Again

Over the June long weekend, the 53rd annual Australian speculative fiction national convention was held. This year, the “nat-con” was hosted by Continuum 10, an annual SF convention held in Melbourne.

My decision to attend was a little last minute. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get away, even though I do like trying to get to at least one convention each year.

However, due to my very kind wife I was able to free up some time, so Saturday morning I flew down to Melbourne to attend the Con.

I had a great time, it was fantastic to sit in on some interesting panels, attend a couple of book launches (and snag a very limited edition of Kirstyn McDermott’s Perfections) and catch up with lots of people. Some highlights included:

Catching up with my fellow Galactic Chat podcasters Sean Wright, Helen Stubbs, Alex Pierce and David McDonald. And then winning a Ditmar with them!
Catching up with writers like Jason, Kirstyn, Jodi, Ellen, Sean and many others and hearing about where everyone is up to with their writing, getting some advance intelligence on what might be coming next and generally talking shop.
Having lunch on Saturday with Tess, who was new to the convention scene and with whom I had an absolutely delightful conversation about her writing ambitions.
Attending the launch of Kirstyn McDermott’s book Perfections, which had previously been released as an e-book but was in print for the first time. Unfortunately, the batch of books Kirstyn had just picked up from the printer had the last page missing, however Kirstyn turned disaster into a marketing triumph by promising new copies for anyone who purchased the book, as well as personally writing a little vignette ending in each book purchased (and renaming it “Imperfections“). It was a great reaction to what would have been a very stressful situation, and my copy of Imperfections is now sitting proudly on the book shelf.
Attending several panels where people talked about their own experience engaging with speculative fiction from a range of different perspectives than my own, including different religious beliefs, different sexualities, different disabilities and different mental states.
Two fantastic guest of honour speeches by Ambelin Kwaymullina and Jim C. Hines. Unfortunately due to my early departure I wasn’t able to hear Danny Oz and Sharon Moseley speak on the Monday.
Some great meals and some great bar discussions on a wide range of topics.
In between sessions and programs having some time to write and edit some of my work in the hotel room.

I had a great time, and I know the party kicked on after my departure (unfortunately I had to head back to Sydney Monday morning and missed most of the Monday program).

Thanks to everyone who I had a chance to speak with over the weekend, and to anyone I missed out on talking to there is always next time!

Writing update

It’s been a couple of months since my last writing update and given that this weekend I decided to make an adjustment to how I’m spending my writing time, so I thought it was about time to check in.

As you’ve seen in previous posts, since the start of the year I’ve adopted a “write at least one long hand page each night” strategy, and it’s served me well. I’ve written north of 30,000 words of fiction, about 20,000 words to finish off the first draft of my first novel, then about 10,000 words on something that started off as a short story but now seems to be incorporating a lot of the space opera elements I’ve been thinking about for a while and is growing out of control. Let’s call it a 10% deposit on my second novel manuscript.

This weekend I decided to switch tactics and look at editing my first manuscript. From now on, I’ve dedicated myself to doing some editing each night. I still have a lot of handwritten pages to type up, so for the time being “editing” is defined as writing up at least two days worth of writing, making line edits as I go. Once that is done, a structural edit will be in order. But that’s for future me – one step at a time.

Wish me luck!

Time management and the art of maintaining a blog

I don’t spend enough time writing.

As we’ve established in previous blog posts, I am somewhat time poor. Between a busy job, a busy family, the ever increasing health related demands of middle age and wanting to keep my writing going, I’m not giving everything the attention it deserves.

Over the last 18 months, exercise and writing have taken a back seat to work and family. Life hasn’t been feeling particularly balanced though, and in the last few months I’ve been trying to find ways to carve out a bit more time for writing (and exercise for that matter – although with less success).

One of the things that has dropped away as a result is regular posting on this blog. Last year it was generally time pooredness (that’s not a word) that kept my updates infrequent. But this year, as a part of my write-at-least-one-page-before-you-go-to-bed strategy, I’ve said to myself that the one page has to be done before any blog writing.

And that has meant significantly less blog writing.

I want to keep the blog up, but something has to give. And I’ve decided that thing is a full review of every book that I read.

I’m lots of books behind at the moment. I read quite a few books over the Christmas break that haven’t made it onto the blog yet. I’ve been doing some reading particularly for the 2014 Australian Women Writers’ Reading Challenge, which are way back in the queue. And I can’t see me ever catching up.

So, I’m going to try something different. Each month I’m going to put in a blog post that summarises the books I’ve read through the month. I’ll save a full review for those books where I have something particular to say, or where there is some specific purpose to me writing a review.

And I’ll try to keep most of my blog writing focused on the process of writing and publication.

If any regular readers of the blog see a book that I’ve skipped over in terms of reviews and want to know more, just leave a comment and I’ll add some more detail. Otherwise, lets try this new approach and see where it leads us!