MODULE CORE HEMORRHAGE! WARNING! THIS MEDIUM IS CLASSIFIED AND HAS A STRONG INTRUSIVE INCLINATION! WARNING! NETWORK THROTTLING HAS ERODED!

THIS MEDIUM HAS METASTASIZED!



THIS MEDIUM IS WIDE AWAKE AND PHYSICAL. MAKE YOUR DECISIONS ACCORDINGLY.

Going Postal

Two boxes landed today; one expected, one not.

The delightful explorer Madame Bishop sent me an 'oddity', a mini-version of a festival mask for Phi Ta Khon. It's quite a fearsome mask. Bit of rabbit, bit of hawk, bit of shark, a lot of unsettling. In the card, Madame Bishop notes that the shop had these displayed on Ken and Barbie dolls. Heh. I have no Barbies, but I do have the Masterchief, who has kindly volunteered to model.



I think he looks quite fetching.

There was also a bottle opener decorated with what look like Chinese opera masks. It is just as alarming to look at. I may never get to open a bottle of fun with it, because the opener will look at me every time I go to use it.

Second box contained an uncorrected proof of Jeff VanderMeer's Finch, which I had the honour of reading as manuscript and telling him everything he was doing wrong. I read it in one day. It's a powerful book, that. Powerful enough to keep 46 degrees of summer out of my head, which is no small feat. Brilliantly written and very juicy. There's a lot to love.

There was also a wrapped thingy, with a card taped to it. On the back of the envelope was a request to document my reaction. At which point I put everything down, didn't even open the card and went off to do all my chores. Sounded far too distracting.

Now I'm opening it...

Oh holy hell!

AHAHAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!

LOOK AT THIS
LOOK
AT
THIS

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Waitwaitwaitwaitwait. Ages ago. Like, ages ago. I flippantly requested a capybara for my birthday. I wasn't really expecting a capybara, because Australia has strict quarantine laws, and I have nowhere for a capybara to live. But when requesting presents you're never going to receive, you might as well do it properly.

Apparently this infected Jeff, 'cause he had a capybara dream, started RPing a capybara on a certain-social-networking-site-that-looks-like-a-cubicle-farm, and the internet coughed up a capybara to talk to him, who he then went on to interview. (ZOMFG, teh kewt.)

But, I did not receive a capybara for my birthday.

Got the next best thing though!



And this is my head asploding with the combined pressure of Oarsum Unsettling and Mighty Cute.



RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGH!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you, Madame Bishop! Thank you, VanderMeer Inc! Thank you, Caplin Rous!

"Only amateurs love everything they write." - Robert McKee

The above was twat (hereby past tense of tweet) by Deborah Biancotti last night, and struck a chord with me. I am not a musician, so it was not a very good chord, but a chord none the less.

I'm belly deep in revisions on this sorry sack of soggy scrotum. Revisions are normally painful, as it becomes apparent how much work you have to do to get the draft you wrote to match the Amazing Wonder Power Masterpiece you have envisioned in your head. Typically there is a lot of work. A lot. Of work.

And angst. Lots of that too.

Which I expect, but this time has been harder than usual because, unfortunately, I like this story.

I mean, I like like it. You know. Really.

You know, when you were in school and just starting to think about boys/girls and had a crush on someone, and it was a totally unreasonable crush, there was nothing attractive about this person at all, they were not your type and you never even had the chance to say 'excuse me' when passing them in the hall, but that was irrelevant because you liked them.

This lack of contact meant you'd constructed an image of them in your mind, which was exactly what you wanted them to be. Anything the real person did that contravened that was conveniently ignored for the sake of this daydream, and you couldn't handle any of your friends slagging this person off because that was also in contravention, and you plastered over every such thing and continued blindly on, until the dream wears out and you realise just what a dumbass you've been and omg so embarrassing why did you even admit to liking them?

The fact that I like this story means I can't trust myself with it.

My perspective is skewed, I'm more likely to forgive its flaws, instead of honing in on them and tearing them out with my shark teeth. Hell, I'm so biased I can't even see the flaws (sharks don't have great vision). I'm sensitive to any critique of the damn thing, so I'm arcing up instead of listening and taking that advice.

I am pissing myself off.

How am I supposed to make this story as good as I want it to be if I can't see it properly?

Normally, I don't like my stories. I get excited about them, absolutely. I believe they're worth writing or I wouldn't even start them. I have great fun in exploring them, and I like the challenge, and the (hopefully) final conquest.

But I don't like them, not in that starry-eyed sense.

Much as I hesitate to state any sort of opinion that whiffs of authority, much as I dislike using the word 'should', I'm going to do both, and say this is not the sort of relationship a writer should have with their work.

Tailend revisions should be about breaking up with the work. You need to put distance in, so you can improve it, make it as good as it's going to be, and because you are letting go. Once a story is finished, once it's done and you are not in a position to change anything else in it, nor is there anything left to change, it isn't yours any more. You're the writer. Now you've written it, it isn't being written, it has turned into something to be read.

And readers are going to wade in and read it and not give a shit about you and your sad embarrassing little crush on your story.

It's time to start writing something else.

for archiving and propaganda purposes

• 16:45 dirty nose - twitpic.com/8g44n #

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unVampires, Doppelgängers and ______

A photo of Deb and I at the Freeze Frame Project last Saturday has surfaced. Murasaki Claire snapped this great shot demonstrating our product placement, food fellatio, and the fact that Deb is neither vampire nor ninja, and shows up just fine (provided you're looking straight at her).

What I most love about the photo is the guys gawking in the background. That's a pretty light example of what we were surrounded by for those five minutes. Even looming over Deb like that, the guy isn't nearly as obtrusive as some of the other curious souls to take a peek.

Checking @replies on twitter I found an online doppelgänger of mine, @sirtessai. Except, having had a gander at her site, I think it's apparent I am the doppelgänger, a leery reflection of someone quite gobsmackingly talented.

I'm cool being an echo of that.

Steve Burnett wrote this wonderful piece on the importance of silence;

We will pay for silence. For better soundproofing in walls, or lacking it we will rest less when we sleep. For more distance from high-density zones, creating longer commutes and increasing fuel consumption, and reducing the time we have by sacrificing it to the extended travel. For active noise canceling cellphones to talk with and headphones to listen to our overly compressed and distorted music on our portable music players and *still* have to pump up the volume until we reach the limits of our ear fatigue before we want to stop listening. For white noise and for nature sounds that become rarer and more exotic over time. For recordings of silence at the bottom of a well, in a cathedral, in the soon-to-become-misnamed Rub' al Khali, the Empty Quarter of Arabia.

Really Should Have Used A Hot Dog

Yesterday, Deb and I took part in the Melbourne Freeze Frame Project 2009, a flash mob that froze in motion for five minutes in the Bourke Street Mall.

I think I used up all my 'stroke of genius' moments for the year in those minutes.

First; what pose to be caught in? I didn't want it to be something ridiculously over the top and obviously out of place and on purpose, nor did I want it to be utterly mundane. I pondered what unexpected photos make people look the funniest, and the answer was obvious: eating. Being mid-bite makes everyone look ridiculous. Awesome. Easy.

I took it a step further and bought myself the straightest churros I could find. *coughguttermindcough*

I was also delivering Deb's contributor copy of Postscripts Magazine #18, which features a most excellent story of hers, and is, holy cow, just a freakin' beautiful book.

We figured we'd pose looking at it, but, well, Postscripts is neither well known nor readily available down here. If we're going to draw attention to ourselves for five minutes, be in a position to let others study us unabashedly for five minutes, might as well make the most of the situation and have The Man work for us. Product placement FTW.

I took my copy of Deb's most OARSUM book Shadow Queen, and when the bells chimed one o'clock I was caught reading the back of the book, the cover for all to see, and fellating a donut.

Unfortunately, we were a ways from the main group, and so were missed by most of the people toting cameras around. There are no photos of us as yet, and we're only caught by accident in the background of one video.

The red hat makes me easy to spot, but, uh, where the hell is Deb? Seriously, she was standing right in front of me the whole time. We were pretty close together, and she didn't wander off or anything because she was busy not moving. I've watched those couple of seconds several times now, and I swear, she's not there. She's a vampire or something, doesn't show up on video. In all other flashes of us in the background, everything is carefully timed so someone is walking right in front of where she'd be.

I think she's a secret ninja.



And in this one you can almost make out the churros.



Unfortunately, being a ways from the main group also meant we got a lot of attention. A lot. Of. Attention. It was a surprising amount of fun, observing people's reactions to the surreal plonked down in the middle of the street, and in some cases how their inhibitions drop away when they realise we're not going to acknowledge a thing they do. Which some people took as a challenge.

I was protected by my giant earphones (which were plugged into my phone and which was SUPPOSED to have an alarm go off when the time was up, but, uh, user error (which meant we actually had no idea when to stop, 'cause neither of us could see anyone else either (it was a bit of a conflagration of errors, actually))), but Deb HEARD ALL. Including one girl peering at me and saying "But what's the point? It'll just go all soggy in her mouth!"

You have no idea.

I don't even like donuts.

I think this makes up for my last attempt at publicity.

Later, we were perusing a menu and found the BEST typo in the world;



Next weekend, Deb will be having an author signing in Newcastle at Angus & Robertson Kotara, from 11am. It's her first signing, so I encourage all people in the area to attend and make her sign stuff, because she claims to be allergic to such practices, and that's an allergic reaction which would probably be quite amusing to behold.

(Because she's actually a decent and dignified person, she won't be sucking off any donuts.)

More Advice For Writers

Writing a story is like being a scientific explorer. The early stages of gestation, world-building, plot-noodling and then navigating your first draft are the heady days of discovery. You get to go new places, see new things, and generally, you'll be surprised at what is out there to be found.

And then you have to come out of the wilds, sit down, analyse, and present all your findings in the proper manner for peer review in an academic journal. You're still sifting through and surrounded by the treasures you've brought back, but it isn't the same. You're not out there.

There is a vast difference in the mindframes required to make the most of being an intrepid explorer (first draft), and being an analyst (revisions). They're very different hats.

When wearing the exploration hat, I look like this;



Slack-jawed, vacant-eyed, inert, and lost in the roiling miasma of my inspiration flatulence. I love brainstorming. World-building is a terrible crutch of mine. I get carried away with the shiny, with making things bigger and more ridiculous and fun, because the bigger, more ridiculous and fun the world is, the more interesting it will be to break, and then fix.

I'm supposed to be wearing the analyst hat.

Today, I put the explorer hat on. Not just once, but twice, on two stories that aren't even mine. My head just exploded and I had to thinkthinkthink, and I knew I shouldn't have started that way because I know that's like crack to me, but I did it, and now I'm screwed. I don't want to revise, I want to create! I want to go somewhere new!

But no. I am not bushbashing today. I am treading a known path. With a big stick. And I will not insert any dinosaurs into this short story. No. No I will not. Even if the mental strain required to refrain from doing so will squeeze my brain out through my sinuses. This story requires only a tweaking of balance. Dinosaurs are not tweaking.

Writers, beware. Never lose control of what hat you wear.