I don’t know what I’m thinking, putting the words “easy” “hard” and “fucking” so prominently on my blog. Given that, when I check my stats, the phrase most commonly googled to hit my site is “my head hurts”, perhaps it could work well in my favour to have all that profanity for search engines to [...]
Archive for January, 2009
Writing is so fucking easy
Posted in The writing life, writing confusion, writing solutions, writing tool box on January 31, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Writing is so fucking hard
Posted in The writing life, gaaaaah! on January 29, 2009 | 14 Comments »
Honestly, why do I put myself through this over and over again? I have notes, I have a desk, I have child-free time. But all I want to do is drink tea and eat those blueberry muffins I made with Astrid this morning. The stupid thing is that actual writing is not as exhausting as [...]
And the winner is…
Posted in Deadlines, The writing life, writing solutions, tagged Kimberley Freeman, researching fantasy fiction, the role of sheep in fiction on January 21, 2009 | 4 Comments »
One of the reasons I came to New Zealand was to research location, atmosphere, ideas etc for my fantasy novel idea. Certainly, it has provided me with pages and pages of random descriptions and fragments in my notebook (though, damn me, why do I never know the names of trees?). I truly thought that while [...]
Vampires in Volvos
Posted in The reading life on January 19, 2009 | 6 Comments »
One thing I love about being on holidays is catching up on my reading, and I’m finally doing Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, which I’m enjoying very much. The things that I’m liking most are (a) the atmosphere of the rainy peninsula town, (b) the clumsy lead character, and (c) the fact that the sexy vampire love [...]
Postcard from Middle Earth
Posted in The writing life on January 17, 2009 | 4 Comments »
One question that is asked repeatedly, of me and of Australian fantasy in particular, is why Australian fantasy fiction is largely so European and so medieval. Putting aside the fact that Australian fantasy is vibrant and diverse (short fiction, for instance, rarely follows the “epic” fantasy model; and increasingly Asian images and themes are [...]
Don’t fear the future of art
Posted in future of art, gaming on January 11, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Okay, this is more about music and gaming than writing, but by now you’ve figured out that I’m really interested in the way that technology is changing our relationship to art (most interesting fact so far this year: the #1 Amazon.com CD for this year was also available free as a digital download… explain that [...]
Your grade 5 teacher wasn’t qualified to teach creative writing
Posted in The writing life, writing tool box on January 9, 2009 | 7 Comments »
Okay, perhaps that’s a little harsh. Perhaps your grade 5 teacher went on to win the Miles Franklin. But in general terms, you need to be careful of those things you learned a long time ago at school. I am always surprised and amused by the resistance I meet in some creative writing classes, from [...]
Is that my imagination in your corporation? I do apologise.
Posted in gaming on January 6, 2009 | 2 Comments »
I have Kate Eltham over at Electric Alphabet to thank for directing me to this marvellous article in the London Review of Books about video games. Gaming doesn’t get much serious attention in the mainstream media, although it’s hugedy-huge. Many of you already know that I am one of the 13 million or so World [...]
Say your farewellz…
Posted in Necessary Vent on January 1, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Best piece of news for the New Year, imho, is that those vile Slutz… er… Bratz* dolls have to be pulled from shelves as of February. I would love to be able to tell you that the reason for this welcome measure is that toy sellers finally realised that it was wrong to sell dolls [...]
