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How to Become a Writer
It starts with the question you get asked when you’re young, and the answer that comes into your head is something to do with books, maybe?
It starts with being shy, and moving around a lot all through your childhood.
It starts with the trinity of SF from your childhood: Star Wars, Buck Rodgers, and G-Force. It starts with David Lynch’s adaptation ( Read more... ) -
Some Thoughts On Writing and Mental Illness
Every night I take 25 mg of Valdoxan before I go to bed, nudging my brain towards a healthier normal. Every morning I start tracking data on my preferred stress, depression, and anxiety management app, marking hours of sleep and minutes of exercise and whether I’ve had contact with the outside world.
Every week I’m learning to pay more attention to ( Read more... ) -
On Organising Shoes and the Failures of To-Do Lists
So I used to have a problem with shoes. Not a problem with owning them - although you could argue, at the point where I had twenty-odd pairs of converse sneakers, there was a problem there as well - but a problem storing them. I’d wear a pair of sneakers out for the day, shuck them off after arriving home and sitting on the couch, and then I’d ( Read more... ) -
New Story At Daily Science Fiction
My latest story, Counting Down, went live at Daily Science Fiction on Friday.
There are all sorts of reasons to write a short story. Sometimes you write them because you have something you want to say, or because you’re trying to chip away at a problem that you can’t seem to tackle any other way. Sometimes you write them because you want to ( Read more... ) -
CS Pacat on how to rock the Aaron Sorkin approach to dialogue
I was going to show up here and write a long post about dialogue this evening, given that I’m rewriting a story where I’m trying to do things I don’t ordinarily do with dialogue, and that’s seeping into the new story I’m trying to draft.
Then I remembered that CS Pacat already has one of the most kick-ass posts about dialogue structures that I’ve ( Read more... ) -
On Resistance and Roll-Top Desks
I inherited my father’s roll-top desk over a decade ago, after my parents renovated their study. It’s travelled with me from apartment to share-house to apartment, sitting in lounge rooms or the corner of my bedroom, frequently serving as a site for storage and the accumulation of junk rather than an actual work place. This is the tyranny of a ( Read more... )
