journal » Deborah Kalin

so much for regular blogging

Apr 052012

So how dull do deadlines make my blog, huh? The answer is, apparently, very.

The past month has seen me squirrelling every spare minute into writing a commissioned short (which I intended to be a touch on the melancholy side of light-hearted, but which actually turned out to be … angry). The pace I set myself to get it done was somewhat faster than normal, because I was worried about it eating into my writing-for-TPP time, so it's been a pretty gruelling month, and I've been frothing at the mouth with envy for those who don't have time-gobbling dayjobs. Yeah, I know, we've all been there, if we're not all still there.

Sometimes I can't help but think Plan B¹ is a trap.

Things may² continue to be dull around these parts for a while to come, since the deadlines are by no means satisfied and my own personal neuroses brought on by needing BUFFERS whenever I start to consider numbers as targets require feeding in the face of the deadlines. I'm more active (if barely) on Twitter, which lets me dip in and out as it suits me.

namely: making sure you can pay the rent [↩]
or may not. Hopefully may not. But I can't promise. [↩]

wherein i share why i can't use 'amongst' without crippling fear

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Mar 132012

Gillian Polack is running a series of guest posts in honour of Women's History Month, and as of today my contribution is up.

Given the majority of my professional colleagues are Australian women authors, the brief for this blog post seemed impossible. How could I possibly pick just one?

So I decided to be a little unfair, and pick the woman who first taught me about writing, at least formally: Margo Lanagan.

Head on over to Gillian's blog to read the rest!

in which my to-read stack … expands

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Mar 032012

One thing that putting up links to Aussie women authors is achieving: my book hunger is breaking through my savings. I have purchased 16 books in the past three weeks, 15 of which are authored by women. Not all of them by Aussie women, since when my book hunger broke its bonds I remembered all the books I'd coveted at WFC and there was simply no resisting all the pretty.

The other thing it does is staccato-ise my twitter feed. I get one tweet in, spot a name, and have to jot it down on my list to research. Women: there be a lot of you.

And in more whimsical news: an interview I participated in a while back is now up in Romanian. It's almost like I speak another language, without even knowing.

Grace

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Feb 122012

On a quiet Sunday morning, I can hear the trains rattling by.

I don't live close enough that they're audible with each passing (thankfully), but when the world is still outside my window then I can hear it, the distant clatter-and-clack, clatter-and-clack of an electric train rushing over tracks originally built to accommodate steam engines.

Sometimes — very rarely — it really is a steam engine, its strident whistle a jarring incongruity against the hum of twenty first century traffic.

Today it's making me somewhat melancholy — or perhaps I'm noticing it today because I am melancholy? Such is the inevitable cycle of these things.

I find myself thinking, today, of R.

I don't know her well, or indeed at all, really. But I think she's a very gracious and graceful woman.

Somewhat to my own surprise, I can do crises. Give me a car accident, or a family calamity, or even just someone in a panic and needing to be talked down, and that's all in my stride. But strangers, and social situations, they can (and often do) strain me to the very eye-teeth of my abilities. If something happens while I'm out there, on the raggedy edge of my coping skills — well, my defences are already stretched too thin, and I take the hurt deeply.

Those situations that undo me, R. takes in her stride. She faces them with manners that are downright Victorian: she's warm and open and engages fearlessly and competently in any conversation. She dares, and she's bullet-proof … or at least, whatever wounds she takes, she doesn't show. She is grace under pressure.

Everyone has something to teach us, and R. taught me that sometimes, all it takes to be amazing is a very small, simple thing — like caring.

i can't help but count the seconds ticking by

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Feb 042012

Time is proving more elusive than usual, of late. This is possibly (shh, don't tell anyone) due to being a smidge over-committed. On pretty much all fronts.

There's the personal deadline for the zero draft of the faerie novel, which is fast approaching (and the recalcitrant thing shows no signs of approaching its narrative end any time within that deadline). Of course, being self-imposed, that's a little flexible — but I'm loathe to mess with it, because I need to be able to stamp =30= on something approximating a draft of this thing and let it collapse under its own weight and sort itself out in a drawer for a while. It's well past time.

Then there's the bunch of short stories, most longer than short and one (hopefully) just normal short, that I've committed to writing. Those deadlines are not flexible — and, I admit, it bothers me that I don't have any words against any of these stories yet. (Well, I have a collection of notes against one of them. I did have 10,000 words on that one, but that was me feeling my way. In the wrong direction, as it turned out. C'est la writing process, eh?)

Still. I trust my process (or I'm resolutely telling myself I do), if not that I'll have time to dedicate to it.

On top of that there's the Kindle links, which I am still getting to but so inch-by-inch that it breaks my heart. I've managed to pretty up the page some, and I've just yesterday included a form so that now people can submit their own links.

This sort of workload and over-commitment is always dangerous, for me. I'm far too inclined as it is to spend my weekends on words, and when I feel I have no leeway it's too easy to forget that I need time away from the words in order to be able to work with them.

Luckily, life is compensating by throwing social engagements my way, whether I want them or not. It's almost like it's summer, and normal people don't catch cancer by venturing outdoors at this time of year. Crazy!

creativity is an addiction

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Jan 262012

A golden outfit made from spider silk has gone on display at London's Victoria and Albert Museum:

The four-metre-long hand-woven textile, a natural vivid gold colour, was made from the silk of more than one million female golden orb spiders collected in the highlands of Madagascar by 80 people over five years.

I remember hearing about endeavours by scientists to mass-produce spider silk. The approach, if I remember correctly, was to modify the DNA of goats so that spider silk proteins were produced in the goats' milk. I even wrote a (terrible) story around that premise during my stint at Clarion South. But I haven't heard any more on that front for years — I wonder what happened?

I never knew that anybody had collected enough spider silk by hand to weave fabric from it, which is apparently an until-now forgotten art.

The effort involved in such an endeavour — catching the spiders every morning, harnessing them into contraptions designed to extract their silk, making thread out of the silk and textile out of the fabric — the patience and time and labour that has been poured into it is … humbling.

It made me think about all the energy that I pour into my writing. Sometimes, when I'm tired, when I'm frustrated with my chronic time-poverty, it's easy to feel dispirited. About a lack of progress, or the latest mental block, or the sheer enormity of the task still to go. And I can't whinge, like I want to, because I chose this, and I keep choosing this. Every day I choose writing. (Even if it feels like a Clayton's Choice, but that's a topic for a whole different post.)

It helps me to stumble across stories like this. Tales of fascination, and the endeavours born out of and carried onwards by that fascination. Perhaps making a coat out of spider silk does nothing for us on a practical level: but I, for one, smiled when I heard of it. And felt inspired.

And now I have a new trick to add to my toolbox for when I get the grumps with the process: I shall simply consider my words to be little golden orb spiders. All I need to do is catch a few dozen a day, and coax them gently into a pleasing order.

And hope the wily bastards stay put.

in which the linkable kindle list is born

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Jan 202012

The laundry sink is backed up, so there's been no washing for over a week now, which has forced a little ingenuity and/or creativity into this week's wardrobe choices. If I were rich, I could afford to live somewhere that had, oh, I don't know, working taps. It's the little things, eh?

Anyway! I have not been idle!

After much trawling for solutions that would allow me to add links (simply and with a minimum of headache) to the list of australian women writers on Kindle, I believe I have at last hit upon a solution. I have therefore set up a page: Australian Women Writers on Kindle.

It's currently not optimised, display-wise, and the list only has those whose names I've managed to collect links for¹, but it will grow, link by link and name by name, as I add to it in dribs and drabs over the coming evenings.

The names are sorted into sub-lists of genres (contemporary, historical, romance, speculative fiction, non fiction, memoir) and format (novels and anthologies) — which is broad, but I figured part of the fun of a reading challenge is finding something outside your comfort zone.

And now, it's totally time for a pizza dinner.

if your name, or the name of the author you think is missing, is not on this page but is on the blog post of the initial response, then I'm working on adding it [↩]

aus/nz women writers on kindle

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Jan 132012

Yesterday I foolishly put a call out for Aus/NZ female writers who have work available on the Kindle, as part of the Australian Women Writers 2012 challenge.

It is fair to say I have not been able to keep up with the response.

Originally I'd intended to go through and present the names in a lovely collated list complete with links to authors' websites and their kindle-edition books. But so far I haven't even had a chance to do more than the most cursory of vetting of names — and, too, I figure it's better to get the list out sooner rather than never.

So, while with time I still plan to go through and sort by genre, and add links and book info (maybe a goodreads shelf?), for now: a very bare-bones list of Aus/NZ women writers, for your reading/researching pleasure.

Goldie Alexander
Belinda Alexandra
Jo Anderton

Philippa Ballantine
Patricia Bernard
Deborah Biancotti
Laura Bloom
Honey Brown
Alyssa Brugman
Frances Burke

Lindy Cameron
Trudi Canavan
Leslie Cannold
Isobelle Carmody
Lisa Clifford
Claire Corbett
Denise Covey
Sandy Curtis
Alison Croggon

Rowena Cory Daniells
Cecilia Dart-Thornton
Marianne de Pierres
Joy Dettman
Sara Douglass
Felicity Dowker

Hazel Edwards
Jennifer Fallon
Phillipa Fioretti
Elaine Forrestal
Kate Forsyth

Sulari Gentill
Andrea Goldsmith
Alison Goodman
Janet Gover
Posie Graeme-Evans
Kerry Greenwood
Kate Grenville

Lisa Hannett
Donna Hanson
Narelle Harris
Rhiannon Hart
Karen Healey
Lian Hearn
Lisa Heidke
Talie Helene
Nette Hilton

Anna Jacobs
Linda Jaivin
Patty Jansen
Myfanwy Jones
Toni Jordan

Deborah Kalin
Leah Kaminsky
Phyllis King

Margo Lanagan
Glenda Larke
Stephanie Laurens
Julia Leigh
Gabrielle Lord
Helen Lowe

Bren MacDibble
Melina Marchetta
Juliet Marillier
Sophie Masson
Colleen McCullough
Kirstyn McDermott
Fiona McGregor
Monica McInerny
Fiona McIntosh
Maggie McKellar
Juliet McKenna
Foz Meadows
Gillian Mears
Hazel Menehira
Jennifer Mills
Liane Moriarty
Kate Morton
Nicole Murphy

Malla Nunn

Kate Orman
Caroline Overington

Amanda Pillar
Gillian Pollack

Tansy Rayner Roberts
Sally Rippin
Jane Routley
Penni Russon

Angela Savage
Mandy Sayer
Katherine Scholes
Jessica Shirvington
Angela Slatter
Cat Sparks
Lucy Sussex

Anna Tambour
Rachael Treasure

Mary Victoria

Kaaron Warren
Kim Westwood
Felicity White
Anne Whitfield
Kim Wilkins
Lili Wilkinson
Janet Woods
A.K. Wrox

NOTE: The names listed have, in most cases, been volunteered on behalf of the author. If you spot something incorrect — or think someone is missing from this page (as there undoubtedly is!) — please email me with the correct information, including any appropriate links. Thanks!

Call Out: Australian Women Writers on Kindle

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Jan 122012

It has been suggested by minds cleverer than mine, namely Tansy, that a list of SF & Fantasy (or any genre really) books by female authors available on the Kindle in the Aus/NZ region would be a useful thing.

And since I haven't actually managed to start the challenge for myself yet, and since I'd been toying with the idea of starting a twitter list of aussie women authors only to find I didn't need to because Elizabeth has one started, I thought this might be something I could do to help.

So!

If you are — or know of — an Australian female author with books available on the Kindle in the Aus/NZ region, let me know.

Leave me a comment here, or send me a twitter reply/dm (my username over there is debkalin), or email me and I'll set up a post or page with the collated information. Links to author's websites (and/or straight to the Kindle store) would of course be appreciated, but for those who forget to/can't provide one, I'll do my best to hunt out what I can on that front. Genre information for the author and/or book might not go astray either, for the benefit of those seeking books to review.

sometimes, daily means when you can

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Jan 072012

I started this year with an admittedly-ambitious daily target: 1,200 a day on the faerie novel and 700 a day on a short story (which will probably end up not entirely that short). I could have aimed for a lower target, but that would have meant working on Saturdays and Sundays and one thing I learnt last year is that time off — and flexibility — are things I can't skimp on.

So naturally this week threw me two non-writing day curveballs in the form of a 3-hour round trip to get the hail damage on the car assessed on Thursday, and a dizzy spell on Friday. So today has been all about catching up (on the faerie novel, at least). Sometimes, writing every day does not mean writing daily.

Eh. Whatever works, right?

I "met" this fellow at the Tiergarten Schönbrunn: he's a Marabou, a species of bird of which I had never heard before that day. He's part of the stork family, and he's from Africa.

And he has a magnificent get-off-my-damn-lawn! dance the like of which I have never seen before. Wings akimbo, he would cover the length of each wall of his enclosure in a sliding-hopping-gliding motion in heartbeats.

Do storks dance in courtship, or is it only the crane family who do that?

I wonder if the poor, magnificent fellow was simply bored, and passing the time?

I'd love to see him in the wild.

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