nulla dies sine linea » Deborah Kalin

so much for regular blogging

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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. [↩]

creativity is an addiction

journal, writing life 2 Responses »

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 a win for all future mornings, i did not go back to bed. but it took eating easter chocolate.

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Jul 292011

Some days it takes every trick in the book to get up and sit down, even promising yourself that you don't have to write when you get there. (You're lying, and you know it. But you're counting on your inner perversity to carry that one through.)

Then there's days, like today, when you sleep through said every trick, and it takes more, it takes the panicked sting of adrenaline to get you going.

Then you find out your mother's flight has been cancelled. And she's arriving later. And you have time to spare now.

And you know this kind of 'reward' is only going to reinforce the bad behaviours.

why, hello again, 5:55am.

journal, writing life 1 Response »

Jun 202011

At last, I've bowed to the inevitable and taken up writing in the mornings again.

I've always written best(ish) in the mornings — by which I mean I like that I start the day knowing I have words on the manuscript, and I like that the manuscript gets first dibs on my attention. At that time of day it's more sleep-deprived than fresh, but at least it isn't drained by attending to the day's myriad needs into the bargain, which is generally my evening state of mind.

It's fair to say, though, I don't like getting up early. The bed is waaaaaaaaaarm. My eyeballs take twenty minutes to work up any moisture and come to something approximating a working agreement with my contact lenses, so I'm not exaggerating when I say the first hundred or so words are written literally blind. (Lucky I can touch-type.) Writing to a clock, because I have to stop in time to get to the dayjob, means I'm constantly interrupting myself to check the time. (I've set an alarm to keep track of the time for me, but it's a nervous tic. I'm hoping practice will help me relax and trust the alarm sooner or later.)

What I love, nay absolutely ADORE, about writing in the mornings is that I am the only person in the world. Sitting tucked up in the dark, with only myself and my laptop and my imagination, knowing the rest of the world is sleeping and no one, but no one, will disturb me … it's divine beyond words. Of course, I'd prefer that snug dark lonesomeness to be post-midnight, but that doesn't work so well with a dayjob. Pre-dawn is the next best thing.

Despite knowing from experience this was my best option, I fought it. Because it's cold in the mornings: I don't need more chillblains, and that kind of cold only exacerbates the aches in my back, neck, shoulders and wrists. Because it seemed like it would create more problems in my daily routine than it would solve, such as waking the pterosaur¹ or making it impossible for me to get enough sleep. Because I wanted to try being more flexible and less routine-driven, like normal people.

But I tried flexible and less routine-driven, and all it gave me was less time than before, and a never-ending slew of last-minute errands which regularly swallowed any chance of writing that day. And I underestimated the pterosaur, who is simultaneously supportive and utterly unrousable in that he manages to lift the doona and help push me upright without actually waking himself. And as for the cold … I have a heater now!

Sometimes, taking time for your writing means admitting you need those routines that you think make you boring. And taking that time, and enforcing that routine, even though you risk some people thinking you're boring. Because the people that count will understand. (Although they will probably still think you're a little bit crazy. But everyone knew that bit already anyway.)

I haven't mentioned the pterosaur overmuch on the blog, out of respect for his privacy, but suffice to say he's named for the noise he makes when he hiccoughs. It's totally the noise a flying dino would make if it had just spotted delicious (utterly deaf) prey. Startling stuff. [↩]

like the pensive penguin

away come away, journal 4 Responses »

Jun 032011

Complain that you hate your novel, and the internet gives you possible explanations.

First it was a post by Clarissa Draper on writer's ~~block~~ boredom, and coping therewith¹ which made me realise I was bored. Oh, of COURSE. To be fair, I've never written to an outline before, precisely because every time I try I end up being bored, and I thought my current level of boredom was "just" because of the outline, not due to the trudgery, gotta-get-through-this-detail bit of the narrative.

To counter my boredom, I have decided to kill off a (very nice) priest, which is helping to liven things up a little.

After that, it was Rowena's post on narrative structure, linking to a discussion of linear and patterned structure by Jennifer Crusie, and that got me to wondering whether the faerie novel was supposed to be patterned rather than linear… (For the record, I don't think it is. At all, in fact. But at least it got me thinking, and I'm sure an awareness of the pattern and shape hanging above all this detail I'm currently trudging through can't hurt. And I have a feeling that, while I'm writing the bits I know linearly, I'm still going to be mulling over the larger structure for a while to come.) Like the pensive penguin I am.

Then I spent Saturday, in a random and unexpected turn of events, totally and utterly ~~neglecting~~ ~~ignoring~~ resting from my writing, including attending a party where all and sundry fondly chastised me for never taking weekends off and made me promise to schedule some downtime into my routine. I interpreted this as permission to spend Sunday totally and utterly resting from my writing. And it was glorious. And included chocolate-covered peanuts.

So. The internet/universe, it turns out, is listening. Even if it doesn't always look that way. Because the internet/universe is a bit creepy that way.

(Dear internet/universe, I would really appreciate it if my neck and shoulder muscles did not ache all. the. time. (And no fair just shifting the ache somewhere else.) Just putting that out there.)

(Also, while you're at it, I want a pterosaur of my very own. No particular rush.)

I really have spent too long in the dayjob. The lawyers always put there before every preposition, whether it belongs or not, and I've fallen into the same habit because I have to argue back using their own language. Therewith. Thereto. Therein. Thereat. Therebetween. That last one doesn't even exist! Lawyers, do you SEE the perversions you make me practice upon the English language? I will never forgive you. [↩]

on a winter's sunday i go

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May 302011

So one of my tasks, pre departure for Europe, among the planning of itineraries and other such intricacies, is to find myself a bridesmaid dress. Internets, this is not really my forte. I have a picture of the dress I must match/complement but really, it's not like white is a difficult colour to match/complement so that's not quite as helpful as I was hoping. This weekend just gone, after discovering yet again that I had too much work on hand to leave the house, I decided to try window shopping via the internet. This was not such a good idea. I found dresses, of course — dresses which had no price listed against them (and are therefore automatically out of my price range) and which need to be ordered with up to 16 weeks notice. Oh dear. You can attend a wedding in jeans, right? Totally normal.

On the writing front, I absolutely hate and loathe the faerie novel all of a sudden. Not sure what happened: I was loving it, then not loving it but it was just a bit of a slog, and suddenly it's the worst tripe ever written. If I could be sure it was purely and simply that dreaded middle point, I could forge on ahead knowing the love will return. But alas, I cannot silence the little nagging thought that it could be a symptom of a narrative that's taken the bit between its teeth and dashed off over a cliff in the middle of the night. Which means there'll be a broken neck come morning, and no one likes cleaning up that sort of mess.

So while I wrestle with my inner editor and my inner suck-monkey, who may or may not be in cahoots or at odds, have some more local graffiti. I would dearly like to know what she's advertising, as it were.

(Hey, maybe it's a boutique bridesmaid dress and manuscript writing outfit and all my dreams are answered…?)

chasing zen. again.

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Feb 042011

It's not often that I suffer from writer's block.

For me, it strikes when I have too much to say, and not enough time to say it. My head fills up with fragments of sentences and splinters of stories, none of it tied to any other piece or theme, just a great swirling structure-less tangle. All that mulch in my head is so busy growing such a multitude of different ideas that none of them can get a clear shot at the sunlight.

Blog posts and stories get tangled together, pairing off wrongly and spawning little mutant baby ideas, until my focus disintegrates and I find myself thinking re-tagging my mp3 library is a worthwhile use of my time right now.

I've never been at a loss for something to say, particularly, not when writing. I simply get choked by how much I want to say, or by how best to say it. (That last is easier to attack at least: write something appalling, and edit it mercilessly into something cogent, and call it done. (For some reason that tactic works much better on writing fiction than it does on writing a blog post, though.)) I want to write about silence, and breaking it; about conversations and confrontations; about the mechanics of a story, its structure and its heart; about innovation as opposed to invention; about people who can't give up and people who can. I want to finish that troublesome thorn girls story, and crank out some mileage on the faerie novel. I need to get that international report done for the dayjob, and prune back that tangle of further correspondence breeding in my in-tray faster than I can sterilise them.

Instead, so far, my mp3 library has sprouted a more comprehensive collection of cover art.

but the year is slipping away, and i miss the words

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Oct 032010

There's an interview with Paolo Bacigalupi up at Techland and, quite apart from the fact that I am now livid with jealousy over what is apparently the coolest surname meaning EVER, towards the end of the interview Bacigalupi has some powerful things to say about writing:¹

For me … having the raw ability … it was meaningless, ultimately. It was the willingness to write four novels and fuck them all up and keep going that was the definer … the willingness to accept failure and not let it stop you, and to not let that define you.

And I feel like it doesn't get talked about, that idea that nobody accidentally gets published. You don't accidentally fall into writing a novel. Just the process of actually writing a novel is too damn hard for anybody to accidentally fall into it. And if somebody says, "yeah I just did it," they're probably lying. They wanted it and they went after it is what they did.

…Discipline comes from within, not from without. I think of it as being, there are those people who are waiting for the thing to arrive, and then there's people who are going out and making it. I think about it as almost theft. You almost have to steal the book from the rest of your life. There's so few things that are going to support you in the process of writing a book. There's always more child care. There's always some emergency that has to happen. There's always some reason why, you know, you have a deadline at your regular job and so you have to stay up late, and you can't get your writing done. If you're going to write it's always stolen from somebody else's time, or some other responsibility.

Life's been a bit hectic lately, complicated by such fun things as being stalked by RSI and productivity targets at the dayjob, not to mention a ludicrous quantity of errands, and it's been stealing my writing time and energy. Worse, I've been letting that happen — because the stories I have at hand are being uncooperative, and procrastinating on them is far easier than wrangling them into submission.²

Carving time out of your day and life to write is a lesson I've already learnt — but it's also one of those lessons I continually have to re-learn and re-affirm. It can be a hard fight, to carve out that time for myself and my stories, but the hardest fight is to do it consistently and incessantly, every day. Life lets me steal a pocket out of any given day without too much trouble — but when I try to steal a pocket out of every single day, life fights back. Sooner or later, life lands a suckerpunch, and I'll miss a day. That's when the slide starts, and I find myself skipping two days and promising myself if I just have the rest of the week off from writing to knock over all these errands I'll be able to start again on Saturday with a clear head.

Finding time to write, it seems, is one endless game of snakes and ladders. Only without the ladders.

Today I'm going to dodge those pesky snakes, though.

And/or investing in the creative process, since it has a far wider application than simply writing [↩]
Well, okay, to be fair to me: calling life a bit hectic lately is a touch of an understatement. But still. [↩]

a thousand words a day – or you'll never write again

away come away, journal, writing life 2 Responses »

Aug 242009

Today I learned that my understanding of the applicability of the phrase "nature abhors a vacuum" was, in fact, completely and utterly misguided. At least according to wikipedia. And we all know what a veritable wealth of reputable information wikipedia is.¹

After my sleep-deprived week, I enjoyed a stupefyingly, blissfully quiet weekend which, quite frankly, I wasn't ready to be done with. I demand a recount, damnit! Then I caught up with some writerly friends last night, during which I once again felt ogrishly unproductive by comparison. (You would think I would learn to stop with the comparisons, but apparently I'm a bit slow on that particular uptake.) Oh well. These things happen. I would claim it helped me keep my backside in the library chair this afternoon despite my desire for a nap, but in truth it was the rain which started shortly after my arrival at the library which kept me there.

That rain, and the soaking it gave me on the trudge home, will make going to the library tomorrow afternoon an uphill battle. Rainy days always test my resolve.

But right now, if you'll excuse me, I may or may not be about to eat my own bodyweight in crepes for dinner.

Although, to be fair to the wiki: if the topic is at all related to pop-culture references, I'm not going to argue with it. On science it can get shaky, but on The Simpsons, wiki is da man. [↩]

today i sat in a beanbag for 8 hours (it was the best day evah)

journal, shaping lily, writing life 9 Responses »

Jul 192009

Today, determined to finish the first pass of edits on "Shaping Lily", I decided to track my progress throughout the day. In the interests of accountability, you understand.

Read on at your own peril. You have been warned.

9:17: Realise I've been dicking around on the internet far too long already, mostly reading through 6 insane discoveries science can't explain (yet).¹ This is not a promising start to my revisions. Quickly check my to-do list, and remember in a panic all those bloody things I promised myself I'd do today. Realise edits on Lily is therefore not the first thing I have to do today. Decide edits on Lily are the first thing I'm going to do today anyway.

I knew about the antikythera mechanism, but didn't know about the others. Really like the pipes. And ~~the bloop~~ Cthulhu. [↩]

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