no one gets out alive
Chemically speaking, a catalyst is a substance that initiates or accelerates a reaction without itself being affected.
Which is correct, as far as it goes, but it's also a reductionist view.
The catalyst may appear unchanged from its initial state, but nevertheless it participates in the reaction. The reactants adhere to its surface, and squirm inside its pores. They shed an electron here, two there, dropping the detritus of their old form and using the catalyst to re-shape themselves into a new incarnation. They borrow the catalyst's stability and strength, plundering its interior as a means to an end.
Then they jump. Tearing themselves from the catalyst, dropping into the freedom of their shiny new form, they are butterflies climbing free of their caterpillar cocoons. They leave nothing behind, physically at least.
But the catalyst remembers. She lost some of herself, however briefly, to fund that transformation. They squirmed across the surface of her and burrowed into her capillaries, those caterpillars turned butterflies, those atoms in search of a new molecular pairing. It was by her power they were granted their new direction, and the strength and energy to pursue it.
They changed her, too, however briefly.
1 August 2010 @ 18:31 | 2 Comments
call me back when the war is over
I am, right this very second, supposed to be writing.
Sir Tessa is sitting across from me1 and she's working industriously.
I am not.2
Instead I am trying out Sir Tessa's new portable ergonomic keyboard. I am not succeeding overly well at typing with this contraption, because the keys are in the wrong space! They're also labelled weirdly, but, being a touch-typist, that's not so disturbing on the whole.
Being a touch-typist is also part of the problem, however. It means my fingers know precisely where the keys should be, and they're not there any more. Y and B are particularly troublesome: those two keys are supposed to be hit by the right and left index fingers, respectively. But I tend to indulge in some crossing of the keyboard, depending on the word in question, so every second time I try to hit either one of them I go for it with the wrong index finger and end up stabbing the table.
Yeah, I look pretty incapable right about now.
Maybe I'll go back to hunting and pecking. That's probably better for the wrists anyway.
- Well, she was, when we sat down. For all I know, given she's leant me her laptop riser stand and thus I can't see anything behind the screen, she's got up and run away, leaving me all alone in the library… [↩]
- She's gonna be so disappointed in me, when she realises what I've been doing with my time… [↩]
31 July 2010 @ 17:09 | 6 Comments
i am this close to declaring to-do-list bankruptcy
Since the old routine was proving difficult to groove back into, post-Mongolia, I've been trying out a new routine. It's not quite working yet.
Previously I'd been landing early at the dayjob, and writing after I clocked off. This has the benefit of my morning tram not being a peak hour one, and the library, where I'm sure not to be interrupted, is open for my writing session. But the library is in the wrong direction, away from home, and errands tend to be scheduled in my writing time. All of which means it tends to vanish before I get to it.
So I've taken to writing before I clock on. It means I get to keep my non-peak-hour tram, I get to work more "normal" hours, and I get at least one hour's writing time that won't be eaten by errands. Sadly, libraries are not early-risers, so while my writing time isn't being eaten by errands, it's not sans interruptions. Decidedly not.
I've been thinking, this weekend, about what I can do to fix that.
There are a couple of external options — writing in a cafe, for example — but maybe what I really need to change is my mind-set.
Writing used to be easier and swifter than I find it now. Partly that's because I'm more conscious of the craft, and trying to exercise finer control over it; a slower pace is a natural consequence. But maybe it's also partly because I have a habit of pushing myself too hard.
Because pretty much all this year I've been caught in a vicious cycle. I'm tired, from working long hours, which means I don't hit even the modest wordcount I'm aiming for, so I push myself harder the next day and work all weekend to catch up, which means I'm tired from working long hours with no break, so I don't hit even the modest wordcount I'm aiming for…
From now on I'll be taking at minimum one day off a week — and that day is going to be a weekend, so it's a proper rest from all forms of work.
And in the meantime I'm going to practise being more in the now,1 so that when I am interrupted it doesn't take me 20 minutes to get back into my train of thought. Or so that when I'm writing, my mind is working — not on how many words I've written or revised (and oh no I only have 20 minutes left before I have to clock on) — but instead on how I'm going to fix this next sentence, this next paragraph, this next scene.
- Oh, and also, I am going to get to all those emails and phonecalls currently waiting on me to return them. Just, yanno, when I can. [↩]
11 July 2010 @ 16:32 | 6 Comments
all the tiny moments of waste add up
So I'm having a little trouble with mustering up the organisational skills required to slot back into my normal routine.
Trams, being the junkies they are, require the regular feeding of metcards. Guess what I forgot to buy (and what you can't buy cheaply (or at all, if you don't have coins) on the tram itself)? Houses, once locked, require keys in order to be unlocked and yield up their comforts (said comforts being an empty pantry, but that's entirely beside the point). Guess what I left at work yesterday, and didn't realise until I was standing outside my front door? Corporate wear, in order to be classed as corporate, requires ironing. Guess what I couldn't be arsed doing any time since I landed?
The thing is, I know there's tasks I need to tackle — but whenever I think of them, I'm choosing not to bother. And I'm okay with that.
It can't last, of course. One day in and already I'm making time-wasting mistakes, when I'm time-poor. If I want to put in a productive day at the dayjob, achieve progress on the writing, and get in what (scant) exercise I can to combat the sedentary spread, without wasting more time than necessary on the daily commute, an organised routine is critical. But I'm beginning to see just how much organisation (and pre-planning, high-alert behaviour) my normal routine requires of me.
Sooner or later, I'm going to have to choose to tackle that routine again. Maybe now's my chance to see what I can streamline.
When I was just starting out at this writing gig1 I thought that the craft was the hardest thing to master. It's not. Don't get me wrong, I still don't understand how putting words in a row can be so challenging, but finding (and keeping) a routine that carves out time to write is sometimes equally as challenging. Life has this nasty habit of encroaching.
In the meantime, while I ponder how best to tweak my daily routine, I give you something I never noticed before yesterday. At the dayjob, we have a desk full of health-wise informational pamphlets, you know the type, all about walking your dog and knowing your blood sugar levels. Turns out there's a rather unfortunate placement of the Beyond Blue campaign poster directly above the anti-smoking campaign envelope:
Because you're not alone...but if you're determined to believe you are, we also have a handy envelope detailing the most efficient ways to end it all...?
- Heck, what am I talking about? I still consider myself to be just starting out. I always thought having a book published would help me feel more accomplished. Turns out, like every other writer who's gone before me thinking the same thing, I was wrong. I still feel just as raw and awkward as I ever did. [↩]
23 June 2010 @ 18:59 | 2 Comments
what the heart wants, the head fears
This evening, after a flurry of emails throughout the day between the travel agent and myself, and many tweakings and confirmings of dates, I am in possession of a quote for an entire overseas holiday. Flights, accommodation, transfers, and insurance.
And about ten minutes ago I had a moment of sheer, blindness-inducing terror, because I couldn't possibly actually go through with it.
But you know what? It's simply not true. (Dear Brain Chemistry: I'm onto you. Stop it!)
I would have the same jitters no matter where I was planning to visit, no matter how standard the destination, because I have a head that likes to throw all sorts of catastrophes and definitely-going-to-go-wrongs at me regardless of reality or probability.1
And at the end of the day, I don't want to waste what little time off I get on holidays that don't take off the top of my skull and reboot my soul. I want to see geography that makes my heart swell with awe, and to witness cultures and ways of life that break my expectations. I want to see mountains, and steppes, and deserts.
So yes. Tomorrow I'm putting a deposit on my flights, and booking my leave from work.
And I'm going to Mongolia.2
22 March 2010 @ 20:59 | 4 Comments
For what nation can advance with its tongue torn out?
I am feeling somewhat serious today, and so I point you to Richard Flanagan's closing speech at the recent Sydney Writer's Festival:
At the moment, Australian writers and readers are being asked to take a fall in order that a few rich people get richer.
… This dullest and dreariest of phrases – territorial copyright – is the drab motley thrown over a measure which will do untold damage to Australian culture. I cannot begin to convey to you the destructive stupidity of what is being proposed, nor the intense sadness and great anger that so many Australian writers feel about this proposal.
…Writers and books that matter will become like an endangered species with no habitat left to support them. The fate of most of them in the large chain and discount mega store culture will be that of marsupials in new outer suburbs, dicing with death on freeways, not knowing until that short moment of blinding light dazzle that this is no longer their home.
I highly recommend reading the full text of the speech, but for the edification of those non-Australians who read this blog, there is a proposal afoot to remove Australia's territorial copyright laws, and allow the parallel importation of books. Proponents argue it will result in cheaper books for the public.
Now, I'm all for cheaper books,1 but the arguments for parallel importation are specious, as Richard Flanagan summarises (emphasis mine):
Of course, as the Coalition for Cheaper Books – or, as we might more accurately call it, the Coalition for Bigger Business – would point out, that's not the whole story.
This is.
What is being proposed doesn't exist in Europe or the USA. And even if US and British publishers are allowed to dump books on our market, Australian publishers will not be allowed to do the same in theirs.
In the one country in the world where the change was introduced, New Zealand, publishing has, according to the New Zealand Publishers Association, suffered, and books are now more expensive.
If it were a reciprocal arrangement — if Australian publishers were granted access to the North American buying public at the same time as the North American publishers are granted access to the Australian buying public, for example — then the story might be different. But as it stands, the current proposal isn't "opening the market": it's turning Australia into a giant remainders bin for foreign publishers.
I don't know about you, but I get plenty of foreign culture on my TV and movie screens and book shelves as it is. I don't want those to be my only options.
More detail can be found at the AusBooks site, including a video of Richard Flanagan's speech, for those who don't want to read a slab of text online.
- Let's just say I don't know any published writers who got into this gig for the money
[↩]
2 June 2009 @ 19:53 | 3 Comments
sometimes alcohol is the best medicine
Right. Back again. I'll spare you all the details, mainly because I don't want to live through them a second time. Suffice to say things looked bleak for a while there. Not everything has fallen back into place just yet, but I don't think the light at the end of the tunnel is the oncoming train any more, so that's positive.
My writing time vanished out the window in all the panic, so I'm very much looking forward to getting words on paper again. All I've managed in the past week is scrawling one or two sentences on scraps of paper during spare minutes in my lunch break. There are a lot of scraps of paper, but a preliminary sort shows most of them have variations of the same sentence on them. Probably because I have a habit of writing down the last sentence I can remember as a starting point, but I obviously never got past the starting point most days. C'est la vie.
It puts me behind, of course, and I might have to start looking at allocating my writing time from a more financially responsible point of view. The novel I'm working on currently is uncontracted; perhaps it's time to put it aside in favour of one that has a more certain future. I shall ponder the issue. Tomorrow. Or maybe over the weekend.
In the meantime, I have spent a goodly portion of this evening attempting to understand the telephone provider system in Australia. I am baffled. Should it be this hard? Really?
26 March 2009 @ 20:05 | 4 Comments
in brief
Objective: Drive. Until the battery is sufficiently charged.
Secondary Objective: Stickybeak around a few suburbs, to see if there's any I fall in love with.
Method: Me. Behind the wheel. Sharing the road with trams. At speed. (Praying I don't stall because there's no way this sucker is restarting short of a jumpstart at this point.)
Outcome: Thoroughly lost? ACHIEVED.
Dear Melbourne: Not big on informative road signs that can be seen at any speed faster than perambulatory, huh? No thanks, Me.
Also, let it be known that mothers are made of win. Mothers who insist you EAT THAT SCHNITZEL AND CHASE IT DOWN WITH GELATO NOW transcend even that.
24 March 2009 @ 7:47 | 4 Comments
it never rains but it pours
The signing sheets for Postscripts #18 have come and gone on their merry way and I can say this with certainty: I have no signature. Truly, every single one of those sheets is unique.
I am currently sitting in my car, which is at the moment a very expensive sculpture, on account of the battery going to sleep sometime in the past two weeks and now declining to emerge from its coma. Given that I need the car today in order to find a place to live, my previous plans having exploded in rather spectacular and last-minute fashion, I am, needless to say, a little peeved with life right about now. For values of a little roughly approximate to I think the world can just go ahead and burn, what do I care any more?
So, my apologies, but sporadic and unfocussed (and haphazardly abandoned) is going to be a feature of this site until life JUST SETTLES DOWN, DAMMIT.
In the meantime, have a snippet of awesome to entertain you: Predator X (link courtesy of splinister)
PS: Comments are not turned off, but please be aware that I may be a little distracted and unable to get around to answering any of them for a bit.
21 March 2009 @ 11:42 |
