deborahb.blog

Edited out

2009-07-11T00:32:51Z

*Apparently* — and I don’t quite believe it — editing is completed on A Book of Endings.

I am heartily sick of everything I’ve ever written.

On the plus side, nice to know I can endure a rapid editing phase (I remember Karen Miller telling the story of her worldcon adventure one year where she spent the weekend in her hotel room editing an entire novel in 3 days. This is clearly the gold standard of professional writing!).

I have to admit, though, that I no longer know what those 6 new stories in the book actually are, what they’re about, or why I wrote them in the first place! (If anyone ever reads this collection, perhaps they could let me know the answers to the first 2 questions. The final answer may be lost in the fog of history.)

But what I’m most impressed with & grateful for is what *other* people are doing for this project. Just one f’instance out of the army of people working on, helping with & supporting this project: Graham Joyce took time out of a busy schedule right before going on leave to give me this charming cover blurb:

“Deborah Biancotti’s superb collection of short stories reminds me of the engaging work of Robert Aickman. She is a damned fine storyteller and her sheer originality, zest, energy and style fill the dark skyline of the modern world with luminous flares of mysterious force.”

It takes a village to write a book, & I’m blessed to be part of this one.

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Water and dust

2009-07-09T00:32:30Z

Apparently California is in the middle of a drought. Not as bad as the Australian one, apparently: we are increasingly unable to grow rice. This is a logical conclusion I hadn’t really considered. Unable to grow rice? What the.

Then again, perhaps we’ll be able to grow rice in the Arctic soon enough.

Water is one of those fascinating (frightening) aspects of climate change. I hadn’t thought to combine it before with the current literature trend in will-we-eat-ourselves-to-death books. Food shortages as the end of civilisation. It seems so logical.

In other news there is carpentry going on at casa deborahb now (yes, during my allotted writing time) & though the noise of it is distracting, the smell of fresh cut wood on a bitingly cold winter day is oddly cheering. Makes this little city grrl want to head out to a farm and sit in the barn all day.

… What is Australian for barn?

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

More or less human

2009-07-08T12:56:58Z

When Michael Jackson died, I was surprised as hell. It didn’t occur to me he’d die. It didn’t occur to me, I realised, that he was still alive. I thought, ‘This has reminded me Michael Jackson was human.’

But when the old footage started rolling over & over, the footage of the all-singing-all-dancing Michael Jackson, I realised that I’d stopped thinking of him as a performer. The idea that he might want to perform, might write his own music, seemed as alien as everything about Jackson.

‘It took for Michael to die for the world to recognise his genius,’ came a comment from someplace.

But looking at Jackson now in the documentary ‘Living with Michael Jackson’ I don’t recognise him at all. What the hell happened to that energetic, talented little kid?

And how can you stay sane in an insane world?

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Ninety per cent

2009-07-04T02:39:39Z

The window is replaced, the excitement has died down, I still can’t find anything missing from the house after last week’s uninvited visit. But now we have a motion-sensitive light over our backyard & a locksmith scheduled to make our internal door even more steadfast than it proved to be last week.

(What a great idea that internal door was. I always figured I was just being paranoid.)

Energy levels have finally recovered, too, after last weekend’s 33-hour Robert McKee Story seminar in Sydney. And though the organisers & I will agree to disagree on some aspects, it was a worthwhile weekend. Satisfying? I couldn’t call it that.

Because what McKee reminds me of is how good story can get, & that’s always going to make you remember the gap in your own work between where you are & where you want to be. “Only amateurs love everything they write,” says McKee, further pointing out that, “Ninety per cent of all writing is shit.”

Ninety per cent of your own writing — he assures us — is shit. That’s why you need that ‘passion for perfection’, that willingness to throw stuff away, the desire to edit & re-edit, to plan, to process, to pull out just that ten per cent & to keep doing it.

People will tell you, says McKee, that writing is a highly competitive business, that writers are a dime a dozen. But that’s not true, because for someone who can actually write good story, “There is no competition.”

It’s a seller’s market. If you can do it.

“Write the truth.” That’s what he wrote when he signed my edition of his book. Don’t write the facts (”The facts are what happened. The truth is our human interpretation of what happened.”). Don’t be satisfied with the ninety per cent.

Write the truth.

… Sound easy?

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Via Twitter

2009-06-28T14:02:22Z

Today on twitter:

13:32 Pink just rode past me on a pushbike on Oxford St. #
21:06 3 days of McKee Story, I am an emotional wreck. #
22:48 Holy crap, Michael Jackson's dead?! #
22:50 Hahahaha, right. Hell, I saw the jokes before I saw the news reports. Also, Robert McKee announced it in his workshop. No love lost there. #
22:56 RT!! @Azhure Overall, I am tired of negativity in general. Celebrate something for a change. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter and my twitter page.

Via Twitter

2009-06-26T14:02:26Z

Today on twitter:

16:08 Day 1 of Robert McKee's final Sydney Story lecture. I'm exhausted, he's perfectly fine! 4.5 hours to go. #
21:37 Robert McKee Story seminar = excellent! Venue = beyond shite. #
21:38 "Only amateurs love everything they write." - Robert McKee #
23:56 #followfriday @newscientist for fascination. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter and my twitter page.

Bad pennies

2009-06-25T13:39:21Z

Much excitement at chateau deborahb this morning, but not the good kind. Turns out we had a break-in last night while we were sleeping. And before anyone feels TOO sorry for me, I have to confess that all I lost was a window (400 bucks, thank you very much) & whatever peace of mind I had left before the event.

Good thing for us (note: sarcasm) we live a reasonably dodgy part of Sydney. There’s a long history of break-ins in my area. Muggings, too. A couple home invasions, but that was one time and years ago.

About six years back my neighbour was robbed. Five times in six weeks. Including one time AFTER getting himself the expensive alarm system (they still took his son’s iPod, but they left in a hurry & as far as I know, they haven’t been back). Three doors up we have a house that once sported a sign by the front door that read ‘we have not replaced the stuff you stole last time, please stop breaking into our house’. Years ago someone slipped a broom handle through an open window & took my handbag. They took the whole five bucks & then dropped the handbag — complete with its credit cards — by my back door. Probably figured I needed it more than they did.

The next day I realised every single window had a handprint on its outside.

You get used to the idea you’re being haunted, that strangers are slipping by your outside walls. You form a relationship with your would-be tormenters. You start to swap stories about ‘the guy’s dead eyes’ and ‘the one in the footy shoes so he could climb fences’. You don’t know their names & they don’t care about yours.

I only know all this because I’m in one of those reasonably dodgy neighbourhoods, the kind that bring neighbours together. We watch out for each other. We don’t necessarily like each other. But unlike the thieves that swarm our borders, we respect each other’s rights to space, security, privacy.

One day I found a chewed apple core sitting neatly on the edge of a concrete flowerpot in the back yard. Had someone really climbed my back fence to eat an apple in my backyard in the sun & then left me the core like they were leaving a message? It wasn’t rubbish: they hadn’t discarded it. It was placed delicately on the rim of the pot. For months I wondered what they were trying to say.

Repeat offenders. That’s what we get around here. Teenage junkies, mostly (a local politician once told me off the record that when heroin supplies in Sydney increased, so did petty crimes). Part of the reason I often say ‘junkies!’ with such contempt. Fucked up, soul-spent drifters, heading nowhere, taking our handbags/iPods/laptops with them.

I have a sense I’m waiting for the other shoe to fall.

Because I still can’t find anything missing. Thing is, with this kinda neighbourhood history we’re slightly more security conscious than the average person. Consequently we have the whole bars-on-windows thing going on & we have — the thing that saved us last night — a locked door between the less secure back-of-house & the space where we keep all our stealable stuff. The junkies’ side of the locked door gives them access to the laundry, bathroom & kitchen. Finding the door locked it looks as though they worked backwards through the house opening every kitchen cupboard & bathroom drawer & leaving them open. That’s what I saw when I unlocked the internal door this morning: every kitchen cupboard door hanging open. All I could think of, for several seconds, was ‘Sixth Sense”.

“Were they hungry?” one cop joked later.
“I thought we were being haunted,” I replied, but she didn’t understand me.

There’s been a spate of it recently, they told us. All over the area — including last night 2 doors up where my relatively new neighbour (in this neighbourhood you’re new if you’ve been here less than 10 years) called emergency at 3am, hearing someone in her house. In her case, they got her handbag with her wallet, phone, iPod, all the good stuff that’s a pain in the neck to replace. Thank god for that internal door, I kept thinking (selfishly).

The cops told me the junkies might not bother returning. Maybe they’ll pass up our place for the easier pickings. Or maybe ‘they’ll come back with a crowbar for that door’. My boyfriend tried to argue logically why they wouldn’t, logically why it made sense not to bother trying it again. Logically, logically… he doesn’t have the history with the local junkies that I do. Or the contempt. He thinks they’ll stop trying when it gets too hard. He doesn’t realise they often don’t stop. They don’t have the sense to stop. They don’t know where they’re going. They often end up in a place you wouldn’t expect them.

Me, my brain has switched to that cold rationality that I call ‘Terminator mode’. I’m now assessing my house again, wondering where they’ll try next, where I should be strengthening my defences. Fuck those junkies, for my $400 worth of new window. Fuck them for filling my head with the illogical image of me on my loungeroom floor, slowly beating a junkie to death.

But I figure what I’ll do rather than waste my energy on life’s disenfranchised is go up to my new neighbour two doors up & invite her over for a cup of tea & a history of the local ‘colourful identities’, the ones that have no names, who have a habit of turning up again & again. The ones who don’t think they need an invitation.

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Visual inspiration: Apply within

2009-06-24T13:41:12Z

A good, long chat today with author rcdaniells about the importance of visual inspiration. Oddly, I don’t hear a lot of writers talking about visual influences though I suspect it’s more prevalent than a lot of people make out. Plenty of people talk about the importance of music, ‘what music do you listen to while you’re writing’, & so on. For me, I don’t listen to music. In fact, I hardly ever listen to music. But art, I’m always seeking it out. It’s like food. Sustaining & satisfying.

So I thought I better share something visual today. And here it is: Simon Hoegsberg’s uplifting (ahem) work entitled ‘we are all gonna die‘.

And music is nice, too. It’s just that to me music is rarely… relevant.

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Economical writing

2009-06-23T12:09:55Z

Reading today about John Cheever:

He wrote stories in his underpants, not to wear out his clothes.
— Morris Lurie, The Big Issue, #331, 16-29 June, 2009

Which is the kind of detail that grabs your attention.

“No one, absolutely no one, share his life with him.” This is Federico, Cheever’s younger son. “There was no one from whom he could get honest advice. Of course, this state of affairs was very much his own doing, but it must have been hard sometimes.”
– Morris Lurie, The Big Issue, #331, 16-29 June, 2009

For some reason I thought of Hemingway when I read that. Probably because Hemingway had a habit of disowning his children when they disappointed him.

I confess I’ve never tried Cheever: there’s something about the classics that becomes either intimidating or unappealing with enough distance. Though I can’t say where I would’ve put Cheever before today. Now, of course, I’m intrigued.

Hemingway is about as far as I’ve drifted into the white-middle-class-American-male school of literature, & it was only mildly successful. Sure, the man can do an undeniably powerful turn of phrase (to state the bleeding obvious), but then again so much of what he writes is opaque to little white grrls like me.

But when wikipedia mentions that Cheever’s “main themes include the duality of human nature: sometimes dramatized as the disparity between a character’s decorous social persona and inner corruption, and sometimes as a conflict between two characters (often brothers) who embody the salient aspects of both–light and dark, flesh and spirit” — I have to say, I wonder why the hell I’ve never tried him. Here, surely, is a man after my own heart.

Right?

By then Cheever’s alcoholism had become severe, exacerbated by torment concerning his bisexuality. Still, he blamed most of his marital woes on his wife, and in 1966 he consulted a psychiatrist, David C. Hays, about her hostility and “needless darkness.” After a session with Mary Cheever, the psychiatrist asked to see the couple jointly; Cheever, heartened, believed his wife’s difficult behavior would finally be addressed. At the joint session, however, Dr. Hays claimed (as Cheever noted in his journal) that Cheever himself was the problem: “a neurotic man, narcissistic, egocentric, friendless, and so deeply involved in [his] own defensive illusions that [he has] invented a manic-depressive wife.”[12] Cheever soon terminated therapy.
– wikipedia

Right. Well. There’s always a downside.

…

Plus, I swear I met that guy.

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Via Twitter

2009-06-21T14:02:33Z

Today on twitter:

09:48 A man victimised by someone who decided he was the zodiac killer -- based on his initials! tinyurl.com/lvlfp3 #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter and my twitter page.

Via Twitter

2009-06-20T14:02:18Z

Today on twitter:

14:31 #followfriday @WilliamShatner ... because it's William Shatner, people! #
14:35 #followfriday @mattuk for interesting ideas & links, esp. in social media. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter and my twitter page.

Via Twitter

2009-06-19T14:02:38Z

Today on twitter:

21:30 RT @nytimes: Idea of the Day: Zombie Films as Liberal Parables bit.ly/U7T6w #
21:33 RT @writethismoment You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~Ray Bradbury RT writethismoment #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter and my twitter page.

Drawing outside the lines

2009-06-17T21:30:44Z

I’m often not a fan of subversive art, finding its teenaged narcissism unattractive.

I make an exception for this guy, though. There’s just too much nutty good humour to Banksy’s art.

Described as a ‘covert graffiti artist’, the true identity of Banksy is unknown. (Instantly my mind rushed to the conclusion that it’s a consortium. I mean, if *you* had a secret identity, wouldn’t you want to share it around? It’d be far more confusing for your followers that way. And since Banksy seems to excel at thwarting expectations, it’d be an efficient way to achieve that… Just a theory).

Banksy, I think, is working in the tradition of Monty Python & other British comedians willing to look silly for the sheer fun of it. He’s suggesting a fantastical, fun, down-to-earth world. Grin-worthy art!

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Via Twitter

2009-06-17T14:02:57Z

Today on twitter:

09:31 Poured a cup of oolong tea. Every time I try to drink it, I sneeze! A lot. What's with that? #
21:14 RT @mattuk: The 500 Most Frequently Used Words on Twitter - bit.ly/10jYHQ (starts with #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter and my twitter page.

It’s a spaceship!

2009-06-16T22:59:26Z

My favourite Twitter buddy & source of inspiration? New Scientist.

Yesterday they were looking at clouds. Some amazing images there. No wonder we believe in the supernatural. If the world can create ‘accidental’ images like this, it’s very confusing…

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Via Twitter

2009-06-16T14:05:48Z

Today on twitter:

21:00 RT @paulocoelho: Coelho writes the 'Geneva Convention' on love: the "Wounded by Love" agreement. bit.ly/5gBzI #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter and my twitter page.

Booked

2009-06-16T10:22:15Z

In my (new & ongoing) obsession with book production, I’m interested to find out about this publishing house via Jeff VanderMeer’s blog: Write Bloody Publishing. They proclaim: “We are proud of our unique style by utilizing modern painters, photographers and rock album designers for all our book cover art.”

Of course, they publish only American authors, so my interest is purely academic. But what a great idea, book covers like rock albums! C’mon, let’s storm those parapets, eh?!

Head over to check out some charming objets de la littérature. You can even take a peek inside & read some of the text, if titles such as “Cast Your Eyes Like Riverstones Into the Exquisite Dark: A Book of Night Poems” (Danny Sherrard) take yer fancy.

In other news, I’m planning a Sydney launch for A Book of Endings. Will keep you posted. Plans so far sound kinda cool, if I do say so myself.

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Via Twitter

2009-06-15T14:02:40Z

Today on twitter:

19:14 RT @seoptimise Which social media website is most likely to still be around in 2020? twtpoll.com/vujssh #twtpoll #
19:46 Hahaha! Tweet Mystery of Death! www.tweetmystery.com/ #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter and my twitter page.

The week already feels long

2009-06-15T10:06:39Z

Somewhere around the beginning of June I wondered why I was still receiving the poets.org April Poem-a-Day emails. Not that I’m complaining. I love getting a new poem every day. And today it was revealed: in honour of the poets.org 75th anniversary, this year the website sent SEVENTY-FIVE poems!

My quote-a-day emails, however, from a website whose name momentarily escapes me, have gone missing. Which they do at least once a year. Sometimes reappearing years later.

It’s like when you have a word on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t think what it is. That’s what this email list is like.

In other news, I have a lot on my plate. I feel, frankly, kinda over-committed with the whole fiction-writing gig (note to editors: nobody panic yet, I said I’ll do it & I’m sure I will … somehow). So I’ve installed not one but TWO time trackers: Rescue Time (which I’ve used once before) & Active Timer. Not only will I get to record a kind of double-entry time tracking log, I can see if they actually agree with each other.

Won’t that be interesting?

Well, probably just to me.

Advice on procrastination-fighting techniques will not be lost on me right now.

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Via Twitter

2009-06-14T14:02:02Z

Today on twitter:

22:31 Hahahaa, according to TwitScoop, this is what Poh was looking for: tinyurl.com/m7recw #
22:32 RT @BlackOnline: HorrorScope - News: 2009 Bram Stoker Award winners bit.ly/GEDZl #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter and my twitter page.

Drowned in red wine

2009-06-14T12:20:45Z

I love a good conspiracy theory, & here’s one I’ve never come across before: Jimi Hendrix killed by his manager, Michael Jeffrey.

Actually, it’s probably wrong to call this a ‘good’ conspiracy. Good conspiracies don’t end up with wildly talented musicians dead. Remember that whole Paul McCartney is dead conspiracy theory? Now, that’s a good theory. And nobody dies (except, according to the theory, Paul. Though it’s funnier when it’s just part of the theory …. er, unless you’re Paul, I guess). Plus you get to be part of the conspiracy yourself by playing The Beatles song ‘Revolution 9′ backwards & hearing that deep, creepy, clipped voice announce over & over, ‘Turn me on, Dead Man’.

Seriously. It’s creepy.

And then there’s this: The original cover of the album Yesterday and Today, the infamous “butcher cover,” showed the Beatles posing with decapitated dolls and slabs of raw meat.

Er…? An early influence for Mark Ryden’s meat series, perhaps?

But I’m surprised, given the prevalence of celebrity conspiracies, that I haven’t come across one attached to a name as famous as Hendrix’s before.

“That son of a bitch was going to leave me,” [Hendrix's manager] Jeffrey is quoted as saying. “If I lost him, I’d lose everything.”

Ironically — or perhaps, fittingly — Jeffery was killed in a plane crash three years after Hendrix himself was found dead.

Jimi Hendrix, dead at 27 with — apparently — his lungs full of red wine. But no alcohol in his blood.

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Via Twitter

2009-06-12T14:03:37Z

Today on twitter:

17:04 Looking for info on 'managing knowledge experts'. Any ideas? #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter and my twitter page.

Serialised novels: Updated

2009-06-11T10:10:59Z

With some shows, the writers have even engaged in such discussions and it’s possible the reactions of viewers have influenced future episodes. (Although not always: Buffy’s creator Joss Whedon said to his fans, “I’m not giving you what you want - I’m giving you what you need.”)

We’ve heard TV types say that ‘each week we’re making the equivalent to a movie’ (but half an hour shorter). Now of course we’re hearing TV shows being compared to serialised novels. A natural equivalence, when you think about it. And explains why I couldn’t get into The Wire the first time I tried: I was trying with an episode part-way through Season 4, with no explanation as to who the hell the characters were that I was watching.

The second time I tried, by sitting down with 4 seasons of the DVDs & starting from the beginning, the show made perfect sense.

… It occurs to me I should be comparing TV, then, not to a serialised novel but to *a series* of serialised novels.

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.

Via Twitter

2009-06-10T14:02:51Z

Today on twitter:

23:17 RT @newscientist: 10 scientific objects that changed the world bit.ly/1c3Ph #
23:29 RT @newscientist: Results of world's 1st Twitter experiment bit.ly/qwmoT (Twitter readers not psychic...) #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter and my twitter page.

Red wall, drying

2009-06-09T22:24:26Z

Sydney’s cold, wet weather caused some headaches for the recent home improvements at casa deborahb: most notably for the loungeroom, where the final wall of the house refused to dry. Here it is under a fan, as per the instructions of the army of Ukrainian painters:

I nickname this photo, ‘Ah-choo‘.

The paint peeled off like strips of sunburnt skin, and the wall had to be re-plastered twice. The painters, I think, blame the plasterers. The plasterers were idiots, so I haven’t asked them to come back & account for themselves.

I wanted to get a photo of the Ukrainians in front of the wall, but they had this habit of sneaking in & out silently, painting as if their lives depended on it, & speaking little english. It was kinda like being haunted.

The house is painted now, the wall is dry, & the belongings have started to drift back into the loungeroom. One of the first objects to re-emerge: my bf’s toy Millennium Falcon.

And, of course, the liquor.

Mirrored from my website at deborahbiancotti.net. You can respond here or at the other deborahb blog.