All Fired Up

Sunday was a very hot and windy day, and fires broke out all over the state here in Victoria. Homes were burnt down, big country properties were destroyed, and much acreage was incinerated. One of the outbreaks was between my place and the Arvo Job, but I didn’t realise the trains weren’t running as per usual until I arrived at the station and heard the announcement, and by then, well, if I’ve managed to get myself out the door and am on my way, I do believe in finishing my journeys. That's how adventures happen. And so it was. We travelled halfway to Melbourne, transferred to coaches – the smell of smoke and burning stuff was unbelievable – and took a series of small, country roads because the main highway was down to one lane until the next town up.

 People grumbled. They moaned and bitched. Loudly. Of course they did. One fellow stood in the aisle of the bus and declaimed a dramatic Shakespearean rant against V-line before finally bowing to his audience’s cries that he should sit down and shut up so we could get moving. More groaning ensued, and the competing jeremiads continued until, for the last 5 minutes before turning onto the highway, we drove through a vast, charred landscape and actually saw the cause of our “terrible tribulations”.

Three things happened:

-          People shut up. They began squirm. The atmosphere was one of nascent embarrassment.

-          Phones appeared. Photos were taken of other folk’s misfortunes.

-          Conversations erupted about the greatness and braveness of firemen (true enough) as people competed to demonstrate their sensitivity to the devastation around them.

Sometimes folk should just stop and think before they start with the whingeing.

Today, all the way to Melbourne, the train drove through a smoky miasma, which was spooky enough until we hit the area we’d been diverted around on Monday. The train slowed right down and we chugged through a landscape burnt to the horizon on one side of the tracks, and except for a few places where spot fires had jumped the rails, saved houses on the other side. And always the smoke.

So, when I arrived in Melbourne and went on to have a spectacularly crap day at the Arvo Job, my perspective had already been honed by viewing real problems. Not that one can shrug off one’s own misery entirely. I’m not superhuman.

Oh, What a Tangle of Cords We Weave

Today I recharged me with a sleep in and a couple of naps so I won't conk out at the Arvo Job over the next couple of days, and added some power to my iPod to prevent a catastrophic inability to access sanity-saving, mind-expanding but gentle-on-computer-strained-eyes audio books during my breaks. Strange to think I once scoffed the notion of listening to books.

 I also juiced up my mobile phone, mostly so I can receive texts as I hate talking on the thing in public, and topped up my notebook lest I find myself working away on a story on the train, tapping words in a rush of inspiration only to have the dreaded 'battery low' warning pop up, bringing on a mad scramble for old fashioned paper and a pen so I can capture a few shiny sentences before they disappear into the ether. And to think that once upon a time, I could only write in my non-moving study at my very own keyboard with no-one in the room and absolute silence around me. What a wuss I was.

 Last, but not least, I uploaded a new collection to my e-reader, and left the device to siphon energy so I can keep up with my now habitual daily intake of short stories (usually 2). It's turning out to be a real gem that e-reader. I'm getting a real feel for the work of different writers, and love the way I can now easily access collections I'm curious about.

So, I'm all powered up (and I'm a relative Philistine compared with many device-dependant people I know) and ready to hit the commuting trail again tomorrow.

Aaaaaah, only 2.5 weeks to the Christmas hols....

What My Brain Saw

So I was on a tram, on my way to the Arvo Job, looking at people and thinking about stuff, just maybe daydreaming a bit, when I glanced out the window and saw a sign with an arrow that clearly read 'To Extermination Complex'.

A split second and one blink later, my brain realised its mistake, tweaked a few synapses, "reality" reasserted itself, and the sign was so very obviously made up of the far more innocuous words 'To Entertainment Complex'.

But maybe my brain was right the first time? If so, what nefarious happenings am I not seeing on a daily basis as I make my way about town?

No, it was definitely an eye-brain glitch.

Not a matrix moment.

I hope.

Getting Stuff Done

I'm busy getting focused. I finished one story on Monday  - just a shortie, but it's done - and almost completed another today. I know how it ends, and it's not an epic saga either, so it should be done and pretty much polished by Friday after two lots of commuting-writing on the way to the Arvo Job. Then I've got two more stories lined up for completion. I'm feeling productive writingwise again :)

Alas, I've also had to fit in a lot of napping and sleeping lately. I hope it's a passing phase, but if there's one thing I've learnt over the past 2 years, it's if I need to rest, I MUST rest. Obey the body. It's busy doing stuff too. Give it what it needs to get on with the job.

So writing + Arvo Job + normal daily stuff + napping = not much blogging. For now.

Bedtime :)

Touchy, Feely Week

So I had another feeling today whilst on the tram. It wasn't about an acceptance this time. No, this time I was sure there was something good waiting for me in the op shop. I could almost hear it calling out to me. Since I was already late for work due to the vagaries of public transport, I jumped off a stop early, popped into the shop, swung by the shelves, and there it was - a great, big hardback edition of Caesar's Women, the fourth book in Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series. I gave a little cheer of triumph. It was going for all of $5.



So the Book Game goes well :)  At this rate, I'll soon have the whole MoR collection. Then I'll have to pick another challenge to make op-shopping interesting.

Been Busy

Hallo, blog. Sorry about the break. There was a birthday to cater for and celebrate (mine, he-he) and a neglected house to clean so my weekend guests weren't too overwhelmed by dust bunnies, and emails with pictures of overly cute cats and kittens wearing conical party hats to read, and ponderous buses to catch to the Arvo Job instead of speedy trains both last week and this week (this yearly fortnight of track maintenance is another reason why I usually take my Annual July Winter Writing Break around now, but alas, I've already had lots and lots of time off from the Arvo Job, and I'm still not sure if I'll need more this year), and a new, dark, bird-based story that suddenly appeared whole in my head to write for an upcoming deadline, and since I can't write on buses, it had to be beaten into shape here at home (done, and pretty close to dusted after I cannibalised parts of a flashback from an old story that I rather liked but never used), so something had to give.

Anyway, I've got a post about dialogue on the boil, inspired by a couple of tiresome gents who sat behind me on Tuesday's bus ride to the Arvo Job. I was going to finish it today, but Wednesday R&R (some of it spent on finishing up that bird-based story) got in the way. I'll try to finish it ASAP.

The Underlying Politics of Free Chocolates

The world didn't end again, but my work year at the Arvo Job did, so now I'm looking at two weeks off with a brain that's rarin' to go and a body that has mostly ceased its grumblings. Happy days! I have two stories I'm determined to finish, and two more that I have to start from scratch but which I'm hoping will be reasonably coherent by the time I have to start stuffing Rover into my train bag again.

Ah, trains. They' re such a big part of my life. I headed for the city before the crack of dawn to get my Arvo Jobbing finalised by midday, but as recompense, there were free Christmas chocolates for we frazzled early bird commuters at the train station today, and many jolly, seasonal asides over the loudspeakers. The effect that free chocolate at 5.45 in the morning had on people was amazing. Smiles all around and instant good will.

Country towns do love their train stations, and ours is a bustling hub of meeting and greeting and networking with its little cafe and magazine stand (I usually pick up the latest New Scientist there). There's a shelf of books made available to travellers by the local library, and the staff are wonderfully friendly and efficient, and dole out much local news as well as sympathy for weary travellers. As said, they give away free chocolate! It's not easy being a long distance commuter, especially for those poor souls who travel each day on the packed, early trains (I love my 11am train - it's so much more relaxed and writing friendly), and people are often stressed and grumpy, so I think it's a credit to the staff and service that they keep the place humming along, happy and human.

I'm mostly mentioning this because there are horrible rumours circulating about the government having secret talks to try and palm off the long haul, country services to the mega-multiple-stuff-up-and-cheapskatey-let's-just-stick-in-machines-that-don't-work-wherever-we-can-and-then-hire-roving-gangs-of-meanies-to-police-the-network management mentality that currently runs the metro trains.

They definitely do not hand out free chocolates.

I shall have to keep an eye on this rumour. I might have to write some letters and wave a banner or two. If need be, perhaps I'll channel the Perils of Pauline and tie myself to the tracks in protest. Because that's what you do when condescending politicians in faraway realms make free and easy with the everyday lives of their citizens.

Evening Eavesdrop

It's not that I wanted to listen in on their conversation - really and truly, I didn't - but excited teenagers trapped in a group on a longer train trip are hardly prone to quietness.

The topic? Facebook.

First they bagged their mothers' Facebook pages. Thoroughly bagged them. They were not kind. Not at all. Embarrassingly unkind, in fact. Unkind in great detail. They were all girls of a certain age, so I suppose it was mostly about them creating their own very cool Fb identities separate from their mothers' annoying, cloying, suffocating online presences. Cyber psychology. Another layer of struggle added to the already fraught dynamics of your typical mother-daughter relationship during the rebellion years.

Next, those who had fathers on Fb went on about the general dagginess of Dad Pages. The venom levels were far lower with the dads though. More of a chuckle than a screeching diatribe. The Fb dads obviously didn't represent the same threat that the Fb mums did. It was all very Freudian.

After that, their nearest and dearest and bestest friends got it in the neck. Apparently, one girl thinks she's so funny on Fb, but really, her jokes are so lame they're like dad jokes, and everyone is making so much fun of her behind her back.

After that, the conversation became so bitchy I was blushing for them. Wow, with Fb friends like these girls, who needs enemies?

Hopefully it's just a stage they're going through.

Hopefully.

Did it!

On Monday, on my way to the Arvo Job, as I was crossing a park (the slightly magical one that so often provides interesting writing ideas and story breakthroughs), a golf ball came whizzing through the air at an extremely high velocity, shot past my head and thwacked into the sports field beyond. Just a few hand spans to the left and bam! Cranial crunch time!

I immediately went into alternative universe mode and thought That'd be right. A person goes through the bother of being sliced and diced by surgeons, spends months recuperating, and then on a sunny day, just five minutes away from a triumphant return to normal life, gets knocked unconscious, or worse, by a recreational missile. Okay, it didn't happen in this reality, only almost, but a lot of unfair stuff occurs in this world, and sometimes it's only a matter of unfortunate people being in the wrong place and the wrong time. Move a little faster or slower on a certain day, and your fate changes. It's quite scary sometimes. As is, I was just happy not to become a sad headline or tragic topic of conversation. Life, right then and there, could have suddenly become a whole lot worse.

Anyway, thrilling near-miss aside, I've just made it through two days of commuting and putting on a reasonable show of business-as-usual industriousness at the Arvo Job. Tomorrow - or rather today, since it's just after midnight -  will be a (oh, thank goodness!) breather, a day for sleeping in, reading, writing, walking, submitting a story or two, napping, baking bread and building up energy for the rest of the week.

Nice.

Brolly Fu Fighting

In case you think I'm completely housebound, I have ventured out into the world a few times. At first it was always with someone who was ready to scoop me up and put me in their nearby car if need be, but now I also totter forth on my own for fresh air clutching my mobile. Today I actually took the train to Melbourne for medical stuff, which was a nice and relaxing enough trip, but boy was I glad to have my brolly with me when I got there. Not for rain, you understand, but to stab or whack anyone who looked like they were even remotely about to bump into me. The city masses were suddenly scary. I wielded my umbrella like an Eastern blade, and I would have used it, believe me. However, people seemed to sense my martial intentions and respectfully stepped out of my path, so there was no need for any violence.

Yeah that, or they saw the wild expression on my face and decided to steer clear of a possible madwoman.

Anyway, I was certainly glad to get a lift home. The pushing, shoving, peak hour crowds would have reduced me to a gibbering wreck, I think.

I Just Wanna Blog

Aaaaaarg, supposedly Not Evil Google is herding me. I knew a change was coming, but I thought I had a while longer to check it out. Now they've arbitrarily, there's no going back, changed my Blogger dashboard and setup with a supposedly superior version, but it all looks flimsy and cheap and messy and yuck to me. Also, since my browser apparently won't support it, things don't work properly, so I'll have to tinker. Or move to WordPress. I hate it when technology herds me by withdrawing options rather than convinces me with the power of their superior product to change my habits (and yes, I'm looking at you again, Victorian Public Transport System devised by people who haven't studied the habits of flesh and blood commuters, measured their body sizes and fitness levels, tallied their ages, considered their special needs, taken a squiz at the amount of luggage people cart around, or ventured onto a packed tram or train during peak hour...)

Anyway, if things starts looking funny, or this blog disappears, you'll know why. As is, fiddling around with a glitchy system, I'm not having fun. I'll get back to this when I have more time.

Out Of Smart-Mouthed Babes

Scene: On board a V-Line train.
Characters: Mother, Father, two over-excited children of the are-we-there-yet type, and an eavesdropping commuter with a laptop.

First Sibling, pointing out window: Look, look! It’s kind of a train!
Second Sibling (scathingly): Not kind of a train! It is a train.

An argument then ensues about what First Sibling actually meant by ‘kind of’. Second Sibling, a pint-sized pedant, will not give an inch, while Second Sibling grows louder and increasingly desperate to salvage some credibility.

Mother: Be quiet, both of you! It doesn’t matter what anyone said.

Dramatic pause.

Second Sibling (in a shocked tone): But Mummy, it does matter!

Eavesdropping commuter silently applauds.

Starry-Eyed

Since Sundays at home are for reading fluff, I peeked at my star sign this morning. If you peruse these "predictions" often enough, you're bound to hit one that resonates with you at a certain point in time. I mean really, how hard can it be to come up with wondrously prescient pieces espousing 'life is tough' and 'but don't worry, it'll all get better soon, so please buy this publication and come back to read what I have to say next week'. Anyway, my star sign this week reads:

If life's been feeling like too much hard work for too little reward lately, you could opt for mattress therapy and pull the blankets over your head. Or, you could follow Buckminster Fuller's advice that things are never changed by fighting the existing reality, but by inventing a new model that makes the existing one obsolete.

The first part is true, and these days I'm often tempted to snuggle under my doona and wait for bothersome stuff to just sort itself out and for life to call me when it's safe to get up, but I'm guessing this feeling would at some point resonate with 95% of the human population (although I have no sources to validate my theory, having unscientifically plucked this number from the ether.)

However, my stars get full points for mentioning Bucky, one of my all-time favourite scientists and visionaries. Now there's someone who weathered down and out times - depression, unemployment, poverty - and rallied to achieve greatness. He was an architect, teacher, engineer, inventor, intellectual pioneer and all-round rational thinker. He was an environmentalist who understood what many people today still seem to be struggling with - the concept of finite resources eventually reining us in, so we really should try to act like adults and anticipate and control the process. He was a believer in integrated systems that worked with humans rather that against them and thus enhanced their existence instead of making them more miserable (the "brains" behind the present public transport system in Victoria definitely haven't read Bucky's work). He was a Big Thinker with a Big Soul.

So, my star sign advice for this week, for once, is sound enough. I'll ignore the astrology aspect of it, but go with Bucky's wisdom. A new life paradigm. Hmm, I'm on it.

Many Writerly Rivers to Cross

Today was sort of set aside as a catch-up-with-myself day, which the non-writing part of me has hitherto seized with both hands. I slept in even longer than I planned to after shushing the alarm clock this morning and turning over for another snooze. When I finally got up, I enjoyed a gigantic, no-rush wake-up pot of tea and a leisurely read of some lightweight froth that I can’t even remember now. Prolonged dawdling about in jammies trying to formulate a rudimentary plan for the rest of today then ensued, and this massive effort was followed by a long brekkie in the backyard and lots of staring at the garden and the sky. All of this was much needed after yesterday’s workshop. Not that the course was exhausting – it was the 6th day of commuting to Melbourne and back that kicked in, and a sense of displacement that needed to be banished with a good spend-time-at-home grounding.

Yesterday’s workshop was the usual first session, half-muddled experience of many strangers getting to know each other, people from all walks of life measuring their writing experience against each other and trying to figure out where they fitted in, and different dreamers at different stages of their career or hobby nutting out an agreement as to how we should proceed with the critiquing. It’s an incredibly varied group ranging from total beginners to writers with pro sales and many publications under their belts, so it’ll be interesting to see how we negotiate the needs of the many. I look forward to getting to know these people. As per usual, however, what happens at the workshop stays at the workshop.

The course provided me with a valuable yardstick for sussing out my own place in the minor scheme of things. I’m still reticent until I get to know people, but nothing like the shy and insecure mess I was a 4-5 years ago when I started out on these workshops with a 2-day Sean William's course. I used to hate public critiquing of my work – I took it WAY too personally, and foolishly believed that everyone else was a better judge of my work that I was - but I knew I had to make myself go to these workshops and toughen up or I’d never survive the business of writing. And it seems to have paid off. Compared with some of the very nervous newbies there yesterday, I felt like a veritable workshop war veteran. I know I won’t be at all bothered if some, or even all of them, shred my work, but most of of the newbies, I fear, have yet to live through the trials of not being hailed as a genius by every other person on the planet. It can be a tortuous experience.

This sense of being an old hand was reinforced by the fact that Steve Cameron is also doing the workshop, and that we could swap stories about our stories – how they were doing, who liked them and who didn’t, our hopes and plans for them – and catch up on industry news. These conversations made me realise just how far I’ve come in the past 4 years, and gave me hope that I might actually be chipping away a tiny niche for myself. They also vindicated precious time spent checking blogs and news sites to keep up with what’s going on in Aussie Spec Fic Land :)

Well. Now. It's time separate the wheat from the chaff. Sort the sheep from the goats.** Put my money where my mouth is. So. Yeah. Hmmm. Should I go take a nap on the backyard swing? Or write for a few hours?

Whoa - there, right on cue, I just got a rejection. The story was too much fantasy, not enough sf, which I suspected might be the case, but it was the only reasonably suitable story I had back in the stable in time for that mag's reading period, and I try not to second-guess editorial tastes these days.*** But. Get ready for another cliché. Water off a duck's back. See? Tough as!

**I chose to write. So does that make me wheat or chaff? A sheep or a goat?
*** It was a "good" rejection. They asked me to submit more work. As for the rejected story, I've already sent it off to another publication.

Commuter's Lament

(Can be sung to the tune of Herman's Hermit's No Milk Today, if you so choose. Just make sure there's no-one around to hear you.)

No blogging yesterday,

My trains and trams were late all day,

Oy vey! Oy vey! Oy vey!

I've finally made it home - hurray!

:(

Talkin' 'Bout My Demographic

Today's chapter in the microtrends book was all about me and my tribe - Extreme Commuters, defined by the Census Bureau (US) as people who travel at least 90 minutes each way to get to work, a development mostly caused by crazy economics and large populations. Good to know I'm in the company of so many millions upon millions of people all over the modern world. Aah well, at least I'm not a Mega Commuter who has to fly to work in another country each day!

Anyway, as I read the chapter, I was ticking off the boxes in my head and nodding, and I laughed when I reached the paragraph about increased audio book sales. The author describes Extreme Commuters as 'the transportation equivalent of speed readers', getting through War and Peace in twelve days. He's mostly referring to car drivers though, because we train folk can relax with the printed stuff as we coast along without having to worry about traffic lights. I also found an interesting rebuff to the knee jerk accusation that Americans are addicted to oil - "Are we?", said one Extreme Commuter, "Or are we just trying to get to work?" Hmmm.

As always, when I read anything about excessive traffic and moving populations I usually flashback to a particular book by the Danish science fiction writer Niels E Nielsen. But warning, that link won't do you much good if you can't read Danish because it's 'Fra Wikipedia, den frie encyklopædi'. I cannot believe there's no wiki page in English about Nielsen! Or that he isn't more widely known. Alas, a quick Google also revealed that very few of Nielsen's book have been translated into English. It's an absolute scandale. I just assumed he was out there and available for all the world to enjoy.

I read a lot of his work when I was living in Denmark, and his books all made quite an impression on me. There are many many images from his novels that are firmly lodged in my brain, some of them from Vagabondernes Planet (Planet of the Vagabonds, I suppose) published in 1970, which basically has everyone in the world just driving around and around on a grid built between the monocrop fields that feed them, I think - I reserve the right to possibly not be remembering it correctly.

As the years pass, this hellish vision is looking less out there, and more right on our constantly moving doorsteps.

Bat Train

As a long time commuter, you get to know your regular train drivers from the way they approach level crossings, climb hills, take corners, and tear, or don't tear, through the countryside.

Tonight's driver was easy. He's the one who likes to speed through the empty night playing Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell album. You can tell he's loving it. And it might be my imagination, but I'm almost certain that the usually staid and respectable V-Line choo-choos thoroughly enjoy the chance to put on their metaphorical leather jackets, shake loose their heavy metal hair and play demon-train-with-captive-passengers-racing-towards-a-Hellmouth.

Train tips (1)

Upon entering a train, avoid, whenever possible, sitting in front of excessively lounging folk with agro-bored expressions. You’re just going to end up getting into a conversation about whether or not them sticking their knees or feet into the back your seat is acceptable public transport behaviour.

Now I can tune out music and chatting (earplugs help) and other distractions as I read (Clarkesworld, in this case) on the train, but I cannot ignore two bulges constantly pushing into the small of my back every time the aforementioned lounger moves.

Sorry to be such a fuddy duddy.

Also, today is a special day for this blog - I got my first comment. Thank you, parlance.