I watched The Matrix Reloaded, skipping the bad parts. That is one awesome 26-minute movie.
Today Fin asked how Grandad fits under that little plaque. I had to explain cremation. She seemed pleased to know.
Stranged
One
morning recently I climbed the stairs to my study, coffee in hand, and found a
pile of books on the top step. There was a Swedish Jennifer Government,
a Polish Company, and four or five others. The front panel of my computer
case was missing: I eventually found it inside the roofspace, along with my Richmond
Tigers scarf.
I went back downstairs and confronted my daughter. “Have you been moving my things around?”
She grinned, one of those ridiculously beautiful ear-to-ear smiles, and said: “I stranged your room.”
Since then, Fin has stranged my study several more times. Once I heard movement up there, called out, “Are you strangeing my study?” and she giggled and admitted yes. She loves to strange.
Today she turns four. Happy birthday, bunny. Thank you for strangeing my life.
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Stranged
Wow, that was tougher than I thought. Got halfway through a story, not a bad start but sweated on every word.
Heading to Fed Square to begin 3-hour live short story. Pity me. http://bit.ly/2iUmVK
Watch Me Write
Tomorrow I’m writing a short story in public. If you’re in Melbourne, you can stop by
and watch me do it. This is the plan: I turn up at
Federation
Square Atrium
11am Saturday with a laptop and no ideas. I plug the laptop into a projector,
to broadcast on the big screen hanging above my head. Then I spend the
next three hours drinking coffee, staring into space, and attempting to
write something.
I’ve wanted to do this for ages; in fact, in my first ever bookstore event (Union Square Barnes & Noble, NYC, 1999) I talked about how there should be bookstore writings, not readings. Because while I’m interested in what my favorite authors have to say, I’m really interested in how they work. I would love to see how they put a story together.
So this year I suggested it to the Melbourne Writers Festival, and they liked the idea enough to turn it into a 7-day spectacular: one writer embarrassing herself in public between 11am and 2pm per day. Saturday 22nd is my day, but you can also catch Eric Dando (today), Cyril Wong (Sunday 23rd), Reif Larsen (Thursday 27th), Evie Wyld (Friday 28th), Shaun Tan (Saturday 29th), and Jessa Crispin (Sunday 30th).
Clearly, this has the kind of potential for catastrophic public breakdown that I crave, so it should go well.
P.S. If you want to drop by at 11am and suggest some story ideas, that would be really handy.
A book deal for Charlie
As
reported
in Publisher’s Weekly, Vintage Books will bring
Machine Man to life in print form in the US & Canada,
most likely in 2011. This will be a rewritten version of what’s
currently going up online—since I think the two mediums have very different
requirements, plus I haven’t yet seen a first draft I didn’t want to rewrite. Or
any draft, actually. But that’s my personal issue. So anyway, once I finish the serial,
probably later this year, I will start trying to figure out how the hell
I do that.
The particularly cool part is that Vintage (like Scribe in Australia & New Zealand) is happy for me to keep the serial online. Which may sound obvious to you, but that idea caused some publishing industry minds to EXPLODE. Their natural inclination is to scrub the internet free of any potentially competing versions whilst locking down e-books so tightly they don’t work on your device. That’s possibly just my bitter experience talking. But this is a significant step for a publisher, and I’m really happy Vintage took it. I didn’t want to take down my online serial. That would be like leading my child into a forest and abandoning her there. Then, I guess, going home and building a new child based on the first one. And offering her in print form. Wait. This analogy may have gotten away from me.
What we’ll have, then, is the original, unedited serial online, and a more polished (I was going to just say “polished,” but that could be a stretch) novel based on it. Given my track record of rewriting books until they cry, it will probably differ quite a lot from the serial. But on the other hand, it won’t have reader comments. Which is a shame, because those are awesome. It’s like book club five days a week.
This all makes a pretty amazing outcome for a project I started just because a reader bugged me. It’s been successful in a whole lot of ways. So thank you.
P.S. I can’t believe that Publisher’s Weekly’s “Deals” section, by Rachel Deahl, isn’t called “Deahls.” That’s a no-brainer.
P.P.S. My favorite sci-fi site just posted an article about this entitled “Max Barry Jams In Public, Creates A New Publishing Model, Slices Your Legs Off.” Ahh, bless your nerdy hearts.
Me referenced in bash script: http://bit.ly/RIQ2T. I am so turned on right now.
Me talking about risk (video): http://bit.ly/4cXIN
Risk
Here’s me talking about risk:
(Link: Max Barry On Risk, ABC Fora or via The Monthly.)
Actually, first that’s Julian Morrow, introducing me. I feel I should point this out because you don’t see me very often, and even to me, all thirty-something white guys with no hair look the same.
Australians with digital TV can catch this on ABC2: an extract (I think) this Sunday at 6pm, and the full thing on Thursday at 5:30pm.
This lecture was for Sydney PEN’s Voices, and delivered at the State Library in Sydney on July 15, 2009. It’s not the kind of thing I usually do. In fact, it’s probably the first time I’ve been asked to write something serious since I became a novelist. It was a cathartic experience: I’m deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to do it, and to the audience on the night for being so supportive.
Two pigeons having sustained, vigorous sex outside my study window. I'm a little intimidated.
Gahh! How can I be sick again??
Landed in Canberra. There are cows right outside the airport.
Entering ABC studios. Doing pre-interview routine: whispering, "You're cool. You're cool" to self.
Outside Sydney State Library, called home to say nigh-nigh to Fin. Explained that Daddy has to read some other people a story tonight.
Me in the Media
As I write this, my intestines are trying to crawl out of my body. They’re
very determined. No, no, I don’t want your sympathy. Well, all
right, then. Maybe just a blanket. And my feet are kind of sore. You could rub
those.
But I’m not writing to let you know of my gastrointestinal issues. That’s just a bonus. I’m writing because I’m doing stuff:
Me on Australian TV: I’m a panelist on “Jennifer Byrne Presents: Brave New Worlds,” discussing Utopian/dystopian fiction. This is my first ever TV panel, and the more time that’s passed since it was taped, the surer I’ve become that I was A TOTAL DICK. But I’m hoping they edited those parts out. To find out, tune in to ABC TV at 10pm Tuesday.
Me speaking: I’m delivering two talks on “Risk” as part of the PEN Lecture Series, in Sydney (Wed 15th July, with The Chaser’s Julian Morrow) and Canberra (Tue 21st July, with Genevieve Jacobs). This will eventually be available on the web somewhere too, possibly here. Relatedly, here is me being interviewed about the upcoming lecture. Notice how carefully I speak while trying to hold my bowels together. That’s professionalism.
Fruit Duty at Fin's kindergarten. Almost killed a boy by not reading allergy chart, otherwise fun.
Now that’s real-time
Yesterday I did something very cool. You might not think so. If you’re the
sort of person who paraglides, for example. Or leaves the house most days.
But for me: totally exciting.
In the morning, I carried my coffee upstairs to my office and checked my email. This is almost always a bad idea, but still, hard to resist. I had a message from Meredith, who said she was very much enjoying Machine Man. That wasn’t the cool part. Well, it was. It’s always cool when someone tells you they like something you wrote. It never gets old. But what came next was even cooler: Meredith was a neuroscience major. She wrote:
I’m surprised he doesn’t have any phantom pain, since that’s extremely common; while the prosthetics would help trick the brain for sure, with that many limbs taken off, he would certainly have pain. No one totally understands phantom pain, but the idea is that our perceptions are not totally sensory; they are, in a large part, just our brain’s best guess. So, basically, the brain guesses that the limb is still there, but you can’t control it (unclench the phantom fist, etc.). A very simple technique has just been developed by Dr. Ramachandran at UCSD that is incredibly successful: Using a $5 drugstore mirror to make the arm that’s still there look like the arm that got cut off. This makes the brain think that what your one arm is doing, the phantom arm is doing. So those with phantom pain can get rid of an uncomfortable position.
I knew of phantom pain, of course, but thus far hadn’t thought of anything interesting to do with it. Now, thanks to Meredith, I did. Suddenly phantom pain seemed extremely interesting. So I opened up a blank page and began writing.
Often people email me interesting things about the subject areas in which I write. After Company, for example, I heard a lot of terrific workplace horror stories. Which is great, but I always think, “I wish I’d heard that two years ago.” Because then I could have used it in the book.
Yesterday, I sat at my desk with no idea what I would write for that day’s page, received an email from a neuroscience major, wrote something based on her insights, and published it. Then, to make it even better, the first reader comment (from always-interesting Pev) was: “Nice research on phantom limb pain, Max.”
This is the kind of research I can dig: the kind other people do for me, before I even know enough to ask. It’s not the first time it’s happened with this story. And it’s a totally unexpected side-benefit of the real-time serial format. I’m loving this.