Liz Argall

They Might Be Giants -> they might just inspire me

Sunday, November 15th, 2009 | News update | No Comments

They Might Be Giants were in Portland last week – one of my favorite bands. I remember when I was a shy geek girl trying to buy music with gift certificates I would look for They Might Be Giants, Sinead O’Connor… and… and then I would look around blankly. Seeing them in person at the Crystal Ballroom was joyous. I felt tears forming in my eyes as I realised it was THEM, this wasn’t a video, we were really here, they were really here and it still felt impossible. I’m so used to tour dates belonging to a different continent, I’m not used to the access we have to different bands now that we live in the United States.

Seeing They Might Be Giants inspires me as a writer.

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World Fantasy Con 09

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | News update | No Comments

Hello all. Life has been a bit crazy the past few months. I’ve just finished a whole bunch of educational comics work, comics about staying out of jail, community sector careers and drugs (mostly alcohol and cigarettes). I’ve just come back from World Fantasy Con, which was magnificent.

Cat Sparks captured many fine moments at WFC, and through the power of google I found a Flickr group dedicated to WFC09.

Right now I’m in an interesting liminal space, exploring new opportunities and deciding what gets priority. I probably won’t have any more educational comics work until next year, which means I am free to explore… and free to eat ramen. It is exciting none the less, there are a few opportunities to chase that excite me, there are short stories to edit and actually send to publishers, novels to explore and creative things as yet unthought of. There is also slush to read and books I promised to judge.

Life is full, yet open, I feel blessed by the people around me and 2 weeks ago I got to be a mermaid. I’m sorry to be so tedious and happy, I shall try to have something juicy and horrible happen (but not too horrible). I injure myself with enough frequency that I am sure something will come up and I shall remember to chronicle it (I fell up the stairs three times in the last month in a splat owie flat on my face kind of way).

Book Overview, Creating Short Fiction by Damon Knight

Friday, September 18th, 2009 | News update | 4 Comments

I am trying to write more book summaries, overviews of non-fiction I read. To help me engage more deeply with the text as I go over it so I can write about it and help me remember who said what should I need to refer back to things. Hopefully it will be a useful resource for other folks as well.

Creating Short Fiction by Damon Knight was a lovely, well balanced read with a lot of love for the art, the craft and the practicalities of story making. It looks at processes in detail and combines theoretical concepts with practical exercises (20 exercises all up).

A rough outline of the jewels contained within:

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Recently Read Books

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 | News update | 2 Comments

Because reading is important (and delicious). One of my favorite things to learn, that I learn every workshop, festival and convention, is that reading is important. “Writers must read!” People proclaim and every time they do I get a delicious shiver. Really? I can indulge in my addiction? I am trying to strategically target my addiction a little more.

Things I’ve read in the past month or so, a scattering of thoughts:

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Conflux 6 Virtual Mini-Con

Saturday, August 29th, 2009 | News update | No Comments

As I mentioned a very long time ago, I’m a guest panelist at the Conflux Virtual Mini-Con. Conflux is a wonderful Speculative Fiction Convention held in Canberra, Australia every year in October. I’ve had a wonderful time every time, with top notch panels, interesting workshops and lovely people.

The panel will be starting in a few hours (Sunday 30 August for folks in Australia, Saturday 29 August for folks in the US) and will be archived. I’ve ‘been’ to a few virtual festivals (although this is the first time I will be guesting) and have been surprised at how much I have learned either during the festival or after the festival has officially ended. So check it out, either soonish, participate in real time and ask squirly questions, or check it out later and see what gems of knowledge have been casually dropped. Conflux Virtual Mini-Con coming to the interwebs near you, wherever you are.

Because it is hard (and because spaces are important)

Monday, August 24th, 2009 | News update | 8 Comments

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

John F. Kennedy – September 12, 1962.

Words on our wall. My sweetheart just put them at the entrance to our room – next to bible thick books in leather, a papier mache chicken and stands above library books, new books and old books from Powells and a few precious tomes from Australia.

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Clarion by the numbers

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 | News update, Technology and design | No Comments

Clarion Writers Workshop is over for 2009. Wow.

Going by the numbers:

• 6 stories critiqued, 5 stories written (my first story was on day 1 and was a submission story)
• One novel proposal, outline and first chapter written and critiqued
• 30 pounds of paper brought home containing those critiques
• Critiquing many many stories, I want to get a full count of stories, pages and words, I shall ask
• Including naps in the afternoon I averaged 5 hours sleep a night/day over 6 weeks
• Living with 17 other people intensely creating for 6 weeks
• 6 amazing teachers
• One incredible experience

People writing descriptively about it:

• Ken Schneyer’s collated posts
• Mishelle’s blog has posts
• So has Tiffani

Clarion is seriously good stuff for any writer, and given the close relationship between genre fiction and comics I particularly recommend that comics writers get their short story writing hats on and go for this experience as well. I’m excited by how this short story workshop can enrich comics as a form.

Goodnight all.

At Clarion, in the USA and loving it

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 | News update | 2 Comments

Life has been an amazing and frantic. Since last I wrote I’ve reached the United States unpacked in a big rush in Portland (turning a rather nice basement into a cosy home) and then zoomed down to San Diego.

I’m in the third week of Clarion Writer’s Workshop, the bees knees of creative development. I’m working with really talented people to make our work shine and it is just fantastic. Week 1 was Holly Black (of Spiderwick Chronicles fame), week 2 Larissa Lai (When Fox is a Thousand & Saltfish Girl) and we’ve just started working with Robert Crais (Elvis Cole novels fame, crime/mystery books and used to write for top TV shows).

Robert Crais is a Clarion graduate, as is Kim Stanley Robinson who will be teaching us next week.

Sleeping 5 hours a night, working like a dog and loving it. Must dash, I’m starving and class starts at 8am.

And in other news

Sunday, June 7th, 2009 | News update | No Comments

And in other news I’m writing and doing all sorts of things while waiting for our flight. Update of our adventures by the numbers:

• 15 minutes until we board our plane for Los Angeles
• 45 minutes until the plane takes off (nominally)
• 10am Monday we leave Australia, we travel for 14 hours and arrive 7.30am Monday. Ah the joys of time travel.
• 7 days in Los Angeles
• 10 days in Portland
• then 6 weeks at Clarion
• 1-14 days amount of time I need to have my ankle in a brace. Given my physiotherapist will be on another continent I’m going to go for the conservative end of things.
• ?????? amount of time we will live in America.

It still hasn’t quite sunk in. We’re going, we’re on our way. I am so full of enthusiasm and excitement. We are in a state of becoming.

Tags: adventures, tla, travel, USA

5am Melbourne – After the Emerging Writers Festival

Sunday, May 31st, 2009 | Conventions, News update | No Comments

The Emerging Writers Festival is over. I had a rocking good time. Met some lovely people. Had the brain juices stimulated, challenged, soothed and had some of my wackier ideas encouraged! Beware.

As always, I didn’t attend most of the panels I intended to go to. Instead I wandered from interesting thing to interesting thing and like a jellyfish followed the currents that found me. There were times when I was juiced up on the best drug of all (ideas), mind and mouth rambling and brain sparking off in all directions from good company.

There were some times when I was asked some really hard questions about my own work, discovered some deep emotions and subtext to my graphic novel script that I had never realised. I felt confused, sad, struggling, lost and around my own writing – going back to my hotel with a laptop full of mud… And built a bridge, got over it and wrote important words. There is still some difficult work to be done (and dusted before Clarion), but I’ve made an important breakthrough… now I just have to hold on to it.

If I do something with 10% of the ideas I’ve had at the festival it shall be a good year. I got up at 5am this morning, with three articles bubbling in my head. Dragging myself up before the morning light I ignored those concepts completely and wrote a comic script instead. I thought it would be a good fun fluff piece (if slightly disturbing) for Tango’s new anthology Love and War. But as I wrote it, dammit, I realised it had a deep and meaningful subtext directly relevant to the theme of the anthology. Ben Hutchings would be the perfect artist for it if he’s available and willing. The working title of the comic? Love and Spandex.

Tags: comics, Emerging Writers Festival, scripts, WIP