Liz Argall

Before moving to Seattle a few months ago we had 2 pieces of furniture in America, a tiny Ikea coffee table and a set of drawers we picked up at a yard sale. We now have many things, a couch, a chair, a soda stream machine, an espresso machine, a good mattress, all the essentials…. and soon, Wednesday in fact, we will have bookshelves AND a bed base.

While it will be nice to have shelves and it will feel terribly grown up for us not to be sleeping on a mattress on the floor I will miss the ease of access to papers our low height provides.

All these books and tax receipts will be a foot further away! Good thing I have long arms :-)

We are almost fully kitted out, all we need now is a desk, filing cabinet, office chair, pots for plants… and sooner or later that TV-type-thing.

Hooray hooray, my glasses arrived.

What is wrong with my current glasses you might well ask.

Well, I let you decide for yourself.

Last time my glasses broke in the act of folishly cleaning them with a soft cloth(Oh no melon, my glasses broke) I just couldn’t wait for new glasses and shelled out $50 for an emergency weld.

The weld has stayed good throughout the recent trials and this time I fell asleep on them and crushed them under my hip. I managed to limp along, repairing my glasses a couple of times a day for a week and a half. And as my reward fours pairs of glasses from Zenni Optical for $85. Now that ain’t too shabby at all.

I’ve been making good progress on my novel (working title “The Scent of Memory”) recently and here is my secret weapon.

(there is also a secondary whiteboard stuck to the cupboard door in the bedroom)

I am able to pace, have random ideas and scrawl them on a wall without any inconvenient getting out a notebook or flipping open a laptop (and all the distractions within the laptop). It’s just me and the wall.

One of the advantages of this over a notebook or scrap paper is my space is finite and a can’t forget where I put it. I scrawl, grab the essence, put it all down, but at some point I have to do stuff with it or the idea has to be so important it justifies using up real estate (such as letters on the top right corner MSMWG, which means More Space Monkey’s With Guns. MSWG is a motto of mine inspired by Eddie Izzard and is a reminder to take make strong decisions and not be afraid).

The clutter reminds me I need to do more with these raw ideas and once I write up stuff that I have scrawled I get to erase chunks of it. Erasing stuff from the whiteboard (technically a whiteyboard) I physically and metaphorically clear up mental space. That empty space refreshes me, rewards me, and invites me to fill it again. The black text on the right panel had a different scene on it yesterday. It was white space for a few hours before filling up within three hours with ideas for two new scenes.

Whenever I’m typing and the well runs dry there are always easy to find notes I can type up and rediscover. And nothing refills the well so much as the ability to run around while writing on walls.

Now that I’m posting more regularly I have the heart to check out my website on Google Analytics.

The list of search terms lead to my website is always interesting. The prize for best search term is…

life detangle blog -hair -pigeon -sun -necklaces

Oh internet you are a strange strange creature. I mean really? I am more pigeoney than most people you know! Who else do you know that’s bred pigeons and killed them with their own bare hands?… well ok, screwed up killing them with her own bare hands and used kitchen scissors instead…

In other analytic news my blog post about Chrome, Comics and Scott McCloud continues to be my number one source of spam comments. Google, level with me here, is it because I mention you?

Daily Science Fiction, a new digital science fiction magazine, clearly has good taste because they’ve purchased stories from fellow Portlandian writer pals, Mary Robinette Kowal and David Levine. And now they have bought a story from me! Ok, ok, I’m not a Portlandian anymore, I live in Seattle, but I wrote this story while I was in Portland… so that counts, right?… Right?

They’re not yet live, but you can subscribe to the advance copy e-mail version in preparation.

“Dear Ms Moon” has found a home. My writertopia bio now has four stories pending. Hooray!

Something Old and two lots of Something New… Class of ’94 & Class of 2010 https://lizargall.com/2009/03/clarion-blogs/

Now for the borrowed and the blue (and remember Clarion grads are a bit like Brides, it takes at least three years for us to stop talking about it and showing photos to everyone!)

I may have wanted to stick a bunch of cool nouns in the subject heading… you have a point there. My website has been a bit fragmented of late, so here’s what I’ve been up to the past few months.

PlayWrite – a funky not for profite I do a whole swag of work for. I’ve been working closely with them to develop a new website. PlayWrite has a lot of complex needs and responsibilities and it’s been quite the journey. I’ve been their communications gal since late last year and my role will be changing soon (my visa type is changing, doh, so I must change with it), but I’ll stay involved, even if it’s as a volunteer. See, new shiny website! The PlayWrite website was built by Blue Mouse Monkey Design (working with Acts of Good) on the ExpressionEngine Content Management System. I’m still learning the back end, but it looks pretty robust. They have been super helpful teaching me the back end so we can manage the site ourselves (it’s a bit more complex than wordpress, but my heavens, the functionality is much bigger too).

I’ve also been working with Blue Mouse Monkey Design on another website. For that crew I’ve been writing copy and making some major structural changes to how information is presented and accessed. The client’s been super nice to work with, we’re not done yet, but I’ve really enjoyed the challenges. The work has drawn on my depth of knowledge around good practice in the community sector and the needs of their constituents and has been fun. Most of the work on that one is done and I’ll let you know when that piece goes live. I really love discrete projects, go in work hard, get the job done right. There’s not much in life that’s actually like that, so it’s important to treasure.

In the past couple of months I’ve also written several work for hire educational comics, fact checking for a number of other comics and trained up a few people around the work I do. It’s a small paragraph, but it’s been a lot of my time, both the doing and the creative recharge afterwards. It can be interesting work, but is also the most draining work I do.

Clarion Write-a-thon, ’tis finished. I’m not sure if we met our $10,000 target. I feel a bit bad for not promoting it more, my energy needed to be focused on comics for most of the duration. If you want to help us sneak over the finishing line you can still contribute on the website. The write-a-thon did help me keep the novel nagging away at my mind and while most of the creative words I put down during the write-a-thon were work for hire I did have a major breakthrough on my novel as well. I’m very pleased I did it and next year I’m going to do something extra special.

So that’s stuff that’s happening, hope you’re all having a grand time. I should get back to the educational comics work!

Just after I announced I’d post every day during the write-a-thon I found out that we have a special place on the internet for sponsors. To support the worthy cause I’ll be posting updates on a sponsor and writer only forum. Donate $1 or more to anyone and you will get access.

You can sponsor me – hint hint, nudge nudge.

Publishing News update

Maia Blue is Going Home, one of my favourite short stories has found a place to call its own. She’ll be finding print in the Anywhere But Earth Anthology, by Coeur du Lion in late 2011.

Seed Dreams, a short comic magnificently brought to life by Matt Hyunh, will be republished in Sprawl Anthology by 12th Planet Press.

Moving and Traveling

M and I are moving to Seattle! This weekend! Work takes us there and while we are sad to be leaving Portland it’s good to know that I work (working with fabulous people like PlayWrite and Blue Mouse Monkey Design) will take me back to Stumptown regularly. On the down side I have a bit of a crazy travel schedule, popping up and down like a cork. We hope to have a farewell of some sort in Portland soon.

I will also be attending Readercon this year, and fully intend to go to World Fantasy Con (I just need to sort out the logistics). Sadly I shall have to turn in my badge for Comicon in San Diego this year and will not be attending. Living in St Johns in Portland without a car has taught me ‘lite working on public transport skills that I plan to use to their full extent as my travel schedule heats up.

Happy travels all!

Liz