Post 8.3.2.0 Journal entry from 2006

This is in the 8 category because I found it while sorting my desk.  It's a journal entry that was made on a palm-sized pad of paper, then removed from the pad and stapled together.  It was possibly tucked into a journal at one point, but it is now a journal-less entry.

It reads:

1/20/2006

The thoughts hide when I'm armed with a pen.  A pen's line is too sharp.  It can cut ideas like a string cuts cheese.

The Velveeta (tm) weeps at the slicing.

Father mailed a flashlight in a Velveeta box, once.  It was our box [my sisters and I].  We had been using it to hold crayons all our lives.

He laughed, thinking of the person at the other end opening it and seeing all the rainbow net of random marks on the inside cardboard.  But it was the right size.  So the flashlight went in with the letter that their batteries had leaked far too soon and ruined the flashlight and what were they going to do?

He was very happy when the new flashlight came.  It was a triumph and a lesson to us.

I don't know that we did with the crayons after that.  I can remember a tin - a round fruitcake tin that was hard to open and pained the fingers.  Perhaps it inspired us to keep crayola boxes intact longer.

It was a better flashlight.  We liked the shiny silver.  And we were getting old enough to want to throw out crayon stubs.
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Engineers are supposed to date their notes.  So I'm getting into the habit of dating every pad as I pick it up, before I forget.
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Lillibell, Ferntickle, and Daffed are a three. [This is notes on a story I was writing.]

So are Narnemvar, Satbada, and Livvy.  They represent two distinct kind of magic.  I think there needs to be another three from the middle. [In the story, one group is starting in the north and traveling south, the other is doing the opposite.]

They'll be engineers - the people who have no way to manipulate magic directly, but who need to cope with it anyway. 

Post 8.2.2.0 Musings of NaNoWriMo 2012 And Possibly About to Eat Out

My Dear Son has been suggesting that we get out of the house and write, so that we can catch up on our word count for NaNoWriMo.  While I appreciate this, because it is supportive of me wanting to write and because it is working, it does make writing kind of expensive, what with 'get out of the house' being a euphemism for going to a restaurant to eat and writing while and after we do that.

Dear Son is writing horror and I'm writing urban fantasy. Well, DS may be writing horror.  He doesn't read horror novels, so he's not sure if he's writing horror or if he's just writing an adventure story with zombies.

We went to Sizzler earlier and he got mostly caught up.  He's not completely happy with what he wrote.  From his complaints I don't think that means that he's not happy with the story so much as he's annoyed that it was so hard to get started and stay started and so it took more hours for that particular section.

I ran across some notes I made at a previous writing meetup, one of the ones at Empressa with everyone, and by the way, the last meetup had seven of us meeting, which may be a local record. 

The note reads: "Discussion of a book where the pov is the pets of the people in the story, one of which is jack the ripper."  I remember writing that and where my thoughts went after writing it, but I don't know if the idea, the reference to the book, came from something that somebody said or from something that I had read online earlier in the day.

However it started, I remember thinking of a possible story written from the pov of inanimate objects that are starting to accrete awareness after being in the proximity of a Mage to two. This is an expectable segue for someone who reads a lot of fantasy.

My thoughts went to to speculate that the thing coming to awareness fastest might be an altar, table, chair or whatever that one Mage tortures people to death on. It doesn't understand much, yet, and it can feel him feeding him in a way that brings it closer to life.  It feels a puppy gratitude to him. 

I don't know if it's the kind of thing that I'll ever try writing, but I think that if I do, it had better be a very short story. 

 

Post 8.2.4.0 Rambling About "Depress Button", a Story

I am writing tonight without being able to see what I've written already. It feels like working without a net. [tonight being last Thursday, or maybe last Tuesday - the second or third meetup for nano]

I was swapping email with Stephen yesterday and he asked a question about a plot point in Depress Button. First, I was pleased that he had read it. The beginning* is on my blog, but I don't expect anyone to be reading that. 

Then I started explaining what else was going to be worked into the story. I couldn't remember what had been in the notes section, and therefor repeated myself.

When he said that he'd read that there would be spiders, and had shivered at the idea, I had to go on and list other things. I was hoping to add things that hadn't been in the notes. I added and added and ended up extending the plot.

This was a wonderful thing, and I'm still feeling a bit lighter for it. The first scene had come easily, after putting two basic ideas together and collecting a few details around it. One of the ideas could work as an ending, if filled out properly. The second scene had taken a little work and had petered out at the end.

Then I let someone read it. She liked it, but in saying why made it clear that she saw the main character differently than I did. 

After that I had a hard time thinking of what should come next. I did research on spiders, which was interesting and which may yet give me a direction. It's already given me facts for purposes of decoration (shades of C. Northcote Parkinson). In fact, I've gone back to the second scene and added a pervasive scent of dog food and bananas.

I also mulled over the three characters in the story and the ways that they might interfere with each other, determined to get some actual conflict into a story for once. I have trouble introducing conflict. Someone once told me that what I wrote weren't stories, they were vignettes. 

But, somehow, showboating for Stephen let things flow again. I was listing teasers and I kept adding one after another, until I had something close to a complete plot. From here, it's dialog and details. I still have to (or want to - it may not be truly necessary to the story) work out how the magic system works. But I teasered my way to a tease about the conclusion.

The conclusion tease is: Two Words. The two words are: spam filter. 

* not that anything besides the beginning exists. Well, there are a few notes and comments, but mostly there is only a beginning. This is not unusual for me. The blog is called A Thousand Beginnings, and I am collecting all of the writings that I never finished in one place. 

Not that I have actually collected and entered every piece of writing that I've ever started. I've made a start, though. Sometimes I feel good to have started and sometimes I feel guilty that I haven't completed it. That's why that blog is listed on my blog called The Guilt List.**

** I may have written about both of the blogs already. As I said, I'm writing tonight with no access to what I've written here before. It feels like working without a net because I have a mind like a steel sieve. There's no way to know if I'm repeating myself. 

Not that repetition is a bad thing

Post 5.1.0.0 Email re: "Depress Button"

 I have no idea why this is here and not in my other blog

email to S -

There is also a reclusive spider mage. He is ill and distrustful. And taciturn. He is performing experiments and breeding his lovely spiders. He wants nothing to do with government snooping.

Was the cheerful, pseudo-portly civil servant named Charles? Let's pretend it was. Charles is about to be immobilized and brought into the experiment. He'll be wrapped in spider webbing.

The spiders spin webs that interfere with the transmission of magic/information. Charles won't be thinking too well when the webs wrap around his head. The webbing also prevents information entering or leaving the warehouse, so no way to call for help.

Sums will be more useful taking readings and auditing the flow of the various magics in the experiments. So she is unwrapped and nominally at large. Since there is no known exit, though, she's not going anywhere.

Oh, and the smell of dog food and fruit? Apparently you can't support a breeding colony of spiders unless you have a breeding colony of flies.

Oh, and the way that Sums convinces Mr. Spiderdaddy (I think his name is Kjeldahl. possibly Lars Kjeldahl. Or Sven. It's in my notes.) to let them go? . . . I do actually have a way, I'm just not sure how to get there. All three of the characters are hiding things, personal things, family related things. They actually do have one or two things in common, but they don't trust each other at all. It's going to be hard to get the dance between them right.

And Sums has an idea, but they'd all have to work together and it would require a lot of balancing and coordination. Can she convince the dour Mr. K that it would work, that it would be in his best interest? And can she convince Charles? Can she convince K that she can convince Charles? And with Charles babbling, will he say the wrong thing at the wrong time?

The idea, by the way is . . . two words.

post 8.3.0.0 Found Part of a Story - Oracle

As I mentioned in a post that I haven't written, yet, I have many journals that I've started writing and then lost track of, over the years.  Today I was clearing my desk and sorting the things in the shelves near it.  I pulled out some notepads, bound college-lines pages, to see which ones could be collected into the available paper area and which had things written in them.

I found one that included a journal started 9/3/2003.  Less than a third of it has writing on the pages.  Two entries are general comments, nothing about me.  The third entry starts the continuation of a story.  I don't think I have that one typed into electronic format. 

There are a couple of things that I liked about that story.  That's not why I'm glad I found it, though.  I'm glad I found it because I really want to get the things that I've written collected together.  I may enter parts of it here.  

I don't have much hope that it will be a sellable story.  (Either Blogger or Safari is starting to upload this post while I write it - interrupting my typing with error messages.  I tried publishing the post and am editing it now.  We'll see if that solves the problem.)  I would consider it a success if I could make it a complete story.  The best writing in the world is no use if I can't complete something.

Talking about the story may be a category 2 topic, but I'm going to keep on, here, because here is where it came up.  The story is a fantasy story and a multiverse story, in that there are parallel worlds and people can travel between them.  It's a story with a low level magic user (female) running from an evil high level magic user (male) and his underlings (various).  

I'm trying to make it a Donkey Story and it includes magic corporations (never called that) and horrible things done to complete magic spells.  Specifically, what has to be done to create and use an Oracle is horrible.  We get used to horrible things when we come to depend on them.  We congratulate ourselves that we're strong enough to do what's necessary.  (I could tell the story of M and the turtles and rabbits.) ((But then it's not my story.))

I have trouble adding conflict to stories, as I've mentioned, and I think that the horrible Oracle magic was an attempt to add some.  I think it will succeed in doing that, not because of the one horrible thing (I've had other stories with other horrible things) but because the person who was used to make the Oracle is related to the woman who is running. 

The Oracle already has motivation to mass with the answers that the magic user(s) seek, but now it has a focus for a specific purpose for disinformation.  I haven't written any direct conflict yet, if I remember and interpret correctly, but there has been a lot of rising tension.

You keep going with your day.  I'm going to take awhile to read what I wrote nine years ago.  Sigh.  Where does the time go?

post 8.0.0.0 Random Writing Technology Difficulties

Had an Asimov flashback earlier today.  I didn't write it down, though, so it's gone.  It may come back, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Dear Son and I are currently eating and writing at Panera.  They have free wifi and outlets.  We're both using ipads.  He loaned me a synced keyboard.  I'm enjoying it and only sometimes stumbling when the ipad software won't accept a keystroke and needs to be touched instead.  

Also the delete key isn't where I expect it to be and when I go to make corrections I often ========.

I'm posting directly into the blog via Safari.  The first time I tried that on a commercial wifi, it lagged hideously.  This seems better.  

Because of the lag mentioned in the last paragraph, I've been logging writing stints into G+ drive and, after having trouble getting it from there to the blog and home computer, just emailing stints to myself.

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No, I don't Tweet.  My writing is choppy because that's the way that my mind and memory work, not because I've been Tweeted and Facebooked into short entries.  

I can write in a more continuous fashion, but that's not the purpose of this.  I don't remember if I explained what the purpose of this is, but if I haven't you well be operating in ignorance for awhile more as I'm not really in the mood to explain.

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You know, this blog could use a table of topics.  It's going to become a snarl of interrelated bits and pieces, but the posts are numbered and hypothetical readers may be curious as to why one thing is numbered one way and another is numbered another.

Or, rather, all things are being numbered using the same system, but some things started with 1.0.0.0 and some started with 3.0.0.0.  I can make that list and since it's a blog, I can update it as I go along.  

post 7.1.1.0 Douglas Adams Flashback

(Douglas Adams flashback: perfectly normal beast*)  I'm sure the 3x5 cards, and the snippets, maintained existential integrity. 

*who were called that, in the story, because their method of entering and exiting the world was obviously very much not normal, and Thrashbarg knew that the village needed the meat.

Post 7.1.0.0 Trying to Remember the Book

I wish I remembered the woman writer's name. I know where on the internet I ran across a comment on her book and a link to it's listing on amazon.com. It included a Look Inside, which I appreciated. At least at the beginning, the snippets were perfectly normal.

Post 7.0.0.0 Musing about a Forgotten Book

There was a woman, a writer, who experienced writer's block. She continued to live her life, for a year or so, making small notations on 3x5 cards, recording small bits of her life as she lived it. Later, she collected her snippets into a book and it became famous and was considered to be very literary.

She did not arrange the snippets into a story. She presented the snippets as they were, although, being a writer, she may have polished and/or arranged them.

I don't think that a non writer or an un established writer could get away with that. I almost said do that successfully, but I think I mean get away with that and all the resentment that that contains.