. Spinning .

Have been busy with a project for hypertext so I haven’t written much here on Literature, but I have been reading Jamestown as much as I can in between tomato plants and computer work.  Also have to get further into hypertext pieces by others to refamiliarize myself with them.

Here’s an image of the project in Keynote, just so you know I’m being honest about the other work:

Not without some pride and a lot of gratitude to Steve Ersinghaus for his eight years of subtle shoving and to Mark Bernstein for his opening up the paths into hyptertext for me via Storyspace, I am now up to my a.. in this extraordinary writing environment.

Besides my work in the medium that has reinspired my writing, I will be sharing my experience at a workshop in Pittsburgh scheduled for June 19th-21st at the Hypertext 2008 conference.  I’m sort of the grass roots level user among the more dignified and knowledgeable majority of presenters; the ragweed in the rosebed so to speak. 

It was also nice to be included in an authoring tools blogbase put together by Judy Malloy in preparation for the Electronic Library Organization Conference, Visionary Landscapes set for May 29th-June 1st, 2008 in Vancouver, WA.

And in true hypertext dedication, this is likely my linkiest post ever! 

I thought it was bad enough years ago when I Googled "lump in breast" and was greeted with websites full of bare breasts and tongues. 

This, somehow, is even sadder: Google "(surname) motorcycle accident":

Save On Motorcycle Accidents. Great Deals On Motorcycle Accidents!
Sponsored by: www.Motorcycle-Accidents.Pages.us.com  [Found on Ads by Ask.com

Accidents
Looking for Accidents? Find it Now
Sponsored by: www.consumeronly.com  [Found on Ads by Ask.com]

Just took another look at the Kindle reader and I suppose that if I had a lot of extra money, I might go for it.  But then again, my naturally frugal nature would still likely balk at the economics of it.

At $400 for the unit, and $10 per book (for most fiction) versus about $12 per book for paperbacks, that’s a $2 difference per book so that means I’d have to read 200 books before it became cost effective.  Let’s cut that in half, seeing that some books may cost more and shipping charges might apply.  But even 100 books is quite a bit.

But that’s not what stops me.  Nor is the fact that I’m limited to what Amazon chooses to make available in its offering not only of literature, but of what news magazines and specific blogs they’ll grant me free updated access to read.  This part doesn’t matter because let’s keep to the specifics and not compare apples to oranges.  After all, no paperback offers this either.

But if the Kindle were a bit cheaper, AND if the books which after all you can not stack back on the shelf later (I wonder if you could store them on a hard drive–have to check again), then it’s like leasing a car.  The payments are the same, but there’s no physical car left at the end of the term.

I like the travel light idea and having several books available at the same time, but it’s still too much money to lay out for what it offers.  At least I think so–though I would like to see one for myself.

After twelve years (my, how time flies!) I have to change my home page.  Excite just gave me notice that they will no longer support stock portfolios on the home page.  Where to, then?  Maybe NetVibes since I have one sort of set-up already but I need to see if a stock column is doable.

Took the Twitter widget off the sidebar here.  Since it’s just another condensed version of what’s happening, it seemed redundant.

Besides, a girl needs some privacy.

Watching Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and noticed a common film trick of introducing a new character into the story without showing him.

In third person pov, we watch as the characters move within their world, camera angles changing and yet there is a comfort zone from which we view them.  As we watch one of the characters walk through the woods we as viewers are suddenly placed in a position which we realize is someone else’s view, someone else is watching the character.  It’s very subtle, and yet with no other indication, we become aware of this other character.

Interesting.  Wonder how you could do that in writing.

I think it’s time I moved my Storyspace adventures over to Hypercompendia, a weblog devoted to the arts of new media and hypertext in particular.  For one thing, as a learning experience the posts tend to get either glorious with discovery or take on an oh crap! what did I do? aura.

So while I may duplicate post here, the journal of the journey will be at Hypercompendia.

But it was exciting:  I had a map space laid out all nice and neat with title pages and links to the beginnings of four stories and one was on its way and I wanted to take a screenshot ’cause I was really proud of myself, y’know, but didn’t know how to do it and before I could open the manual to see if it could be done I’d messed around some more and lost the perfect image.

Next I’m going to do a text link, although I can’t until a good portion of the other stories are properly set into their boxes.  One good thing about using a ‘finished’ piece (I intend to do a lot of editing): I know I have a chart done up in Word that shows the paths.

Seems I’m going to learn by trial and error(s) or maybe print out some of the Storyspace Manual pages or else I’m going to be knee-deep in empty writing spaces that appear to be breeding like rabbits.

I know there’s a proper way of doing it, but without the instructions staring me in the face and left to my own devices I’m a regular fertile Myrtle with the text boxes, touching one with intention to write and creating a cute little new box instead.

Right now instead of working with the collaboration work in progress–since it’s got more mysteries and random roads that without some skill with the software and with little idea of where this story’s going yet, I’m going to practice with something I have on file.

Paths is a composite of four stories that was published in linear format yet with a system of pseudo-hypertexting links between words that brought the stories together.  I’m familiar with it (since I wrote it) and figure maybe it’d be a good time to see how it works out in true hypertext form.  I suspect that it won’t be as creative as the hypertext environment offers, but it’s a start.

Unlegalesed that means plotting and story.  In Storyspace, it seems that while your options are wide, wide open to follow wherever a thought leads you so that story winds back on itself and is ever-moving, unhampered by the tube top of linearity and story that needs to fall back on foreshadowing and backstory and where will I stick that? there will always be a need for organizing the threads.  I think of macrame’ and how the threads move from the base this way and that, meeting here and there and sometimes never again but all threads are tied up at the end of the body of work.  And a single piece made up of patterns and designs becomes the whole.

But, you do have to have some idea in mind as to how you will keep track of the different threads.  Shall I separate them by character–though the characters meet many times–or by motif which may be the best way of all.  Certainly not by time.  Time is the element we purposely have eliminated from our stories.

Well I’ve learned how to do a few things and I’m trying to incorporate a story into the program just to learn and get comfortable with the software and the process. 

My basic learning style is know what you want to do and figure out how to do it.  Works somewhat, but I’ve had the manual to refer back to in many instances.  One thing in particular I don’t seem to grasp is the save feature for the file, and then pulling it back open again to work on it at a later time.  I keep losing it or can’t open it so it’s back to square one (literally).  But that’s okay, that’s reinforcement.

More later.

Got it.  Downloaded and registered and ready to go.  I check out the manual and am almost intimidated: 317 pages.  I don’t like anything that takes 317 pages to learn. 

But I’d already played in this and now I’m ready.  The manual’s just a look-see.  There in case I need it while the story’s getting laid. 

I am not me and nothing I have written to this time will ever be the same.  It brings out poetics.  It brings ideas.  It is a map that’s ready to be designed into a story.

Don’t know if progress will be posted here or in Hypercompendia, its cradle that lay waiting all this time. 

While my craziness over ability has swaggered back onto a trail of sorts that still leads in the direction of writing, I’m discovering new methods that may be forcing other issues into the open and inadvertantly working to their betterment.

In going back and forth with a friend in a series of e-mails of random story, many things are coming of it.  I’m being forced into creativity on-demand and make every effort to add my input based on what is received as quickly as possible while retaining the story line(s).

Which brings me to another benefit; learning to write in a flowing manner that seems to be a merge between psychological realism and plot.  I could well see how Storyspace can mimic this what happened next and next and next form that the e-mail writing has produced.  But more, the e-mails, a story being written by two individuals without verbal collaboration produces background threads of related but non-linear story plots.  Meaning, not merely what happened next, but what else is happening now. Ripe for hypertext. Nice.

What I’m also noticing is that the characters are being formed by the process in a very much show manner.  That is, when focusing on writing just a brief sequence, the character’s action becomes important and telling.  His assessment of another character is revealed by his thoughts, coming in short spurts of dealing with a situation within an episode.  We can see not only what someone does (action) but what someone thinks of the doer and the act as well as getting an idea of how even the thinker deals as judged by his reaction.

Much of this is all part of the basics, and yet I’m feeling that there’s assistance to the writing via the process.

if:book always has some interesting points on what both artists and audience are reaching toward in story.  This is a particularly fine post regarding changing methods of reading, therefore, filling the demand with adjustments to writing styles and means.

"The boundaries between page and screen, inside and outside, imagination and reality are shifting around us. We are fumbling towards new ways to make and publish fictions online. Interaction needs to be more than the multiple choice options for what’s next. Readers want to inhabit a good book, not be pressured into helping to write it."

This gives the would-be writer much to think about.  As I stand in the dark morning kitchen of James Agee’s Jay and Mary as they say goodbye (A Death in the Family), I feel the familiarity and yet the tension between them that’s hidden in learned marital politeness. Is this something I want to change or is it something I want to explore.  In hypertext, a story such as Steve Ersinghaus’ The Life of Geronimo Sandoval, there are other possibilities–not options, but possibilities.  In Agee’s novel then, it wouldn’t be of my doing, but I might see a character such as Jay, instead of kissing Mary goodbye and getting into his car, instead pull off his tie, unbutton his shirt, grab Mary by the wrist and take her back upstairs.

The post at if:book also questions the necessity of story arc and conclusion:

(…)has grown out of observation of how children actually play; they don’t enact complete adventures but drop in and out of narrative threads – walk along a wall and you’re escaping across a chasm; clamber up a tree and you’re creeping up on an enemy; enter an enclosed space and it becomes a homestead where imaginary meals are cooked and served.

My initial thought is that adults have learned to organize their thought process and this is essential to survival.  But why can’t the child in us be retained for some areas of our lives–such as reading, as the posting suggests?

So then, Jay leaves, has second thoughts and returns home to find that Mary, his kids, the house are all missing and a Wal-mart stands in place.  In the space of an instant of thought, his world of the past is no longer there.

Posted on my new media weblog, an idea for a project; something wrung still further from this harvest time.

This collection of images–graphic and lingual–of trees and growing fruit, picked and fermenting or boiled into jelly, have a story to tell, one that’s beyond my interference in the cycle of nature.  Rather, I think it to be a timepiece, a clock of natural means.