WRITING: Impetus

Posted on October 12, 2003 by Susan

In skimming through this blog in search of creative impetus, and noting all the stories I have started (won’t mention my CREATIVE WRITING folder in My Documents which really needs to be cleaned out), I found my true calling in life. I’d probably make an excellent writer for Interactive Fiction if I knew how to code.

I have tons of opening paragraphs complete with titles that lead nowhere. I need someone to type in LOOK or EXAMINE at the end of each to drive me onward with possible plots. My analytical mind and devil’s advocate personality would come in handy to foresee reader input.

Since it’s easier to write than to learn computer code, I have chosen to add these instructions to each of those many, many stories begun: KICK SELF.

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INTERACTIVE FICTION: Research

Posted on October 11, 2003 by Susan

I realize that I must produce a paper on Photopia by Tuesday morning, but figured perhaps I should do a little more research first. This professor is one that I suspect sees through any bs that I may produce. So…

Wow! Adam Cadre’s Shrapnel!!
You die instantly upon the wrong move,
You die over and over and over again, and
You cannot QUIT the program.
I love it.

I believe I should thoroughly research this one out before I work on the paper. And, after hours of hard work and much thought put into interacting with these programs, I cannot call them games. I wouldn’t be playing games when I have a paper to write, now would I?

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INTERACTIVE FICTION: Photopia

Posted on October 11, 2003 by Susan

At approximately 3:03 EST, I emerged from Photopia. Some question as to whether I played the last part correctly–PURPLE seemed to go on by itself with its own responses (wicked me, I copied them down in case this was a temporary glitch). And I do have to go back because, maybe it’s just me, I don’t remember what happened at the end, or if I accomplished my mission. Towards the end of the session, it seems I was too concerned with maneuvering, and was not following the story line. Possibly like reading a book, checking your e-mail, and watching TV while making supper and speaking with your spouse all at the same time. Truly enjoyed the humorous responses to some of my idiotic attempts to move forward, and am pondering the implications of a computer generated story that can make me laugh at myself. Similar, I suppose, to certain games where a message is on a card which is drawn or uncovered on a board by moving a piece, but certainly not as intimate or pointedly given in response to direction by the reader. Interesting…to me anyway. Most of you out there are probably beginning to wonder how long I was in a coma while technology marched by.

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EDUCATION: To a degree…

Posted on October 11, 2003 by Susan

In this space should lie my last discourse of the morning on the very important subject of combining personal interests such as literature and computer technology towards selecting and pursuing one’s education. Unfortunately, techie that I am, I lost the post as well as the thought.

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EDGAR AND I: Mood Music

Posted on October 10, 2003 by Susan

Download file

Time for a little fun. Love this song that was written by M. J. Wilkin and D. Dill, and is performed by The Band. Lyrics are below, and a link to audio should work above. This is my type of music when I’m feeling really evil!

Long Black Veil

Ten years ago on a cool dark night
There was someone killed ‘neath the town hall light
There were few at the scene and they all did agree
That the man who ran looked a lot like me.

The judge said, “Son, what is your alibi?
If you were somewhere else then you won’t have to die.”
I spoke not a word although it meant my life
I had been in the arms of my best friend’s wife.

She walks these hills in a long black veil
She visits my grave where the night winds wail
Nobody knows, no, and nobody sees
Nobody knows but me.

The scaffold was high and eternity neared
She stood in the crowd and shed not a tear
But sometimes at night when the cold wind moans
In a long black veil she cries over my bones.

Credit: http://theband.hiof.no/lyrics/long_black_veil.html

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INTERACTIVE FICTION: Discovery

Posted on October 10, 2003 by Susan

Well I finally got free from the daily grind to allow some time for research on Photopia and a few other programs. I am learning some things about Interactive Fiction: 1) It takes the fun out of it to write down and follow notes; 2) You can get lost in the exact same places you were lost in the last several times if you don’t have your notes; 3) CRY is not a recognized verb.

When you are first exposed to IF, and indeed you are foolhardy enough to think you remember your path and go racing along, you are most likely to get stuck. You are so anxious to get to the place where you left off that you forget to read the text for clues, examine, take, and inventory every now and then. You forget how you got out of the last jam and frustrate yourself by relentlessly typing in the same command over and over because you just KNOW the creator of this program wouldn’t leave you stranded like this. When absolutely nothing you try works, you go back to the beginning, a broken player. Hemingway himself could not have beaten a reader down emotionally more than this.

I believe that my analysis of IF will be based on the ways it affects the reader during and after interplay. Obviously each time I enter Photopia I bring new information with me (except the crucial parts that I forgot!) and am a different person when I read the opening lines. I’m tense, on edge, antsy to get back to where I left off, but can’t just flip open the book. I realize this is fully possible to pick up where one left off with the addition of the WinFrotz (sp) software download, but I’m winging it for now to examine the reader reaction and learn the methods. I also realize that I can’t go on much longer this way, since it would become a frustrating experience rather than one of intrigue and accomplishment. Since author and reader are in this together, there is a competive impulse to outwit the author by the reader. Just thoughts for now, but need to get back to my game research.

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WRITING: Fairies and Nuns

Posted on October 10, 2003 by Susan

A comment was made by a reader regarding finding the time to make sense of the scribbles of thoughts made in moments when access to your computer is not readily available. This post is an expansion of those few words, “Fairies and Nuns” near illegibly written on a bank envelope on my morning errand-run. Besides, it’s a catchier title than its subject: “Oral vs. Written Skills”.

One of the earliest books that I remember reading to myself was a compilation of short stories featuring fairies (complete with lovely black-inked drawings) who visited earth children and in a gentle way, taught morals and values within the text. I still can picture Princess Whats-her-face, delicate and dainty with lacey wings, holding her hands over her ears as she listened to the children speak. Poor grammar hurt her ears. I still am reminded of her and am torn with guilt when I hear myself saying, “I did good.” Despite this, and the countering effect of early elementary school under non-English speaking nuns (my classmates and I, unfortunately, did not speak other than English) I feel adequate in writing the language, but wonder at the difference in my speaking habits. Does then, a writer indeed have someone else within him that takes over when the fingers hit the keyboard?

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Current Affairs: Education and Beyond

Posted on October 10, 2003 by Susan

Referencing an ongoing controversy about curriculum, research, unnecessary course studies, the value of chosen required reading and the like on the Great Lettuce Head site, I am tempted to offer that “Because I said so!” in answer to “Why do I hafta know this…?”is within acceptable reason and should carry some weight. But to those who would argue the point, I offer this more liberal reason: How would one learn to think outside the box if one is never shown the edges? Education is the giving out of information known to date. The general idea is for students to store the information and to expand on it through reading and listening throughout one’s life, or if in an area of particular interest, challenge to improve or refute it. Until the day when we can afford to assign six experts in their fields to an individual student based on his own area of interest, the curriculum will remain “rounded.” For the many students utterly bored by Chaucer, look around to the one student whose eyes fairly glow with growing interest and love. Many decades ago, my high school Freshman English teacher, Mrs. Virginia Baltay (oh, where you be?) introduced me to Poe. Her own eyes sparkled with enthusiasm and she was wise enough to note that she was connecting with me on the man. “While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,” (Poe, The Raven) –yes, a tapping to awaken something in the mind of the student sitting next to you that will change his life from that point onward. I mean, like running to the bookstore to spend half of your first paycheck from the real world beyond graduation on “The Borzoi Poe”. Meanwhile, I carry an invisible raven on my shoulder “Evermore.”

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INTERACTIVE FICTION: As Literature

Posted on October 9, 2003 by Susan

Okay, so you probably don’t care, but I did find my way out of the crystal labyrinth with some assistance and now I’m facing a wolf.

I will likely spend a good few hours of this weekend exploring PHOTOPIA among other interactive fiction. Starting out with a writer’s attitude and a reader’s impatience, I quickly fell into the journey of this game, and I hesitate to call it a game. But it was exciting, frustrating, euphoric, funny; all the things that one hopes to achieve in writing a story in text. Engaging the reader to a point of real emotions, where he is immersed in the narrative to the point where preparing supper is out of the question and customers could bloody well beat down the door before he can tear himself away from the computer screen. (Okay again, change gender references and yes, it’s true.)

Barriers are being destoyed at the same time as bridges are being built within the literary community just as in almost every other field affected by the almighty computer. Arguments fly on all sides especially as to what constitutes art. Progress constantly changes the determination–even when it may be that it is a subjective view, after all. Time and experimentation move things beyond the established (to date) criteria and may improve, but certainly expand the categories. Homo’s red handprint on the cave wall can not remain the standard forever.

I’ll do more on this subject, but in the meantime, if you are curious, please check out John Timmons’ link to Interactive Fiction on this page. Play a bit. See what you discover.

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WRITING: Lyrics

Posted on October 9, 2003 by Susan

WRITING: Lyrics
For all you songwriters out there, I’m just going to have to throw some lyrics out at you every now and then. From Waylon Jennings, and the song of the same name as this line:

“Get your tongue out of my mouth
I’m kissing you goodbye.”

You tell me that these simple words don’t tell a whole story in themselves! Man and woman aren’t doing so well, man wants out finally, woman uses her charms (?) to change his mind, but it ain’t gonna work. How much clearer can you get?

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INTERACTIVE FICTION: Getting Into It

Posted on October 8, 2003 by Susan

Okay, so I’m into it now. I have just added a new category to this log, Literature just for times such as these. In approaching Interactive Fiction, I came to it with reluctance and suspicion (I am one of those folks who still cannot compare hand-drawn art with computer graphics on the same level) and felt it was “cheating” for some reason. Also brought with me my own feelings against interfering with another’s work, or accepting the text of others as my own. Well, tonight I lost my inhibitions, and suddenly I was no longer a writer but an honest-to-God game player! Yes, I got caught up in the thrill of the journey, and reader and writer both had a hell of a lot of fun. These posts are more just notes to myself I think, so that in analyzing the process, I will remember the turn of events. Speaking of which, and despite being warned to write down what I was doing during interaction, I scribbled but a few. This is very like the way I have approached fixing computer software problems–trial and error–but getting so involved in what I was doing that I’d fail to write down what I’d done in case it didn’t work (or the problem came up again in the future, which with computers, it invariably does). Very similar indeed to where I left myself crashing into the crystal labyrinth walls in PHOTOPIA. I’ll write again on this subject as soon as I find my way around.

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EDGAR AND I: Personal

Posted on October 8, 2003 by Susan

To quickly dispel any possible circulating rumors that I am a depressing, bitter old lady, let me give you one or two tiny pieces of the puzzle. I have a husband who makes the best chili and gazpacho (obviously a patient man—who else will take an hour just chopping vegetables?) and who has brought me a single red rose every Friday for the last fourteen years. He is perhaps, the rock to which I cling when I’m dancing in real reality. My writing is something that perhaps is often gloomy or sardonic, but that is from no other man but Edgar (Oh look—he’s smiling down at me!). That, and the inclination to write most often when I’m having a saggy diaper day.

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REALITY?: Exploration

Posted on October 8, 2003 by Susan

The fear of the unknown was coupled with her own lack of self-confidence in attempting anything beyond the safety of experience. Her biggest fear—that of failure—was reflected in every part of her daily life, inhibiting, prohibiting, condemning her to a path of secure mundanity. But with age comes a sense of daring; not that of the passion of youth, perhaps, but caused by a reminder of mortality that comes with each birthday celebrated after fifty. A different form of passion that adds its own urgency to a deed undertaken. This feeling rose to the surface now, and she opened the book and started reading.

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BLOGGING: It’s Value to A Writer

Posted on October 8, 2003 by Susan

For those of you who do read my weblog, I apologize for calling myself a writer. I mean this self description only as the love of and need to write–everyone writes, and in that category, I write more than most. It’s something I’ve always done and something I will always do (my family, I’m sure, wishes that I’d get around to writing their own favorite–my will).
I hope I’m not the only writer who is drawn back time and again to reread my own words, enthralled with their beauty for the first several readings, dismayed at their lack of purpose or value eventually. Blogging, more than a Word program, seems to set a more urgent internal deadline that forces one to get back to the story. In other words, some of these entries are possibly just stalling for time until I figure out where I want to go with Stories: “Few.” Just the stress of knowing he is out there rather than asleep in My Documents will weigh on my mind as a commitment.

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WRITING: Habits

Posted on October 8, 2003 by Susan

In my pursuit of learning, I’m heading into Interactive Fiction. I won’t comment about it much until I get the feel of it, but after a bit of dabbling I realize that I am approaching it from a writer’s viewpoint, and do not see it as a game. As a writer, I indeed use games in the writing process. Freecell, Solitaire, Sliding Tiles, Diamond Mine–all simple matters of dexterity and after much practice, almost automatic maneuvers. Like being able to drive a car without concentrating on turning the wheel to corner, these games allow for the mind to roam free. When stuck on a story, I often open Freecell and in short order, the story has progressed in my mind. Quick! Switch back to Word and get that thought typed down. In IF, the momentary writer’s block is overcome by the reader’s need to find out what happens next. Type “go north.”

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