Filed under: Hard Eights
A quick update for those who have asked: Holly Lisle’s How to Think Sideways writing course now accepts new students 24/7/365. Originally limited to one new class twice a year, Holly has redefined how she teaches and encourages students to interact, so the class has become a work-at-your-own-pace kind of thing.
Payments may be made monthly for six or 12 months. (For the very flush among us starving artists, Holly also will accept lump sums.)
I heartily recommend the course. Holly’s style is cheerful and witty, and the lessons are quite accessible, even for stubborn types like me. I’ve learned a lot about myself and my writing, as well as how to overcome some particularly obstinate writerly challenges. About the best thing I can say about Holly and her course is that they encourage writers to find paths that work for them, to uncover potential writers never knew they had and to have fun along the rocky road to publication.
It has been said that religion and politics are two topics people should not discuss in mixed company. Both are polarizing subjects: Few people can agree to disagree about something so personal and self-affirming, so there’s huge potential for vicious, recriminatory arguments to erupt.
Like the one I got into yesterday.
I make no excuses for my behavior, and I probably should apologize for getting involved in the first place, but in my defense I have to say I didn’t mix the explosive ingredients. I just lit the fuse.
This election, more than any other I can remember, has distressed me. Now that it’s almost over, I feel emotionally drained. I’m beyond tired of the endless backbiting and mudslinging. I’ve become exhausted by the sleazy innuendo. If I could, I would slap upside the head both presidential candidates, both vice-presidential candidates and most other candidates, and I’d tell them all to get a grip. “It’s the negative campaigning, stupid!” I’d be tempted to yell mid-slap.
(By the way, what is it that makes political candidates believe lying or truth-stretching during a campaign indicates trustworthiness?)
One of the things I find most frstrating about modern campaigns is the number of people who seem much too willing to cast aspersions on those who don’t share their religious convictions. The amount of religiously motivated campaign literature to which I’ve been subjected in the past few months is mind-boggling. I probably should ignore it, but I’m intensely curious about why people behave as they do, so usually I read the material and then engage in a “hm” moment, a “huh?” moment, a “you idiot” moment or a brief bout of hysterical laughter before I go on about my business.
Yesterday was different, though, and I haven’t been able to define why. Perhaps I lost my own grip because the religio-political message came through at an early, not-yet-fully-caffeinated hour. Perhaps my fed-up gene was working overtime that day. Whatever caused the unfortunate series of events, it began when a member of a Yahoo! hobby group to which I belong forwarded a religious message about voting.
I stared at the message in disbelief for a good long while before taking action, distraught to realize the last bastion of politics- and religion-free space to which I could retreat had been breached.
I responded with “[Our beloved hobby] is apolitical. It has no cultural, social, religious or political agendas. Please, let’s keep it that way.”
The other member apologized and explained she accidentally had forwarded the message to the wrong group. The mistake was understandable and all was forgiven, at least on my end. We’ve all been in that uncomfortable position, after all.
Unfortunately, while the message misdirector was composing her apology, other members who, like me, were offended by the original post also were composing their own messages about the religious voting screed’s inappropriateness. All of them crossed in cyberspace, resulting in a veritable puddle of terse-but-polite condemnation of the original poster’s unfortunate mistake.
That offended her, and she resigned from the group in a huff.
I felt badly, not least because although I read almost every message delivered to the group, I don’t often post. My first post in months resulted in a skirmish, illustrating why it’s usually best for me to eschew posting. Much like Typoid Mary spread the dreaded disease everywhere she went, I seem to precipitate ruckuses without even trying.
It’s a gift.
I wasn’t going to participate in National Novel Writing Month this year. For months leading up to the Nov. 1 launch of the 10th annual 50,000-words-in-30-days challenge, I told myself “You have too much to do this year. Just let it go.” I told all my writing buddies I was going to spend November hacking and slashing at the 100,000-plus-word manuscript I’d dearly love to submit to a publisher before year’s end (if I can get it below 100,000 words without cutting my heart out or “offing” any more characters). I told my professional pals I’d be glad to embed myself in some new startup projects that look promising, even in a hibernating economy. I accepted a couple of big feature-writing assignments because, after all, I gotta eat even if the economy is hibernating.
And then Nov. 1 rolled around, and Muse leapt upon me like I was her best friend in the world and she’d missed me excruciatingly while she was vacationing for the past several months. (Yes, this is the same muse who ran off with God knows who to God knows where while her brain-dead writer pal muddled along solo with a manuscript badly in need of a Frankenstein-like jolt.)
To make a long story short, by the end of Saturday I had an outline and several scenes planned out. By Sunday evening I’d written 3,719 words.
It’s entirely possible those 3,719 words are all I’ll get written this month. Looking at my schedule, I’ve already determined that if I write any more, I’ll have to pen them in my sleep.
Now I understand why so many literary giants were alcoholics or drug abusers. They weren’t feeding their muses. They were trying to shut them up.
I wish I had been kinder to my mind while I had it. I miss it sometimes.
I’m still bumping up against some creative roadblocks with my current work in progress, but thanks to a couple of freeware tools with which I’ve been experimenting, those annoying little disruptions are fewer and farther between. (I’ll never again complain about my muse’s hyperactivity, because when she decides to take a vacation, she doesn’t leave a number where she can be reached in case of emergency.)
So, while I’m sitting around hoping some stupendous solution to writer’s block will land upon me with an unmistakable thud, I thought I’d give other writers a heads-up about one of the tools I’ve found helpful. Maybe someone else will find it helpful too. (In the interest of full disclosure, I receive nothing for reviewing, endorsing or linking to this product.)
Understand that I didn’t pull this nifty freebie out of a hat. I spent far too many hours surfing the Web, reading product descriptions and reviews, and downloading and playing with demo packages that ranged in price from free to about $50. In addition, I’ve been a technology journalist for about ten years, so I feel at least marginally qualified to comment on software. Still, all of what follows comes with the caveat that it’s nothing more than my opinion. Your mileage may vary.
The program I’m using most often these days is Text Block Writer, a sort of virtual note card organizer and manager. Many writers prefer to use physical index cards to jot down scene ideas, because the tactile experience of arranging the cards into a workable pattern is important to them. I’m not a fan of physical note cards, primarily because not even I can read my handwriting when I become frenzied during particularly inspired moments, but also because I find thinking easier in front of a computer screen. (We all have our little peccadillos.)
Here’s a screen grab (click to enlarge):
Text Block Writer desktop
Text Block Writer is quick to download, easy to install and the learning curve is quite shallow. File size is virtually unlimited, so each project can include as many or as few virtual cards as one desires. In addition, the desktop interface can include as many columns as the user wants to define. For my purposes, I defined five six-column pages upon which each column represents one chapter. (I could as easily have defined one 30-column page, but scrolling sideways makes me cranky.)
Each virtual card represents one scene, and it can hold as much or as little information as one wants to include. (Yes, each card will hold an entire scene as it appears in the WIP, but I use them to jot down just the classic “essential details” like point of view, conflict, characters and basic action.) Scenes can be arranged within columns in whatever order the user desires. They can be moved around. They can be deleted, although that’s never really necessary because the “Block Shelf” space near the lower right-hand corner serves as a repository for unused scenes until you find a place to put them. The Block Shelf also will hold cards for scenes that pop into your head unbidden, just in case you want to add them somewhere later.
Cards also can be color-coded to indicate anything your little heart desires. I color-coded the ones in the example to indicate character POV at a glance.
Along the right-hand side of the page are a number of tabs that offer quick access to an overview of the cards included in the project, a card index, grouping options and the ability to change certain aspects of the project’s layout if you decide you’d like to try another way of looking at the desktop. The program is capable of printing everything in hard-copy form.
On the negative side, people who are accustomed to working with physical index cards will have to adjust their eyes to an altered reality. The virtual cards in Text Block Writer look nothing like the real thing. However, for the money (Did I mention the software is free?), this is a killer app for writers who use Windows-based computers. Sadly, it’s not available for other platforms.
The developer also offers a sort of big brother to Text Block Writer: Text Block Author. It has a few additional bells and whistles and only costs $19.95, but I didn’t find enough important bells and whistles to convince me to buy it. Author also doesn’t seem to be in active development right now; the most recent update was released in 2007.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I really should be engaging my work in progress, but I keep getting sidetracked by online diversions that are just too cool for words. Take this one, for example: Wordle. (Thanks to Authoress for the heads-up about it. While you’re at her site, check out the velvet-lined dungeon devoted to masochistic wordsmiths who willingly throw themselves under busses in pursuit of literary perfection.)
I’m thoroughly enthralled by the Wordle concept, which appears to be a distant visual and conceptual cousin to mind-mapping (one of my all-time favorite tools).
Here’s my first Wordle, based on a scene from the WIP over which I should be slaving at this very moment:
The full-size version is in the online gallery here.
Is that nifty, or what?
I’ve decided that in-between fits of Ike-inspired cleaning, I’m going to relax by taking a page from Nina Katchadourian’s book, so to speak. Katchadourian is the mastermind behind the Sorted Books Project, which has captured my imagination quite completely. The concept entreats both halves of my brain to play. If there’s one thing I have a surfeit of — besides Ike’s detritus — it’s books, and this seems like a thoroughly engaging way to use them in ways other than they were intended to be used. (The best things in our lives always have more than one purpose.)
Here’s one of my favorites among Katchadourian’s creations. Read the book spines from top to bottom.
I’m not a poet by any stretch of the imagination, but I think the books on my shelves (and my nightstand and my coffee table and my mantel and my bathroom counter and almost every other horizontal space in my house) will do the heavy lifting for me. Can you imagine what fun it would be to walk into someone’s home and find little “Easter eggs” like this scattered about?
I’m going to stack books strategically in various spots and see how long it takes someone to notice what’s up.
There are going to be some good, hardworking people who’ll never recover from Ike. You can recognize them on the street: They’re the ones with the hollow eyes of war survivors.
I just spoke to one while I was walking my dog outside the Holiday Inn in Seguin, Texas. She’s a single woman, middle-aged, and an evacuee from Gilchrist, a small town on the Bolivar Penninsula between Galveston Island and Port Arthur. Gilchrist wasn’t one of the Texas Riviera’s trendy beach communities. It was a country town populated by salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar working folks and farmers. The sum total of Gilchrist’s commercial development comprised a True Value hardware store, a couple of country-and-western bars and a handful of mom-and-pop diners, feed stores and groceries. Ike took almost everything, leaving only a few building shells standing.
Angie, my new friend, lost everything except her dog to Ike. Her house. Her car. Her clothes and furniture. Her job. It’s not like she had a lot to begin with, but she worked hard for what she did have, even after an auto accident last year severed the lower portion of her right leg. Surgeons reattached the leg, but it will never be normal. Through it all, Sophia Loren, Angie’s sweet Rottweiler-Blue Heeler mix, has been her steadfast companion.
Angie and Sophie were separated briefly after they were bussed to a San Antonio shelter when their aging van was washed away by Ike’s rising water. After Katrina and Rita, Texas law was changed to allow people to take their pets with them during mandatory evacuations. Sadly, legislators didn’t deal with what would become of the pets once evacuees reached shelters. A San Antonio animal welfare organization collected all the sheltered evacuees’ pets so they could be cared for properly, but the form the evacuees were required to sign gave the organization the right to place the animals in new homes if the evacuees didn’t reclaim them within 10 days.
When Angie’s head quit spinning, she read the fine print. She left the shelter, got a rental car through her auto insurance company, and headed for a motel that accepted pets. The expense, she said, is about to kill her, but she’ll manage as long as she has Sophie.
FEMA still has not approved Angie for temporary housing assistance. They need her to fax them proof she actually rented the now-destroyed “cabin” (her term) she occupied before Ike vented his fury all over the upper Texas Gulf Coast. She didn’t think to take utility bills with her when she left, and now she’s sure they’re scattered all over a narrow strip of land that’s still soggy nearly two weeks after a 15-foot wall of water wiped most life from its surface.
Someone from Texas Governor Rick Perry’s office called Angie’s room this morning, she said. They wanted to know what they could do to help. “I didn’t even know what to tell them,” she told me, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “Where was I supposed to start? I told them about my dog. I’m not giving up my dog.”
Sophie jumped up and licked my face. I wouldn’t give her up, either.
Occasionally I take off on little Web-based excursions that are the virtual equivalents of unplanned car trips: I start on a Web page I’ve visited for some Really Important Reason, and before I realize what’s happened, I’m 100 miles down a wholly unrelated, winding road I didn’t even know existed. The reason I don’t turn around and head back for home and safety before I find myself standing beside an out-of-gas vehicle and praying for the largesse of kind strangers is that I’m fascinated with the before-undiscovered scenery. It speaks to me in new and exciting ways, and I’m a glutton for that sort of experience. I find it enormously difficult to “do the intelligent thing” and stick close to home lest I become hopelessly lost.
Even though these impromptu treasure hunts sometimes get in the way of legitimate work, very seldom are they complete wastes of time (at least in my mind, which family and friends increasingly seem to think I’ve misplaced). Today, for example, I followed a link from Holly Lisle’s plot-building mini-course to StoryToolz.com, which led me to romance novelist Stephanie Tyler’s blog, which led me to a right-brain-vs.-left-brain test on the website of the Australian newspaper Herald Sun.
Here’s the test:
Right brain vs. left brain
Now, answer this question: Does the woman’s figure appear to rotate clockwise or counterclockwise? According to the Herald Sun, most people see the figure rotating counterclockwise. (I assume that’s to the left in the Southern Hemisphere, as it is in the Northern Hemisphere, although I could be wrong.) Those people’s left brains are dominant, meaning they tend to be logical, detail-oriented, math-and-science types. Scientists also have determined most of them are right-handed. The folks who see her spinning clockwise generally are ruled by their right brains, the side which primarily is the seat of emotions, philosophy, symbolism and risk-taking. (The Herald Sun’s website has interesting lists of right-brain and left-brain characteristics; see the “right-brain-vs.-left-brain test” link, above).
Many fiction writers and visual artists are right-brain types. Even though I’ve been writing fiction since childhood, I’ve always considered myself a left-brainer, and I do find numerous left-brain characteristics within my essential self. However, no matter how long I concentrate on that darn spinning woman, I can’t make her rotate counterclockwise (although the Herald Sun insists some people can make her switch directions).
Here’s another interesting right-brain-vs.-left-brain exercise.
Here are my results:
You Are 25% Left Brained, 75% Right Brained |
 The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning. Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others. If you’re left brained, you are likely good at math and logic. Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet. The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility. Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way. If you’re right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art. Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports. |
I don’t know why the results surprised me, but they did.
In which direction do you see the woman spinning? What did your results on the second right-brain-vs.-left-brain test say about you? Do the results jive or clash with what you’ve always thought about yourself? For very different reasons, both sides of my brain would be interested to know how other people reacted.
