Meta Creation #4 2012-01-26

This was inspired by a shitty customer service experience with Dell, where I started thinking about how CRM software should be far more advanced than it typically is.  That got me on my standard internal rant about how shitty Office is, which snowballed.  I'm glad I got it out of my fingers.

It could be better, but I've been sitting on it for a day.  I toyed with varying the style of the verse even more; but I'm not sure which would be more successful.

Aside from the message, there are things that I really like about this, not least the little LOTR reference.

The Lament of the Power User (Creation #4 2012-01-26)

Whither the helper
that knows what's going on
and tells you who's calling
and speaks in your ear?

Whither the sibling
that works with its family
and copies and pasteses
my master's tables,
my precious's charts?

Whither the program
that knows what it's doing
and knows how you do it
and works for your ends?

Whither the email
that carries your message
and all clients render'it
as you recommend?

Whither the handsfree at motion or rest?
Come out from the lab and interpret my voice!

Whither the shuffle which varies the noise?
I like much more music than that damn Prince of Fresh.

Whither the days without
all three yes buttons?
Whither the software
that shuts up and functions?

Whither the software?

Whither the software?

It's not 1997 anymore.

Meta 2011-09-23

This is based on my morning, except that I'm not as attractive as she is; and I'm not gay.

I couldn't decide if I wanted this to be longer or not.  I also had a lot of endings in mind, including comically waking up the other woman.

I don't know. I'm not sure if this is done, and I'm not sure how good it actually is.  I like a lot of the sentences, but I'm not sure about the paragraphs.

I almost went back to give her more definition, as race or eye color or something like that; but I definitely do like it better this way.

Creation #2: Story 2011-09-23

A laser-thin light shone on her dresser. Pursing her lips in concentration she nudged the door; and only when it stopped, a clear path upon the floor of the room, did her face relax.  Quietly drawing a breath, she compressed her body as one in need of self esteem and walked, like an Egyptian, through the crack.  Once in the room she allowed her curves to return to their natural state, gazed lovingly at the voluptuous form barely visible through shadow and spread, and allowed herself ten seconds with the mirror to reflect on how lucky she was.

Back to business, she stepped around the dresser to the carefully-placed armoire. Everything it contained was suitable for the office, but she only dressed for the mood which was hardest to inspire and today aimed for arousal through impressiveness.  Stepping back, she selected the undergarments of the woman she aspired to exude and dressed slowly, carefully, quietly, as if she were slinking away from some unnamed chamber, desperately trying to keep last night's mascara from making tomorrow morning's dry cleaning.

She cast her eyes where she knew the bed was and blew a silent kiss.

Meta 2011-09-22

http://writeeverydaymoster.blogspot.com/2011/09/creation-1-poem-2011-09-22.html

This one is based on a memory from Karin,

Years ago, camping in Ithaca, there were four deaf friends at a site up the hill from mine. As the night wore on, and we let our fire die down, they built theirs up, so they could continue talking. The last thing I saw before I closed my eyes, were their wild and graceful arms, animated against the silent dark

I told her it should be a poem, but she demurred.  I like this one in concept, but I do think it's a little too on-the-nose.

 That's OK; it's my first one in this forum.

Creation #1: Poem 2011-09-22

Clear through their cloak
Urgent whispers unite



Hidden plainly in the light
Deft gestures bind

Novel Adventure #1

I want to find a platform which will allow me to track all the disparate parts of the book differently.  I don't think this exists (it's actually a big part of why I want to write an office suite, but that's a digression for which there isn't time right now).  So then I thought that a wiki would be a good place to start. It will track the changes as I make them, which I feel is important as I want to be able to go back to things and see my thought process for a long time in the future.

With that in mind, I will be dividing the creation of the book into discussions of the characters, the timeline, the general things about the book... and then I'll start to write little pieces of the story.  The idea is that I can build the novel around those pieces, referencing the original ideas and then modifying them to fit the story itself, etc., while still referencing the basic premise of the element of the story.

When I talk about characters, I'm going to be very detailed. This will enable me to write about them at any point in my personal timeline while keeping them consistent within the timelines of the book.  I also want each of them to speak with its own voice. I will have dialect notes for each person and no two will be exactly the same.  The narrator will speak differently--better--than anyone else in the story.

The timeline is what it sounds like. Since thigns will unfold at different times within each story, this will allow me to track where I put the "gotcha" story intersection moments while knowing what the fuck is going on as this universe grows and grows.

As I write this I realize that I need to track places as separate items for similar reasons.

General things about the book will be very high level, guiding principles.  This will keep me focused on what I actually want to achieve without letting me get too far astray.

I'll also have a separate section about research, because as fantastical as certain elements of this thing will be, I want everything to be grounded in fact or good scientific theory.  One story element that's already in my brain requires me to do research on a few, related topics.

In closing, yes, I'm approaching this book as a project with myself as its manager.  I think this is a recipe for success, not least because it will save my thoughts (which I haven't been doing at all right now) even if I fall back to the lackadaisical MOster and don't touch it for moths at a time.

I went in search of a wiki that i could keep private .  I thought that wikia would be a good place to start. Of course, you can't really get a good look at the functionality until you've signed up. So after jumping through a shitload of hoops I realized that A) I couldn't make it private; and B) I didn't care to take the time to figure out how to delete my account.  There's some idiotic mosterdoesalotofthingswithalotofwords.wikia.com out there. I hope someone hits it so Google picks it up.

The next stop is wikispot.com, which is a pretty bare-bones, no fanciness interface.  I didn't want a lot of fanciness but this turned out to be less than I'd like.  There were a lot of battles with understanding how things work, which starts with my lack of understanding of the base concepts of a wiki.  A lot of crappy rendering through poor syntax has led me to a halfway-decent site that I can use to spew from my fingertips the crap which may or may not turn out to be a really good book.

We'll see.