At the linkspace Mrs. Diamonte in The Dumpster, after following Danny and Mike, everything feels clean. The reader is prepared.
The link “asleep” has narrative meaning. But does everything depend on Mr. Diamonte’s and Mike’s fear?
Digital Ecology
The notion of digital ecology seems a mess. It seems more simple than the complication of “virtual.” Digital tools and data pervade the environment and they’re works in progress, unfinished apparatus.
Digital ecology appears to suggest perpetual critical questions. How should we publish? How should we share? How should we interact? What are the important questions?
Story Plotting
Here’s today’s story plotting by word length in Tinderbox, using this bit of code as a rule: $Pattern=”plot($WordCount)”.
Considering length hasn’t been much of an issue, as the internal questions about plot and character have taken precedence. Day to day writing prohibits length, but the upper parameter of length hasn’t been much more than a thousand. The longest story is The Champion at 1203 words. At 238, The Children works out as the shortest. Average length works out to about 650.
Creative Moments
My wife sent me this article (perhaps sensing story struggle). In any event, there are some interesting conclusions and contexts:
In today’s innovation economy, engineers, economists and policy makers are eager to foster creative thinking among knowledge workers. Until recently, these sorts of revelations were too elusive for serious scientific study. Scholars suspect the story of Archimedes isn’t even entirely true. Lately, though, researchers have been able to document the brain’s behavior during Eureka moments by recording brain-wave patterns and imaging the neural circuits that become active as volunteers struggle to solve anagrams, riddles and other brain teasers.
and
To be sure, we’ve all had our “Aha” moments. They materialize without warning, often through an unconscious shift in mental perspective that can abruptly alter how we perceive a problem. “An ‘aha’ moment is any sudden comprehension that allows you to see something in a different light,” says psychologist John Kounios at Drexel University in Philadelphia. “It could be the solution to a problem; it could be getting a joke; or suddenly recognizing a face. It could be realizing that a friend of yours is not really a friend.”
These sudden insights, they found, are the culmination of an intense and complex series of brain states that require more neural resources than methodical reasoning. People who solve problems through insight generate different patterns of brain waves than those who solve problems analytically. “Your brain is really working quite hard before this moment of insight,” says psychologist Mark Wheeler at the University of Pittsburgh. “There is a lot going on behind the scenes.”
Repost on Associations
Here’s something I’d written about a year ago on units of meaning. It’s fresh in the mind again:
Kafka’s The Trial never grows stale. The Kafkan, however, as a descriptive modifier, has become a cliche. The Borgesian suffers similar potential for emptiness, while the fictions live on with every encounter. And what political commentator hasn’t used Yeats to describe the current state of affairs? In my view, Victory Garden must not “prove†anything. There is something implicit in the voice and feel of interactive fiction, something impressive in its often powerful imagery and relationships, something impressive in its infinite possibility of forms, and, finally, something in its ideas that can be expressed in no other form, something that will “create afresh the associations.â€
Flake on the Cantor set sent me back.
Lunch Time
I’ve been writing in the mornings, gardening, and working on reports and courses for the fall. Usually, I’ll eat a baloney sandwich and watch MSNBC or CNN with it. This has become an unhealthy habit, and the baloney’s not much good for me either.
Afternoon TV news is all commercials and random goodies I have no interest in, so I should have lunch in silence. But there’s a related issue. Apparently, some statewide policy prohibits pizza parties and other “unhealthy” snacks at school, which is slogging into late June along with spring season, as the projections have all the way up to Tuesdays yet in the low seventies.
I went searching for the policy and was unable to find it on the DoE site, which is of poor design and looks like a neglected front stoop and not really designed for assisting people who might want to find something specific. The D of Higher Ed site is simpler but still looks like something built for Mosaic. It’s a little depressing, as State webpages should be designed as human destinations and should reflect the place that owns it, if indeed that place wants to make a good impression. I’m sure there are lots of design and IT people out looking for work who’d be glad to take on the project. What is it about government web sites and information tonnage?
Anyway, later we saw a report on texting and my wife and I, while in agreement, went at the problem from two different directions, as the example on the news was, I thought, a poor illustration of several issues in American telecommunications infrastructure. A family may indeed pay hundreds of dollars in texting usage or they could pay the going rate for another sort of plan which limits the rate but encourages the usage, or simply limit their texting. Texting is kind of interesting, though, so the ten extra dollars on top of an already too expensive plan isn’t all that bad. But the plans are too expensive to start, which is a real concern. The fact that people pay for regular cable and mobile service is just plain odd. Unfortunately, real competition is simply impossible at the moment given the way cable is delivered into the house, as the company owns the line in and probably wont give it away to a competitor.
Do users of mobile service or cable really know why plans are rated as they are? Does the company use a λ algorithm to determine it? And, by the way, why do we all assume that the inside of a plastic bag is clean?
This is the sort of day it’s been, when everything just seems sloppy, lazy, and built and delivered half-assed.
Day 25 Reflection
We’ve hit the 25th day of 100 Days, which has been relentless work. I’m curious to know how other people are working, what they’re working with, how they’re working through problems, and what their “workbenches” look like.
Day 25 for me saw a return to Computer Leon, who persists for me as a fun and comedic character. He could get into all kinds of interesting problems. One of the items I’ve realized is that I don’t want to leave Pelgram and The Rabbit stories alone for long. But returning to these characters and their narrative implications requires distance as they really don’t taste of serialization.
I still have a lot to think about with experiments. But a major insight I’ve had about my own writing is that 1) I work with internal voices in two ways: I listen for narrators and for how characters sound and 2) following 1) I listen for how structure and plot emerges from the language and 3) I try to feel out action and event from the ideas I’m interested in.
Stylistically, I’m aiming for story language that conveys as much with as little as possible but, hopefully, doesn’t restrict for restrictions own sake, a language that keeps cutting away at the slab, the stone, or digging at the dirt for that unlikely or unknown nugget. That might be key, and is something I look for in my colleagues’ work. I’ve discovered a number of things: Leon, Pelgram, and all the other hes and shes that have emerged, and would never have emerged, without these stories. This is significant: withal, I’ve uncovered new voices, new places, new people, more ideas to consider.
For example, Cruz in The Mirror was a nice find for me, but he didn’t become a find until Maricela ends the story with a statement about Cruz: “The Cruz that not even I, and you, can escape.” The story progressed in fairly linear fashion. Cruz gets an idea about mirrors, Maricela just happens to be his girlfriend, and he follows his line to a point and the notion is closed by Maricela. But she throws an idea into the mix that made me think about future issues with Cruz, who sounds somewhat focused/obsessed and interested in mysteries. Maricela, who is the same Maricela of Weeping Bird, can’t escape Cruz. What does this mean? And how did Maricela get from an island in danger of attack, and out of a TV program, to Cruz? Cruz must be pretty interesting to attract an ex-special forces, bisexual bird-woman.
I could spend the next 75 days following each of the characters in these stories. I could also write the next 75 stories in one of several rooms or with a hat on or with a ribbon tied around my pinky finger. The point is not to plan on anything. For example, at this moment, I’m thinking about the Oedipus myth and how that might be fun to play with. And what if Computer Leon decides to reprogram his mobile phone? Is Pelgram in Shantou? Or is he that smoker smoking in the dark near a coffee shop on Carlisle?
More Government
If minority leader, Senator McConnell believes this
“We can make incredible improvements in American health care, but I don’t think having more government — in effect putting Washington between you and your doctor — is the way to go.”
then how can he, again, accept FEHBP as an asset and a good?
Critters
A few pictures of geese, bees, and ticks.
Saw these at the Barkhamsted Reservoir.
Bees are hard to catch. But a little patience and a large salvia worked here. This one may be a queen. Really big.
Another.
No critter set would work without a tick. Thanks dog.
Healthcare
As storytelling is in the bones at the moment, I haven’t been keeping up with news. But, I do wonder why any Congress person could argue an ideological position against a subsidized system. I think we have a pretty good handle on cost benefit. But why the politics? How can one enjoy a meal and at the same time rail against the chef?