I’m back into Dreamweaver as my code editor. But I still like hand-coding for some reason, though Dw just makes it easier to figure out why I screwed it up.

We also have somewhat of a bead on a Flash or SVG generated Storyspace file rendering machine. This will take some time though and it will be an interesting thing to try. Flash is getting pretty darned complicated though.

It will be back to Brimmer soon. I want to get a little splash it’s coming soon thing up and will also be working on the story in Literatronic: Brimmer and Death, a Storyspace, Literatronic project. That sounds pretty good. If things look good, this technos collaboration may form the basis for a new novel, titled at the moment Canyon Fall, the story of Wally Rorschach’s chase across the continent, closely followed by his daughter, who’s closely followed by a reporter, and after them, is, of course, the reader.

In the mean time, my schedule is a little daunting.

This imagery is real core stuff. The text box’s contexts are compressed and vivid.

Find the local dealer and walk into the section of choice and you’ll possibly be overwhelmed, unless you’re Charles and Charles has a thing for dusty stacks, the deep and penetrating pains from bumping into the corners of close-drawn furniture, and he enjoys following young men and women. He backs into the shadows and watches them read or guess over which title to pick from the shelves.

Message: there’s a lot to read out there. The output in the last few hundred years has been enormous. How many titles are published in one month? And, of course, there’s Charles.

He’s heard lots over the years and he never forgets.

“Charles, stop staring into the toilet.”

“Charles, what’s that red stuff on your hands?”

“Charles, how long were you in the girl’s restroom?”

“Charles, you’re a fucking maniac.”

“Charles, do you still collect cicada shells?”

Every day the voices add up. He has difficulty suppressing them. In the shadows, he watches people read. He hides behind a volume. But he’s really watching you. He’s watching you read. The store is quiet in those nooks with the soft chairs. However, Charles’ mind is as loud as a train tunnel, voices boiling out of memory. He’s that guy you see reading quietly in a corner. You have no idea.

Get up, Charles. Walk over to the reader. Grab that book and say you want back in. You want back into the world where we walk. Do it, Charles. Get up. Forget about the toilet and the cicadas. Show us how you can square off the sun between your fingers that you raise like a frame to the sky.

Stories haunt the writer.

The rhythm of the language takes over, too, such that the the normal way of observing and expressing an object takes the color of that speed and temperament. Being inside the world is a way to express this metaphorically. Consider writing a large space. “writing a large space” isn’t writing a large space.

The room was large is something to be avoided. You almost have to shout this out and say, stop saying that, will you! It was a large room. Maybe that would be fine. But it’s better to consider a point of observation and to watch someone enter that space from the other end, their outline so obscured by the distance that their identity is unknowable until they come close enough to you to make shouting convenient.

The haunting is a form of mediation.

The following screen shots illustrate a creative problem in hypertext having to do with the content of writing spaces, closure, and links. I’ve highlighted the second link in the space called Burdens. The link in question is “like you.” In the context of the writing space, “like you” implies a lot: association, metaphor, difference, tension and other relationships. Brimmer tells Death he doesn’t want to be like her in a context of the space. But what happens if a reader clicks on “like you” rather than “burden”?

Physically, if the choice is “like you,” then the subsequent space is Methods. (Whisper: none of the titles mean anything).

Logically, there should be three basic relationships given any semantic link. A relation between the content of Burdens and the link, Burdens and Methods, and the link and Methods. In the first condition, “like you” takes on a significance simply because it initiates choice thereby drawing attention to other links that may appear in the space. In the third condition, “like you” should relate to subsequent text in Methods.

As writer and editor, I’d suggest that the condition fails. The essence of Methods doesn’t really carry the link “like you” into its meaning enough to warrant the link choice. I think this is critical: some of the language in Burdens will have to be revised so that the correct link develops or some other existing text will have to supply the link.

I do like the “like me” . . . “like you” rhythm though, which, in my view, adds an element of complication to the link, closure, character issue writing game.