Hypercompendia

Trying to catch my breath here between stories, and I’m sure most of the other participants are as well. I’m a slow writer when forced to come up with something (“Will you please be quiet?”) though when a story starts on its own it practically rolls itself out on my screen.

It’s been a learning process of the Tinderbox software which has been a tremendous blessing as a tool. I only wish I could have been more familiar with its closetful of features and could make better use of them instead of the learn when you need it under a 24-hour deadline to do it in manner that this project demands.

My own work has been a case of coming up with the concept of story after reading Steve Ersinghaus’ morning offering, working up a color theme that jives with the mood, renaming all code references to reflect the new story number and title (thank God for the timesaver Copy and Paste), start writing, make up a viable and enjoyable story, link and relink and recheck all the links, check spelling and typos, and then export the whole schmeer into html format into a file on the desktop (this is where I’d like to transfer the files into a Tinderbox shell but don’t have the time). From there, it’s adding necessary code to some of the .html files (which are the individual story pages) that sends the last page to the home pages on the site. I take an image of the Tinderbox map as a guide to the reader (and to pretty up the Hypercompendia posts) and Filezilla it all to the Lunar site server. From there I add the new post into the Hypertext Flash Fiction Page, then do a quick run through to make sure it all works before posting the new entry and make it available on the main home page.

And there’s where the problems may begin. It takes a while to go through checking links to make sure that all has been properly done. And it takes even longer to locate that missing “, or # or ; or http: or // or even the damned susangibb.net sometimes. Honest, the hardest one I’ve had to track down was a blank single space when I didn’t backspace it out during a copy and paste. And again and, because I’m obsessive compulsive all errors found at this stage are corrected in all three places: Tinderbox, html file on my hard drive, and the server file.

A few of the hypertexts I really like;  #3 Humankind, #6 Impressions, #8 Evilution, #14 Something Dark, #17 Smoke and Mirrors, #19 The Perfect Woman, #22 Wishes of Time, #23 Reflection, and #24 Everywhere, which are about the only ones I’d likely save and of course, further edit.  But there’s a purpose to each of the stories, and I’ve learned something new with each one.

And then it hits me: 74 more to go? Here are some thoughts from a few of the others at Steve’s post and at Mary Ellen’s.