Hypercompendia

I’m still not sure of the balance between what hypertext demands of a writer and what it offers as opportunity, but I do know that there is a great difference in processing information from the creative standpoint.  This, of course, will translate as the same balance of power for the reader.

This is what I’m working on to submit as a workshop presentation on hypertext and the writer.  I have written tons, hundreds of posts on my work in the Storyspace hypertext software, and to aid in my organization of the process, to catch the initial highs and lows of learning to write in something that was nearly as foreign to me as Sanskrit, I have pulled the Storyspace postings into a word processing program that is now over 100 pages and growing.  The thing is, once you’ve walked around the area for many months, once you’ve slept in the hills and planted the valleys, you tend to get smug and forgetful of that initial awe in learning.  This "book" that I’m printing out and putting together with my little punch and plastic binding machine, will serve well as a reference guide to highlight those ecstatic moments of discovery; the rants and ravings of the frustration until the problems faced were overcome (or answered by the SSP & TXCC elves). 

What cracks me up is the fact that I’ve come to rely on traditional ‘hard copy’ to aid in a presentation on the digital and this: because of the medium of weblogging, the traditional is not so traditional in that it starts at the end and ends at the beginning.

How’s that for an unconventional brave new world?