Hypercompendia

Steve Ersinghaus is doing a wonderful series on reading hypertext, one that has helped me to understand better how to read deeper into any form of literature while it emphasizes the nature of hypertext to form a story that examines itself by its forms of writing spaces.  He has graciously been using A Bottle of Beer as one of the examples in his series and I’d like to attempt to present a particular premise that he so astutely noticed–that I as author hadn’t really consciously written in.

The text spaces in question:

(FRAGMENT) – HARD TIMES
Yolanda prayed to the Virgin Mary because of their bond of motherhood, though she’d never suffered the groping and plunging of Javier and Juan, nor the sweet touch of Carlos.

From her gruff abuelo through her father and brothers and husbands and sons to even the Padre or Mary’s own Son, if there was any man Yolanda had trusted, it had been Carlos.

Then Carlos had broken her heart with his fist, leaving it like clay shards of a flowerpot, no longer capable of holding the soil in which to grow love.

(SHARD)
It was all right with her grandfather, he had told her it was.  But Yolanda wasn’t sure about what she did with her brother.

(SHARD)
There was a meteor shower one night.  Yolanda had awakened and though she did not know the hour, she later believed that it was the time between midnight and two that Carlos had died a year before.

She went outside and walked a distance from the house to relieve herself.  As she squatted and waited, she looked up to see the stars dying in bursts across the sky.

She watched for a while and decided it was a sign that she was forgiven.

The Fragment is from the linear narrative of the story, the Shards are linked from certain words within the text of the Fragment.  Steve says:

Curiously, in Hard Times, Gibb restricts the reader to the writing space without supplying a link for exposition or further exploration. It would appear that Yolanda is reluctant to give up some aspects of this relationship to the narrator. Instead, the additional opportunities for exploration point to other men in Yolanda’s life. Conceptually in the hypertext, this amounts to a undisclosed shard, a shard, or additional linked memory, that might have been, or, rather, may be imagined by the reader, unseen but imagined, untouched, but an aspect of the texture of Yolanda in the reader.

Well, I hadn’t thought of that but I love the idea of it and with luck it will remain with me through all current and future hypertext writings.  In retrospect, what might have stopped me from explanation is what Ersinghaus has called a "unit of sense" in the first part of his series.  The relationship between Yolanda and her third husband, Carlos has been given out a bit at a time, in images that provide a representation of years in a single act.  They are honest and yet they are without a lot of emotion.  Here, the image of the broken pot is likely all Yolanda can offer without sentiment.  We have already seen her crying in her bed at night and she probably would not have let us seen that had we not caught her in a weak moment. 

Instead, what I’ve brought out from the Fragment of Hard Times is a reference to sexual abuse by Yolanda’s grandfather and brother, and a meteor shower that oddly takes place a year after Carlos’ death, but Yolanda takes as a sign of forgiveness.  We don’t know how Carlos died.  We do know about Juan.  Many times I’ve gone back to this particular shard and said to myself, no, that should be Juan, not Carlos’ death that’s mentioned. But something keeps stopping me.  Something Yolanda might know that she hasn’t even told me.

Jeremy was kind enough to point out the feature of "Read this Story" while logged in that eliminates the small problem I mentioned earlier about the preferred manner of editing when one is in the final (hah!) editing stages.  I’d clicked on that when I first got into Hypertextopia, then promptly forgot about it when in the whirlwind of writing.  He also pointed out that I’m a bit late on my congrats in the last post, but then again, he deserves the notice so I’m leaving it in though the news is dated!

Well I had certainly been impressed, but others evidently too:  Congratulations to Jeremy Ashkenas of Hypertextopia on his new affiliation with White Whale as a designer.

"He brings a new design perspective to the table, focusing on visitor
interactions and front-end design. A generalist in the fine
liberal-arts tradition, Jeremy has worked in and around many aspects of
the web site arena: from behind-the-scenes Ruby and Rails development,
to PHP CMS customization, XHTML/CSS template design, and Javascripting
up draggable, tuggable, animated interfaces. He’s learning how White
Whale works as a company, and is enjoying diving into our new projects."

Jeremy is extremely talented and I owe him a great deal for the opportunity to write into his hypertext program.  Congratulations, Jeremy, at this step in what I’m seeing as a brilliant career!

One final read through before I move on.  By the fourth text box I’m logged in and into My Writing Space; open iPages as backup, make changes.

Writing allows rewriting.  How lovely if life did as well.

After cutting about 30% of the story out, I’m wondering if I’ve possibly cut not too much, but the wrong things.  I’m just not getting that warm fuzzy feeling from the story, the empathy with the character.

Maybe the imagery and language were hiding a rather blah plot beneath them.  There is some depth to the story beyond the simplicity of the linear and the intricate Shards that enhance and provide balance.  The protagonist of this story has been abused emotionally and physically by not just her husbands, but by the traditions of her society.  She has survived.  This story is one of the few I’ve written that goes beyond personal trials to be more representative of a portion of the population, and it’s certainly not a frivolous problem.  But I may have lost the drama, even as I’ve attempted to focus it, by cutting some of the emotion out of it.

It could also be that I’m just sort of sick of reading it by now.

Some neat new pieces up at Hypertextopia, though some are just in the beginning stages.  One of the things about Hypertextopia is that at some point in writing and editing, it is easier to read as a reader sees the piece presented, rather than as the writer, opening and closing the writing text boxes.  This means that it need be ‘published’ and though it’s easy enough to toggle between published and unpublished, the writer in you sorta makes it hard to turn off…

While there are a few there that are evidently abandoned–and that’s just an indication of writer choice in developing an affinity for writing within the hypertext environment.  Some love it, some just don’t, and that’s fine.  But some of the new pieces are really intriguing.

Jeremy, the creator of Hypertextopia has a piece entitled Saint EMC2 that has some lovely language:

Silver like this:

Like the thousand fishes’ skin.
Like smiling through tears.
Like staring at the spotlight, your first night on stage.
Like gunmetal.

Rebecca Bland has a first piece up titled The Possibilities of No, and I was surprised and flattered to see the second Fragment box titled "A Bottle of Beer."  There’s some nice stuff here:

The cigarette she held between her fingers continued to burn down. She
watched as the ash was whisked away by a quick breeze, wishing that she
could do the same.

I’m glad to see more folks trying their skills out on the hypertext medium. All the published pieces can be viewed at the Hypercompendia Grand Library.

Okay, this is another one of my fav’s that’s ending up on the cutting room floor.  I’m sure Yolanda will be grateful, since it’s in the very first Fragment, by way of introducing her to the readership:

Wind whistled out of her in a long, low moan.

Yolanda lives alone.  She’s drinking beer.  It’s natural for flatulence to occur, especially in older folks and especially when they’re drinking beer.  But was it necessary for the narrator to tell us about it? No.  Not unless this hits the big screen and helps for audio effects.

Well now, ever since I realized that I could make Writing Spaces in exciting colors I’ve been antsy to work back in the friendly environment of Storyspace.  It’s the inspirational WOW factor I suppose, my muse likely being a hot-pink sequined queen.  The space is an appetizer, a platter to be filled with tasty words that build to the main meal and all the sweet potatoes and artichoke and chick peas side dishes.

Food shows up in my writing a lot.  Mostly as metaphor; I don’t sit a family down to a meal, particularly in that odd tv sitcom manner where seven people crowd three sides of the table to leave room for the cameraman’s plate.  Though eggs at breakfast were a very important part of one of the storylines of Paths, and corn tied the five narrative threads together.

Before I can start or restart something in Storyspace (I have four or five so-called ‘concepts’ awaiting me) I need to wring our the Hypercompendia A Bottle of Beer  till it’s dry as a pretzel (see?) and then take out all the embarrassing excess in Paths.

So inspiration is the beginning of story, perspiration is the writing, and dedication, well that’s gotta be all the rewrites.

Looking for something else, I stumbled upon Montfort’s hypertext The Girl and the Wolf and just thoroughly enjoyed it, particularly for its simplicity in options and choice of story according to the degree of sex or violence you want in your reading.  Love the concept.  Enjoyed the stories.

From Spinning regarding a trip to the CPA with our files: "he sends me out with all the backup papers, checkstubs, inventory
sheets, etc. that he doesn’t need to focus on the single sheet I’ve
given him for our personal tax info, and one on the business…"

Perfect metaphor for the editing process.