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?

Been editing not as much for language yet as for structure and cohesion.  I’m just so very close to the end of story that I want to make sure all is in place and held together in a sound manner and building towards this ending that should come as a bit of a surprise, even while pointing back to the theme of human nature.

Can’t get it all in here, just what fits on the screen:

In the process of seeking translation of a somewhat vulgar slang word into espanol, I was pointed in the direction of editing this hypertext story and while I realized that there were some rough spots here, the story seemed to grow so quickly that I focused on letting that happen.  This is not my usual way of writing, and in hypertext, it’s vital to keep it under some form of control because the story can never be available all at a glance (well yes, it can be presented in Map View but that doesn’t really show up the little glitches of language and time).

Now I’m in a quandary.  I’m finding more and more "rough spots," places that could be smoothed and polished in rewriting, some time and space flaws, and other story element areas that beg for attention.  This is all on my own recognition of less than top quality writing; I can well imagine what a pro writer like my buddy or a bunch of pro readers like the CW classmates could point out in this.    But do I take care of these things now–which is what I normally do when writing, starting from an earlier point, often the first line, and reading and rewriting as I go–or should I finish up the story, since I’m so close to the end?

It seems to be getting easier for me to write into the hypertext environment, though I’ve been doing it since sometime in November when I first ordered Storyspace in the Windows Version, then again in January with the Mac version, and now, in these last couple of days, working in the Hypertextopia site online.

While I’ve wandered away from the Storyspace wip, The Hanging, I’ve plunged right into A Bottle of Beer in Hypertextopia and I think part of the reason is simple the story and character that came out of the first text box and grew from there.  Yolanda, the plump protagonist of A Bottle of Beer, is likeable, has risen above her family script, and is at the point in her life where she just wants to be left alone and live through her good dreams and happy times.  But her vulnerability has always been men, and even now, on a hot late afternoon, there is someone coming to see her and we can’t imagine what it will mean for her future.

Nearing the four-thousand word mark on this, and I’ve an idea that I’m close to winding it up.  There are plenty of places that I can add on the "shards" of hypertext, enhancements, background, insight, and I do have these tagged (color-coded) according to what they are revealing: Something of Yolanda, something of Men, or something that comes natural to the instinct for survival.

Another day and maybe even later tonight, I’ll link to it here though I’m still working on the piece. 

Jeremy Ashkenas of Hypertextopia has responded quickly to take care of the problems I’ve had with lost text and broken links in this medium.  With these little annoyances out of the way, I’ve been going full steam ahead with story and while Jeremy’s statement onsite claims to have an axial hypertext pattern as its goal, I feel that it does give the writer plenty of flexibility for creative purpose.

In this piece specifically designed for and in Hypertextopia, A Bottle of Beer contains a main character and even as she is alone out in the middle of the Mexican desert, she is surrounded by characters from memory and past.  This is the story, Yolanda’s life as it brings her to this one more face to face meeting with one last man.

I’m having fun with the lovely Yolanda:

SUNSET

She woke angrily, as if someone or something had given her a mighty shove.

“Leave me be, Juan!” she grumbled. She moved instinctively, still half asleep. One hand she pushed out in front of her to keep him away.  The other gathered together a clump of skirt and stuffed it between her legs, her hand splayed out protectively, her fat fingers clamped on her crotch like iron rungs on a grate.

He was a sly jackal, that one.  Her first husband had been her first lover, of course.  She had been a virgin when they married but then she was only fifteen.  Juan was demanding and horny and she’d learned early as a young bride never to fall asleep with her back to him.  Nor bend down to the oven when he was hungry.

“Stay away, animal,” Yolanda mumbled back into sleep.

I’m have a great time writing into Hypertextopia, and while I’m running into some technical glitches, I’m finding out that some of it is my own fault in the way I’m entering information and some of it is just program quirks.  The good thing is that Jeremy Ashkenas, creator of this site is so wonderfully willing to work with you in getting things straightened out. 

One this he has mentioned is that the site works best with Firefox and I’ve found that to be true so I’m not hopping back and forth between couches (the northern Dell and the southern Mac) but using the Mac and Firefox exclusively.  He has also told me to mind what text is selected for linking, to keep it simple and symbol-free, which I am doing.  It does matter if the text is copied from a Word program into the Hypertextopia writing boxes (called Fragments and Shards) and I’ve done this, but only when I’ve already lost a portion of text and have now covered my ass by copying and pasting from Hypertextopia to Word or iPages or an email as backup and have had to replace the text. 

The story is moving along nicely and I’ve no idea where it’s going or how long it will be but it just seems to be flowing from the characters themselves, starting with Yolanda and her three past husbands and a stranger jogging out of the sunset. 

Here’s the latest, and I’m just getting used to the manipulations of the text boxes and what I can and cannot do.  For one thing, I’m thinking differently than in the Storyspace world.  Though I want to tie things together, I seem to be forced to do so with the lines of narrative, rather than planning on depending on links to bring it all to a conclusion.  It’s just different.  But as I learn, I’m approaching story (or rolling it out) in a manner that is agreeable to the medium.

Love the way this is going–it is as if the medium brings out a sense of magical realism that I’d noticed as well as a force working in Storyspace.

Yolanda was dancing with a large black bear.  It was
light on its feet and its smile revealed clean long white teeth.  She
was falling in love.

As the music gathered together in pace and
intensity, the bear whirled her around and around until she felt she
was flying.  She’d never felt so happy and free.  The sweet smooth
twanging of the guitars and the rattling beat stopped with a loud
flourish and he caught her in his paws and lifted her high above his
head.  An angel flying in the sky; a white cloud drifting over the
troubles of the cockroaches in the cornmeal and the putrid water from a
dying well.

She was in ecstasy.

The map, however, is not going to be one of many paths unless I learn a better way of maneuvering within it.  While I do like the idea of a  thread of  singular narrative and the side trail of embellishment or enhanced informational text, I think I do see this as a middle ground between the complete freedom of Storyspace and the restrictive borders of traditional text.  Then again, I may only need to adjust story to medium, or select medium to match story.