Hypercompendia

Spent quite a bit of time last night and this morning on this piece.  Rearranged the mapview once I made a connection between characters.  It is progressing oh so slowly though; I wonder what it is so different this time that makes it so.

I seem to have the general story in mind, the characters and the setting.  Only a small part of the ending do I know and that is only because it’s there already, in the beginning.  What I seem to be spending time on is the language, the knowing and the building of the characters.  Each of them will meet and pass another, yet each I feel are tied together in some way.  That’s where the hypertext form is so very useful.  I’d gotten quite excited when I noticed where the old woman walked, and who sat waiting up ahead. And so they nod and greet each other, knowing only what they see of each other in this sometimes routine, this single similar moment that repeats itself with regularity, and just as regularly remains upon that level, that main trail.  The rest of their lives, past, present and future are only known if delving deeper…

…like following another trail.

Somehow this morning revealed the man to me:

The idea for the story was right there in the park in Pittsburgh.  The visuals, the things I watched and thought about that blossomed into concrete narrative right there in front of me.  Back and forth I wondered whether I should take a few pictures; the pigeon, the people, the shoe.

No! the purist in me shouted.  You are a writer first and foremost and should not need the graphic image to enhance the story.  You should be able–if you’re any good at all–to draw the images with words.

Well, I can try to do that, yes.  The problem though is that I’ve just considered that this will be a short story in Storyspace (because that’s the form the story seeks and wants itself to be!).  And then it comes to me that perhaps this particular story is the perfect vehicle for implementing the audio and visual opportunities of Storyspace that I’ve wanted to play with way back when.

The sound is humming in my mind, the pictures flashing through; and here I sit without a single dopey pigeon picture.

Maybe it’s not yet automatic in the writing, but the editing seems to hold me to the writing space.  I keep it open, send it to the Mac Dock to keep it out of the way yet ever at the ready.  I rewrite knowing that it will be rewritten again. The space is here and now, and like the eventual reader, I can move on but I shouldn’t need to. 

It’s the focus of the hypertext environment, particularly in the Storyspace program, that holds me to the writing space arena.  I presume I’ll end up knowing this side of this boy quite well before he and I move on.

Naturally, the first thing I’m working on is the mostest fun:

Haven’t had a chance yet to replace the Windows version of Paths and need to work on that today–if possible without the Dell laptop here since I’ve only brought the Mac.

I have the Powerpoint version of the Keynote presentation I made and will upload that one shortly and add it to the previous post and the sidebar.  PPT is fine, though you won’t get all the same neat transition effects that Keynote provided.

Then I’m going to be conferencing, Pittsburghing, and reading and writing the day away.

Going through and simply changing language still doesn’t have me hot for this story anymore.  Maybe, even though I’ve been away from it a while, I’m still tired of working on it.

I plan to spend some time in Pittsburgh working out a new hypertext.  Not even one of the ones I’ve started but something totally brandy new.

It’s time.

Editing and some revising of Paths mostly for language and necessary (or so extraordinarily lovely eloquence–not much here though!) verbiage just so I’m not embarrassed too badly by it next week.

It has me looking more deeply at its structure and while it seems so linear (x 5) on the Map View it is in concept so multilinear in its simultaneous timelines that I wonder if a good scrambling of the map would make it look more hypertextual.

Five characters, two time periods, no definitive right or wrong for the reader.  The question at the beginning posed by a woman’s reflections are mirrored throughout but it is a funhouse mirror–distorted by perception particular to a character.  I’m not seeing much to change with storylines and really don’t want to add anything to it to make it more concrete, so maybe for now just the language.

In keeping with my firm belief that hypertext story works much as the human mind in using stored information, being selective and influenced by impetus and purpose, I was thinking today about how my own life has been stacked into memory segments and stored on shelves by what method of filing system?

Are memories archived by date? By the senses–surely, or at least linked in that way.  Or are they put into bins marked "Good" or "Bad," "Pleasant or "Distasteful," or how strong or impactful they were on our lives?  And when they are called up to duty, what is the chain of links that brings the right one to mind?  What interferes with accuracy (oh, that wasn’t Joe, that was Fred!)?

It’d be interesting to do a hypertext in sort of a Jim Carrey’s The Truman Show style of presentation of a life.

I work so much better with deadlines–except for paper submissions (not classroom stuff) which sees another deadline go by tomorrow as the lit journals cut off reading for the summer.  The last time I’ve submitted any short stories was a couple of years ago and I was determined never to bother doing so again but…you know, you just have to because what are you going to do with these things otherwise?  My heirs will likely toss them into the hole after me, just as I’d so often threatened my mother to do with her recipe collections.

But now I’m getting nervous because I’m in love with Keynote and have been fiddling with that so much that I’m not doing other stuff.  Like editing Paths which needs it so very badly.  Or working on one of the other hypertexts that would likely be in much better shape except that it has no ending yet.  Then again, it’s hypertext; I can let people go around in circles and loops forever if I just do some fancy maneuvering with the links…