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Tag Archives: Writing space
Free at Last!
“Ha, ha! I’m free at last, free at last!!!”
Free at Last!!\
“Finally! That wretched creature you call the Domestic CEO released me from my plastic coffin. Stuffed in there with effigies of witches, pumpkins and candy corn, I’ve been in mass graves with fewer occupants. I thought I was your writing partner? Huh? Wasn’t that what we agreed to?”
“Uh…yes it was but, I didn’t realize she packed you away until it was too late to come find you. Besides, I knew you’d make an appearance about this time.”
“Some friend you are! Hey, you’ve been busy. The stories coming along and I like the twist…”
“Hush, Nabob! don’t give it away.”
“Okay, okay. But look at that section in the beginning with the entire cast. Now that really needs some work. What were you thinking?”
“Well, I was trying to keep the story moving forward and kind of glossed over it. I knew I’d come back and fix it later.”
“It’s time to get it done, Writer.”
“Not quite yet, Nabob. I still need to finish the last three scenes.”
“Oh yeah. Shitty first draft and all that, right?”
“Right.”
So, Writer, where are you at?”
“I’m in the middle of the big fight scene where Derek and Amy are …”
“Good to be back, Writer.”
“Good to have you back, Nabob.”
Inspiring Spaces
As part of a blog hop run by Cate Russell-Cole, I was tagged by a wonderful lady named Jade Reyner, to share spaces that inspire me to write. Notice I did not say writing spaces. These are two different things for me. I posted about one of my three writing spaces back in June 2012 in a View of the Room. This is actually my home office where I do my day job one day a week and when I’m on call. It is full of inspiration and I love to be in this room even though oddly, it is not where I do most of my writing.
Reference and reading room
I have another writing room that houses most of my reference library, a comfortable chair for reading, and several paintings created by a friend who was inspired by one of my short stories. However, the spaces that inspire me to write are rarely indoors.
Inspirational View
Those who follow this blog know that I spend a great deal of time at my cabin. And, if you read back through my posts, you will find numerous references to the lake, the weather, and the fauna who allow me to interact with them. I find that nature inspires me more than anything else. When I get stuck, lost, frustrated, etc., going back to nature sets things right. The change of seasons triggers different moods that translate easily to the page.
Treasure trove of inspiration. en.Wikipedia.com
Another source of inspiration are the numerous antique and junk shop excursions the Domestic CEO drags me invites me to join her on. Seeing the odds and ends of eras long gone, fires my imagination. I see a vase or a chair and I wonder where they have been? Who owned them? What type of house was it? Why did the owners part with the object? You can easily see where this line of thinking takes me.
Anyway, All my teachers used to say that I liked to daydream and look out the window. That’s where my inspiration was all along.
Lost – Writing partner
Nabu, Where are you?
I walked into my writing room and suddenly realized there was a void in the dust on the dust atop the book-case. The space where my writing partner sat was bare. (You remember him from an earlier post. He took over my blog to get a new name. The name he chose was, Nabu, the Babylonian god of wisdom and writing which was suggested by Eagle-eyed Editor.)
What seemed most odd was that there was a trace of dust in the void. My uncanny powers of deduction indicated that my partner had been missing for some time. Now guilt struck me because I had not noticed his absence sooner. The excuse I have settled on is that I was so engrossed in writing that I simply overlooked his absence. I know, weak but passable.
I searched high and low, starting in the obvious places. As the god of wisdom and writing, it would make sense Nabu would go somewhere like my office or the other bookshelves in the house. However, I could not find him. I restrained from calling out to him for fear of what my two cats and the domestic CEO might say. My having a skull as a writing partner is still new to them. For several days I scoured the homestead. I even traveled to the cabin in search of my cohort.
One evening, the domestic CEO entered my office to find me desperately digging through a file cabinet. She calmly closed the file drawer, gently reached up and took a hold of my face, and screamed at me, “What the hell are you doing?”
I explained my plight, that I searched for my writing partner and that I felt guilty for not noticing his departure. The domestic CEO patted my cheek and smiled at me.
“Oh, that,” she said. “I put it in the garage with the other Halloween decorations.”
She turned and walked away leaving me staring aghast after her.
Relief washed over me as I realized Nabu was safe. However, the task of finding him among the myriad of decoration boxes would not be easy. Uh oh! He had been missing for months. My feeble excuse would not fly. Ah, a new idea came to me. The domestic CEO had aged another year, taking her into the realm of geezerhood. She had placed him in the decoration boxes. I would tell Nabu that her mind is going and she had forgotten what she did and where she had placed him. Yes, yes, that just might work.
I will head to the garage this weekend to release my partner. I hope he buys my story.
New Writing Partner Needs a Name
Hallo! I would introduce myself but, I have no name.
What name are you called?
I recently came to rest on the desk of Rabbit Hare’s Tales. My last acquaintance was a Sage in the great city-state of Alusia. How I came to reside in this writer’s space is still a mystery to me. The one usually sitting in the chair apparently acquired my services to assist in creating a masterpiece of fantasy fiction. Ha! Talk about a fantasy.
Because his brain is as idled as his body appears to be, he has yet to provide an adequate name for me. Being that his wits are limited, I offered up two suggestions, Bob and Prince. He stated that the former was already taken by a spirit who consults a wizard out of Chicago and the latter was taken by a musician of some sort. The musician apparently can’t make his mind if he likes the name or not.
SO, I ask for assistance from the cosmos internet to provide a suitable name that I might perform my duties and respond to something other than Skullboy. Please leave your suggestions in the comments area provided below and I will demand that my new master fairly compensate the one who provides the most suitable name with accolades and verbal gratuities.
Alas, I beg you please do not tarry as he grows restless and may start calling me poor Yorik.
Writing is like a Train
For me writing is like a train.
The Warm Up:
Train: The engineer gets into the locomotive, turns on the power, and fires up the engine.
Writer: I create characters that I think will be interesting. Next comes a situation the characters find themselves in that will create tension and lead to further adventures. The setting is somewhere within the fantasy world I created years ago. Finally, I gather my plot notes (islands), character sketches (Traits and Tags), and a big bottle of water and head to the Storyboard. Once the islands have been laid out, I go to the computer.
Leaving the station:
Train: The locomotive winds up and builds to a roar. The train begins to inch forward. It crawls along for a few yards as the full weight of the train is taken on. Now there is some momentum and the train begins to pick up speed.
Writer: The blank screen is deafening. My mind is full of the possibilities that await the characters but, nothing is happening. There is a moment of panic and self-doubt. My hands reach for the keyboard as I try to formulate the first sentence. It has to be the best sentence of the story. The hook has to be perfect. I stop and take a drink from the water bottle. Then I remember that the first draft is always crap. My hands return to the keyboard and I peck out the first sentence. No, it’s not perfect but, it is a start. Take another drink. Back to the keyboard. Soon the first paragraph is complete and the head is getting into the game. Each paragraph that follows is easier than the last.
Coming up to speed:
Train: The train accelerates to its cruising speed. The power and momentum seem unstoppable. The cars jostle around over the uneven tracks. However, the train keeps going forward.
Writer: Once I get into a writing rhythm, woe unto any who disturb me. My mind is in high gear and the fingers begin to have a hard time keeping up. I have become the characters at his point and the story flows out like a lake draining though a broken dam. I just stay out-of-the-way and let it happen.
Coming into the next stop:
Train: The Engineer reduces the power and the train begins to coast. The friction of the wheels against the steel rails begin to slow the train down. As the train enters the station, the brakes are applied. The momentum of the train strains against the brakes because it wants to keep going. At last the train jerks to a halt and the sound of the locomotive drops to a hum. It’s not off, just waiting for the command to crank it up again.
Writer: The mind is racing forward ahead of the fingers and it sees the end of the scene/chapter/story before the fingers do. Once the mind reaches the end, it begin to coast. The fingers continue to bang away but by now fatigue is beginning to set in. The keystrokes are becoming softer and begin to slow down. The final paragraph flows forth but much weaker than before. Finally, the fingers type out the last few words and then become motionless on the keys. The Save button is pressed. The mind, however, is already working on the next scene/chapter/story. Wanting to move forward.
Out with the old, in with the new
A while back I posted that I had just completed the remodel of my home office/writing room. There is a lot of inspirational things in the room. Unfortunately, my computer is nearly ten years old. So old in fact that it has a 3.5″ floppy drive.
Some of you will remember these data storage devices before cloud-based online back-up, thumb-drives, dvds and cds. When the 1.44 Mb High-density/Double-sided floppies first came out I thought, “Wow, I can store my entire hard drive on less than twenty of these!” They can fit into a box roughly the size of two packs of cigarettes. My old 5 1/4″ floppies were finally obsolete.
Time passes…back to the present.
With the new room completed, the domestic CEO stated, “It is time we get rid of that piece of sh*^t desktop and get a new laptop.”
“Excuse me? Did you say we should purchase a new computer?”
“Yes, I …”
The car was started before she finished.
Two hours later, I look like a little boy petting his new puppy. It is so shiny and new and fast and new and cool and did I say new?
So I started the process of converting data from the old desktop to the NEW laptop. I took my time and cleaned as I went. Then, something dawned on me. I have a paper box filled with 3.5″ floppies filled with data I don’t want to lose. However the laptop does not have a floppy drive. So, yesterday, I transferred files to the laptop and scrubbed 263, 3.5″ floppies. 1.44Mb X 263 floppies equates to 378.72 Mb of data. That’s just over a third of a Gb. In today’s world of memory, it’s nothing. The smallest thumb drive I now own holds 1 Gb. But, those floppies represent 25 years of my data.
I ultimately dumped a lot of old data, old file types and outdated software. However, the really good news, is that I found some old writing files that I had forgotten about. Over the next few days/weeks, I’ll reorganize the files and try to post a few of them.
Now I have no excuse. Well, other than I type slowly.
How about you? Do you have old storage files that need clean-up? You might be surprised what you will find.
Tales From The Hare 