Day: May 27, 2017

Authors Answer 134 – Are Authors Organised?

Interesting P.O.V.s. I’m kinda sorta like Paul Spence, organizing certain aspects in a multitude of ways following the clever decision of whatever works at the moment, but don’t ‘organize’ the plot. I do a lot of thinking and writing about the plot to help me understand what I’m thinking. I think of that less as organizing and more as therapy.

Jay Dee's avatarI Read Encyclopedias for Fun

Are authors organised? Many authors take notes, but not all do. Some authors have colour-coded pens, post-it notes, and different notebooks for different things. Some use paper, some use computer spreadsheets. Everyone has their own way. This week, we’re talking about how we organise our notes.

Question 134 – How do you organise your notes?

Beth Aman

For my first novel, I had a spiral notebook that held everything – all my plot ideas, scenes, characters, sketches.  For actual plotting, however, I used 3×5 notecards.  Each one had a major plot point on it, and I lined them all up on a wall in my room.  Then I could add other notecards underneath with further explanations or questions, and I could easily re-arrange my plot points.  It was a great visual, and I liked it better having it up on a wall instead of having it on a computer screen. …

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The Unknown

We don’t know what happened. My S.O. was in bed in the M.B.R in the house’s rear and I was in the snug at the front when I heard her open the door and hurry out. She was talking but I couldn’t discern anything coherent. Knowing her, though, I followed.

She’d put on the back porch light. Growling and yowling, Meep was on the patio. He was holding up one paw. As we approached him, he put the paw down and tried to walk. That paw wouldn’t support.

From the forensics and investigation available – mostly the presence of Boo and the noises my wife heard – Meep and Boo fought, as they do too many times. Boo is bigger, older and a little damaged, but Meep is bold, spirited, and young ginger. He’d clearly been on the losing end.

We created a circle of peace around him so he could relax and calm down. My wife went back in while I, armed with a squirt gun to keep Boo and Quinn back, stood by Meep, talking in comforting tones. After about fifteen minutes, he’d relaxed sufficiently to lay down and wash the injured limb. I saw no blood. He seemed to be moving it normally. Again, though, he attempted to walk but limped.

Waiting longer, I saw an opportunity, picked him up and carried him into the house. After setting him down, I did a brief but closer examination. He was already walking around close to normal. I offered him food, and he ate with gusto.

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The decision was arrived to keep him in the house in isolation for the night. He limped a little this morning but jumped around well. The thing is, cats are so good at masking their injuries and weaknesses and coping, they can fool you. So we continued keeping him in. What happened, exactly? We don’t know. We can speculate. We did. I wished once again that the cats all had cat cams mounted on them, or a drone was in orbit overhead, recording what happened. We don’t have those, so we remain frustrated by the unknown, and its results.

Funny, but that’s a good blurb for the novel in editing, “Incomplete States.”

 

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Inspirational Quote # 650

I’d love to believe this and tell you that I live by these words, but I don’t see the inner voices and those outside me through the same prism. My inner voices usually get along with me and one another pretty well; those outside voices, though…well, I just don’t know what they’re up to, nor if I can trust them.

Today, You Will Write's avatarToday, You Will Write

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Catsanova

A catsanova is an unusually seductive and loving feline of either sex, working its wiles on people and other animals equally.

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Today’s Theme Music

This protest song, from the nineteen eighties, counters what’s normal for rock, at least as it’s experienced in America. Sure, we have some invasion hits from the Brits, Germans, Dutch, etc., and more than a few from Australia, too.

This one came from Australia with a strong rhetoric against taking the Earth from the people who already inhabited it, along with choice rails against global warm and environmental destruction. Featuring a heavy base line, it also has a fat horn section, pretty unexpected in a rock hit in nineteen eighty-seven. But the lead vocalist’s voice and enunciation will never challenge anyone for smooth delivery.

Know the song? It made news again during the opening of the Olympics in Sidney in two thousand. Sure, it’s “Beds Are Burning,” by Midnight Oil, perfect for a walkabout on an unusually hot spring day – in North America.

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Future Blues

Groaning, shoulders slumping, Heather lowered her head and hit her forehead. She’d forgotten the friggin’ bag. Damn, damn, damn. The day was becoming sub-prime in a slide.

People thronged past. She faced a rack of bags. So, options, text someone to bring a bag. Go back and get it, but time and money, time and money. Five Georges for porting home and back. Steal one. Buy a new one. Get caught stealing a bag was a dime. Who to text to bring one? Everyone else had ported out on holi, but she had to work. Not friggin’ far, not friggin far at all. Welcome to her life.

So buy one. Gawd, two Georges. Were these getting more expensive? Why did she forget the friggin’ bag? Stupid. She slapped her temple. Stupid.

The bag was bought but that just started a whole other chain, syncing it to her head — and another George, gawd — and this bag wasn’t listed, forcing her to walk through the store and compare the items, like, manually, like some factory worker or some girl at a jewelry counter, because there was no list in the bag to tell her to pick something up and put it in. Good thing, sync did bring up her checking and budget so she knew what could be spent. Least the bag was telling her that. Wouldn’t want to exceed the budg and bring on the wrath.

And she had to remember what was on the list. Shit wasn’t easy. Like, did she need milk this week? The frig always told the list what she needed. She didn’t know. So she didn’t know. Probably all kinds of messed up. Who knows if the syncing was right? She hadn’t done one in all kinds of yesterdays. Didn’t even know if the bag was porting it to the right place. She peered into the small purple cloth sack. It was all gone, all right, but where? She could recall it all, go home, she shoulda just gone home and got her bag, suck up the time and Georges, way it was going, she would have only be out one or two Georges that route and a whole lotta less stress and aggravation, which she already was feeling, having won the lottery to work a holi weekend.

Ah, fuck it. Heather lowered her head and succumbed to getting it done, because that’s how the world work, but she couldn’t do it without multiple sighs and a pitying chorus in her head. She hated being eighty. Retirement couldn’t come soon enough.

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