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Brief writing exercises and thoughts on writing. Maybe the occasional personal musing.
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  Proud Member This is my writer's scratchpad. I use this space to scribble down some quick thoughts and images that appeal to me. The idea is that when I don't feel like working on one of my stories but still want to write, the incomplete "droplets" I form will get posted here. I have another (currently dormant) blog where I discuss politics, sexuality, spirituality, and whatever else comes to mind. It's called The Musings of a Confused Man  . |
| This post is in response to today's "Blogging Circle of Friends " prompt: May is almost upon us and I hope I'll be healthy enough to tackle my garden. There is so much to do, if I want everything planted before the heat of summer. What are your plans for May? Gardening? Traveling? Writing? Hopefully, may will be a continuation of the increased writing and blogging that I've been doing the past week or so. I hope to continue posting blog entries here as well as my main blog site , where I get more spiritual and political.I am also working on a writing project , which is based on a single-player D&D campaign that my husband is running for me. I've quickly fallen in love with my character, a Halfling (Stout) monk who has just been sent out by the head of his monastic order to seek out new historical artifacts and documents for preservation in the order's great library. We've tried running a few campaigns (some with other players even) that have just fizzled. Hopefully we will do better this time. I think we will, because things have felt different from the very first session. There's been a lot more role-playing combined with a greater sense of my character having a clear sense of where he wants to go and how to get there.I've actually needed this, as I've felt like my creativity has been stagnating for the past few years. |
| I don't know how well this fact is known by the people who read my stuff on this site, but in addition to being a writer, I'm also a witch. I am reminded years ago that I said something about writing on an email discussion list and a Wiccan elder commented that there is a strong connection between the Craft and any craft. Both are about creating and/or changing something. Both are about a vision and having the will and skill to make that vision into a reality. I remember years ago, I was writing something -- probably a journal entry -- by hand. While part of my brain continued to focus on what it was I was writing, another part of me started to focus and pay attention to the process of writing itself. I observed how a handful of careful pen strokes against the paper would form a letter. More pen strokes would form another letter. After enough letters were crafted from individual strokes of the pen like this, a word would emerge. Then more words. Eventually, enough words, with appropriate punctuation added, would be crafted to create a full thought: a sentence. I observed how this process of making hundreds of tiny marks on the paper would eventually comunicate complex thoughts and idea. I saw this as a truly magical act with an incredible outcome. This is why I often enjoy going back to writing some things out by hand -- providing I have the tools, materials, and environment I need to keep my hand from cramping up within five minutes. Yes, the forming of ideas, thoughts, and stories through clicking keys on the keyboard is equally powerful and magical. But it just doesn't have quite the same effect for me as and does not reveal the magic to me as well as watching that tiny ink marks transform into something far greater. |
| This post is a response to today's blog prompt from the "Blogging Circle of Friends " : Write about something you're very knowledgeable about, for example a favorite hobby or passion of yours. I love programming computers. I started doing it in junior high. (I don't "draw crude images on the screen using Logo" on the Apple II computers in my elementary school.) I love it so much, that I made it my career. (In retrospect, that might have been a bit of a mistake. But that's a post for another day. Maybe). So in the spirit of today's blog prompt,I'm going to give everyone a free lesson in computer programming. Don't worry, you don't need to have any previous knowledge. (Well, that's not entirely true.But trust me, you already have the knowledge you need for this lesson.) We're not going to delve into C, java, C#, the .NET framework, or any of those other weird terms you might have heard. All you need for this exercise is a way to write or type something. So get your pen and paper ready. Or open up Word, Notepad, Pages, or whatever. Because this lesson starts with an exercise. Ready? Here you go. Write out detailed instructions on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Pretend that a computer can understand the English language and will follow your instructions exactly as written. That's all I want you to do for this lesson. Not hard, right? I mean, I'm betting you know how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Heck, unless you're allergic to peanuts or something, I'm betting you've actually made a few of them in your life. So you can probably do so without even thinking about it. (That will actually make this exercise hard. And that's part of the point, believe it or not.) So get writing out your instructions. When you're done, we'll finish the lesson. All done? How'd you do? Let me ask you few questions. Did you remember to state up front that the reader will need a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly, and a loaf of bread? How about a knife? If not, the computer is going to be lost and confused when it gets to the part of your instructions that mention theses things. "Spread the peanut butter on the bread. Wait, I'm supposed to have peanut butter?" Did you mention opening the jars of peanut butter and jelly? If not, the computer may stand there confused as to how to get the peanut butter out of the jar. Did you mention using the knife to spread the peanut butter? The computer may use its fingers (or whatever it uses like fingers) to spread it instead. Messy! (And do you want to eat that sandwich now?) If your instructions said to spread the peanut butter on one slice of bread and the jelly on the other slice (me, I always put the peanut butter and jelly on the same slice of bread and then just put the plain slice on top), did you specifically mention making sure the sides with peanut butter and jelly are facing each other when you put the two slices together? Did you think to describe how to accomplish simple operations, like opening a jar and spreading something on a slice of bread? Sure you know how to do that sort of thing because you're human and these things are practically muscle-memory. But computers don't have muscle memory. They need to be told how to do these things. Every time, because they don't remember how they did something from before. They only know about what they're doing right now. So, now how do you think you did? Unless you've done an exercise like this before, I'm guessing you missed some stuff. I know I did. I first did this exercise -- except it wasn't presented as a lesson in computer programming -- back in fifth grade. My teacher had the entire class do this. And then she surprised us by choosing some of our instructions at random (or maybe she picked those she knew would be funny), pulling out a jar each of peanut butter and jelly, a loaf of bread, and a knife and started following the instructions. One set of instructions didn't even mention taking the bread out of the wrapper, so "put the peanut butter on the bread" resulted in setting the entire jar on top of the still-wrapped loaf. Embarrassment and laughter ensued. I don't remember what my instructions looked like, but I'm sure I missed a bunch of stuff. So don't be too hard on yourself for whatever steps you might have missed. It's kinda the point of the exercise. I bet if you rewrote your instructions now, you'd do a lot better. In fact, if it'll make you feel better, go ahead and do it now. If you do, understand you're actually engaging in the central activity of computer programming. To do computer programming, you have to look at a task you want the computer to accomplish, understand all the details of what's required to accomplish that task and then express it in a way (write code) that tells the computer how to go about it. The computer needs to know: 1. What inputs and/or data does it need (like peanut butter, jelly, and bread). 2. What tools does it need (the knife). 3. What operations does it need to execute on their inputs (the steps to follow) 4. What's the final output (a yummy sandwich!) Learning a programming language is simply a matter of learning a particular way to communicate this information to the computer. Knowing how to identify and break down the task is the more important part. I will note that back when I was in college, I tutored a number of women in their thirties who were taking their first programming class. They often came to me because they were struggling. I found that the reason they were struggling is because their instructors focused way too much on the details (grammar and syntax) of the language. So I'd sit down with them and talk about the assignment in terms of what the program needed to do. Once they started thinking about the assignment in terms of identifying the steps the program needed to take to accomplish the task, they caught on pretty quickly. The moral of the story is that there were a lot of college instructors back in the early-to-mid-90's that were just awful at teaching computer programming to newcomers. (Or maybe colleges were just terrible at making sure newcomers to programming that were taking night classes -- as were most of the students I was tutoring -- got into the appropriate introductory classes.) I sure hope things have gotten better in the past 20+ years. Of course, there are a lot more things you need to learn to be a computer programmer. For example, we haven't covered functions (also called procedures and subroutines in some programming languages). These are reusable pieces of code that can be called from different places in the program. For example the steps for opening a jar is pretty much the same regardless of whether the jar contains peanut butter, jelly, pickles, or the assortment of screws that my dad has collected over his sixty years of doing carpentry. So you might write an "open jar" function and then in your instructions for making the sandwich you say something like "take the jar of peanut butter and perform the open jar function on it." It's a lot easier than saying "pick up the jar of peanut butter in one hand and grip the lid with your other hand and twist in a counter-clockwise direction" and then say the exact same thing for the jar of jelly. And that's the nature of everything else you would learn if you kept learning how to do computer programming. All subsequent lessons teach you different ways to understand, break down, and describe how to accomplish the desired goal so they computer can do it. |
| This blog post is in response to today's blog prompt over at the "Blogging Circle of Friends " . "A writer said, a problem a protagonist can walk away from, is a book a reader can walk away from." ~ unknown. I saw it on Tumblr. Dp you agree with his statement? How important is the tension or the protagonist's mission to a story? I want to start my post by making a statement that many people might find controversial: The protagonist can always walk away from a problem. Frodo absolutely could have stayed in the Shire, allowed the Nazgul find the ring, and watched as Sauron enslaved or slaughtered all of Middle Earth. Katniss could have kept quiet when her sister's name was drawn as tribute, and stayed comfortably in District 12 while everyone watched Prim die horribly. Instead, both of those protagonists made different choices, and as a result underwent hardships, overcame obstacles, and lived out a story. They made those choices for reasons. I maintain those reasons are central to the story. I also maintain that this is the best understanding of the above quote: That in good story telling -- whether on the printed page, on the screen, or in the interactive story-telling environment of an RPG -- understanding the motives of the protagonists (and in many cases, the antagonists, but that's probably best left for a separate blog post) is absolutely essential. It's the fact that Katniss loves Prim so deeply that she is willing to volunteer to face near-certain death herself in Prim's place that first draws you into the Hunger Games. If Katniss's name had simply been drawn at random instead, it might have still been a good story but without the same power and intensity. If Katniss had simply decided she wanted to participate in the Hunger Games simply because she thought it would a lark,(1) well, I think that would just be too unbelievable to continue reading. This is something I've been exploring as I learn to play Dungeons and Dragons. Right now, hubby and I have started a single player campaign (he's the DM, I'm the player). I'm playing a Halfling monk with a somewhat detailed backstory. One of the things that we had to discuss is what my character's motives for taking on this campaign is. Because "getting gold and magical weapons" by itself just isn't going to matter to my monk (though I have a few ideas how he might use that gold, based on his backstory and personality). It's also not going to hold my interest as the player. So we've worked together to figure out what it is about this series of quests and adventures that make them worth taking up in my monk's mind. Notes: (1) Now, a story in which she didn't know what the Hunger Games were all about and didn't realize just how terrible they would be could be an interesting story in its own right. Then the story would be about her discovering what she had gotten herself into and how to deal with it now that it's too late to change her mind. But as the story was actually written, she knew exactly what the Hunger Games were about because she's watched them in previous years. JarredH  Give me pen and paper and I shall create entire worlds and fill them with adventures. |
| I haven't done a daily prompt from the "Blogging Circle of Friends " in forever. So here we go: Hemingway was famous for his six word memoir "For sale:baby shoes, never worn." Now, it's your turn to create a six word story. Have fun! Couldn't bear living. Now I thrive. |
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