On Collaboration

Writing is usually thought of as a solitary pursuit, and to a certain extent it is.  One can't exactly write while carrying on a conversation, or in a restaurant among a bunch of people.  However, it's something one can't do completely by oneself.  One needs feedback, support, inspiration... and, after all, a writer needs readers!  One should write for the sake of writing, but that writing's written for somebody to read.

I've come across a few good places to find feedback for my writing.  Yes, blogging's alright, but it's tough to find wide readership if it's thrown out for the general internet population to happen upon.  But, if work is put out for a narrower audience odds are someone's more likely to find it and appreciate it.

Way back when I discovered the writing site ficlets.  The idea was to craft story bits, or just smaller writing pieces, between 64 and 1024 characters in length.  It doesn't seem like a sufficient length to do anything significant, but it was impressive what people could conjure.  The following is an old piece of mine:

Sigh.

It felt like only yesterday that we met.
Something just seemed to click.
We had the same sense of humor, could understand each other’s quirks.
I can’t recall when I’ve had such interesting conversation with someone (who is not related to me, that is).
(Then again, there are all those other similarities, so there is that possibility.)

Alas…

Alack…

There is so much we can’t see.

Words can only go so far, you know.

I’ve never seen your face.
I’ve never heard your laugh.
I’ve never seen a smile grace your lips.

We’re separated by an unseen barrier of time.
A wall of space.
A web of wires.

But I guess that’s what the imagination is for, isn’t it?

I can only guess what you look like.
What you sound like.
And you can do the same about me.
Our friendship linked by words.
If only we could finally meet.
If only to be friends.

But for now, as I type, I’ve decided:
For now, I can let my imagination satisfy me.

Because that’s what the imagination is for, isn’t it?
http://ficlets.ficly.com/stories/43467

Not only was it amazing what one could do in a short space, but the community was what truly astounded me.  Most folks tried to look out for everyone else, giving feedback and otherwise supporting each other in their writerly endeavors.  We were a very tight-knit community.... until AOL pulled the plug on the site in January of 2009.

One of the original developers of the site, Kevin Lawver, resurrected the idea in a new independent site, ficly.  It's essentially the same idea, very short pieces, and again with some old ficlets vets and new recruits it's up and thriving.

In the interim between ficlets' death and ficly's birth I discovered Protagonize, a similar community without the character limit.  It was intimidating at first, but after a slightly bumpy start I got right into it and I haven't looked back.  The folks are great, the pieces are good, it's overall been a great experience.

Most recently, however, I've discovered the awesomeness that is local feedback.  I've found a good support group in two friends from my English class and my physics teacher, of all people, who're all working on some project or other.  We've deemed ourselves The Fellowship, and thus far I'd say we've been working very well together.  We're looking over each others' projects, offering feedback on those projects, and overall support.  We'll see if we can still work with three of us slightly sprawling at different schools next year.

Basically, I've found that while the actual act of writing's fairly solitary, the surrounding processes of support and communication shouldn't be so.  Sounding boards are great.

After the Fall, seg. 1

Alright, so this is a story idea I've had floating around in my mind. I'm not one to usually do bleak-sci-fi-future-stuff, but a bunch of ideas have been bouncing around my mind in just the right way to convince me that they just might coalesce into something good. I'm... not frightened, but for lack of a better word I'm (as of now) frightened to post this on Protag. Maybe it'll find its way over there, but for right now it's staying right here.
-----
Much of the work we do is for our progress, for our apparent advancement in this universe. We strive to move ourselves ever forward, not pausing to take a good look back. Sure, we bring some things along for the ride, history and art and principles and what-not, but we constantly look for ways to "improve" it, to make it "fit."

This is especially true with science. It's based on the basics laid down by the Greeks, the other "ancients" in all those textbooks, Newton. Even Einstein used these principles, using them to chip in his own ideas and expound on others.

Advancement. Ha! Progress. Ha! The only progress we've seemed to make is to backpedal. And that's my opinion on a rare good day. If you catch me on most days, I'd say we're progressing alright: progressing right into our own rendition of The Inferno. The stupid Computer screwed everything up. In our rush to go forwards, all it's led up to is a launch backwards. Sure, the calenders say it's 2062 (at least, that's what they said last I checked who-knows-how-long-ago), but that's just a number. Numbers could care less if the world's more like 1062. 1562, depending on where you are, and if you're lucky.

Maybe a brief history lesson would help. I'm not sure of all the details, or even if the details I have are correct, but it's all we have to work with right now.

Back in the day, before The Fall, my mother was in high school. From what I understand she was pretty bright, loved school. Among her many loves academia was her physics class. She claimed that it twisted her brain into knots and really made her think, but she loved it. Close friend of the teacher, too, Patrick Hewlett. At one point he told her about the effect the quantum computer would have on society. It would be able to predict seemingly-random events such as the weather, the stock market, the lottery, and such. The way he put it, if one person could single-handedly control the stock-market, the economy would collapse because once it got out that someone knew exactly what would happen, what would be the point in investing? Everyone would pull out. Down comes the stock market, down comes the economy, and then down comes most of society as we know it. And, in Hewlett's mind, this person could probably control what remained of society.

Ain't that a comforting thought?

When the idea was introduced in-class, some wondered, "If quantum computers'll be the end of the world, what about the end of the Mayan calendar?"

"Maybe they'll be developed at the end of the Mayan calendar," she suggested half-jokingly.

Anyway, fast-forward to my mother's sophomore year in college. She picked up a copy of a newspaper, and looked at a tiny side-bar article She nearly fell out of her chair in surprise. I still have the page, faded and tattered as it is.

The New-York Times. Saturday, December 22nd, 2012.
Late last night bore witness to a momentous occasion. A brilliant individual, who wished to be unnamed at the time of publication, has claimed to have completely developed the long-awaited quantum computer. Earlier versions of this machine have been able to execute simple functions such as addition and subtraction, but, "this has limitless potential," the developer said. One of the known functions, the developer told our reporter, is its ability to predict weather with such accuracy, it can predict the exact temperature, amount of precipitation, and dew-point for one side of town, and the same figures for the other.

The text at the end of it gets blurry, but I think it was something like big corporations and labs and such had offered "the developer" astronomical sums of money, but "the developer" refused.

Needless to say, my mother was a bit flipped out. She double-checked the date of the paper; it still said December 22nd. Nah, it can't be, she thought at the time. Now when I think about it, nearly fifty years later, I say it had to be. There's an odd connection between the supposed Fiery End and the rise of The Computer.

Do you see it?

If Only...

If only I could see your smiling face
Lighting up with gladness
Seeing the beauty of each day.
If only I could see your graceful hands
Dancing over the piano keys,
As they say you do so well.
If only I could see your velvet hair
Thick as it cascades over your shoulder
Falling through my unworth fingers.
If only this barrier of mine
Didn't lay between us.

If only I could hear your voice
Rough but sweet, crooning
The blues in your heart.
If only I could hear you play
That sax filled with the passion of your soul
As they say you do so well.
If only I could hear you laugh
Richly, joyfully, at Life's comidies
Amidst our own tragedies.
If only this barrier of mine
Didn't lay between us.

If only they could see our strength,
Hindered as we may seem,
Our barriers don't effect us.
If only they could hear the music of our hearts
Intertwined like the bramble and rose,
As they say it does so well.
If only they could feel our bond
Holding us fast
Holding us close.
If only they could know these barriers of ours
Don't lay between us.

If only you could see the strength
Of their hearts,
Compassionate and understanding.
If only you could hear the wordless conversations
Between these two so frequently
As I see they do so well.
If only you could know their barriers,
He is blind, she is deaf,
But each understanding of the other's.
If only you could understand that
In His eyes, their love is enough
To break the barriers laying between them

GE: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic

Note: In 9th grade, we read Charles Dickens' Great Expectations in installments, as it was originally published. See, it was originally published in weekly chunks of 1-2 chapters in a Victorian magazine, All the Year Round. ('betcha didn't know that, did'ya?)
After reading an installment, we'd do a writing assignment having to do with that installment. I'll be posting some of my personal favorites of these assignments.
This assignment had to do with Pip learning to read and write. We had to write about our own experience with reading and writing.
Ever since I learned the alphabet and how to count, I loved reading and writing.
I never had much trouble with school in any subject. Reading has grown into an absolute passion. And generally a love of reading brings a hunger for books. I eat up books thew way a child eats cookies - fast. I've always read very fast. My mom would think I wasn't really reading, that I was just skimming. Once I was reading a book called Little Bo. She made me go back two or three chapters. Or she'd quiz me on the books. I always got it. Because I read so fast, I always end up rereading the books. Just to make sure I got everything, and because the book was so awesome.
When I learned to write, that was different. I remember, on the paper with lines as wide as [four college-ruled] lines, putting my finger in between each word. The teacher had told us to space in between each word. So, my brilliant five or six year old mind came up with using my finger.
I also remember in kindergarden one method we used to learn to count to ten. There was a computer story based on the Bugs in Boxes stories. It was called "How Many Bugs in a Box?" I also remembered how the song before it went!
Learning how to read, write, and count was always a great experience.