Posts filed under 'Creativity'
Back in the bronze age –my high school and university years, to be more specific– I spent a lot of time writing fiction. Just like every other struggling writer (and perhaps those with far more experience), the development of plot and subplot elements within story lines proved to be one of the most intimidating and frustrating parts of the writing process. And, like so many others during that epoch, I turned to index cards. I’d jot down a title like “Man peers down into sewage drain” and then use the rest of the card for details. Afterwards I’d lay out the cards on a large table and shuffle them about till I was satisfied with the progression. Nowadays, I often use outliners for that purpose, but they never felt, well… authentic to me, at least as a writer.
Enter the Writer’s Café, a woefully under-publicised application from a UK husband-and-wife team that seeks to deliver an authentic writing experience in ways other software falls flat. The duo is an interesting couple: Dr. Julian Smart is a fairly well-known software developer, the man behind the cross-platform wxWidgets project, and Harriet Smart is a novelist with several books to her credit. For this product, they combined their respective disciplines to create an application that might prove invaluable –if not essential– to many writers.
Writer’s Café is essentially a suite of writer’s tools. The emphasis is not on word processing –there are too many of those out there already, including the free OpenOffice.org Writer– but rather on the development of ideas and the organisation of material. StoryLines is their equivalent of the index-card-shuffle, and you can create several streams, one for each plot line. You can create detailed content for each card and even add annotations and an image, then export the whole lot to an external file as a report suitable as the basis of a first draft (it even supports OpenOffice.org format). Another application serves as a hub for:
- Keeping a journal
- A “notebook” for writing down your loose ideas and developing them
- Displaying random inspirational quotes the developers have selected (they call them cookies)
- Timing your writing, with optional prompts to kickstart your brain
- Creating simple brainstorming diagrams or collages, with ovals, rectangles, pictures and text interconnected with lines and arrows
- The scrapbook: this is essentially an outliner in which you can organise text, web links, images, collages and shortcuts to files on your hard drive
There are a few other applications, such as WordTiles (like a fridge-magnet poetry tool) and Forty Thieves, a card game to help de-stress. Also included is a 60-page ebook called Fiction: The Facts, which should prove handy to beginning writers, and a catchy theme song by Jay Goldmark called Untie Your Tongue. (Hey, why not?)
So is this for you? Well, it depends. There are a few things I really like about it. First, it’s cross-platform, running on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (which is probably a bigger deal for me than it is for you). Second, it does a great job of creating a nice little self-contained system for writers to develop, research and arrange ideas, plots, locations and characters, even if one’s computer skills are fairly basic. Most things work by dragging and dropping or by simple menu commands. An effort has been made to keep it flexible but user-friendly. Third, I like that it caters to writers and the writer’s mindset… everything is ordered and implemented in such a way to make a writer feel at home, using standard time-honoured nomenclature and techniques. Even the title is meant to evoke this. Fourth, the StoryLines program is definitely a best-of-breed, and I can’t say I’ve seen many comparable pieces of software, at least in terms of helping writers to re-arrange and annotate their plots. (I’m not about to mention the oft-hellish Dramatica here.) Last but not least, the program contains functions that are normally only found in higher-end and more technical applications, albeit here they are far more basic and intuitive (read: less intimidating). Programs like DEVONthink Pro and Visio would scare the pants off many creative writers I know, but Writer’s Café should hit the sweet spot in terms of balancing technical know-how with the need to be productive as a writer.
Downsides? Well, there are a few. Depending on what applications you already use, the Scrapbook and Collage tools can seem rather primitive and a little clunky. Unless you’ve invested time, money and effort into learning other applications, though, you’ll still do fine by these tools. The text tools are another matter, however. I understand that the emphasis is placed upon developing your ideas, and not to recreate a fully-functional word processor, but the lack of certain functions like search/replace are a little frustrating if –for example– you decide to change a character’s name or a location. That being said, you can do a search within the application and replace text manually, or simply export the “report” to your word processor and just change the words there when you begin work on your first draft. The good news is that (according to a post in the forums) improving the text tools is high on the developer’s to-do list.
My only other qualm, and it’s a fairly minor one, is that of aethetics. The cross-platform widgets set seems a little out of place on Mac OS X, and things lack a little of the Aqua “elegance” that many expect from most native applications. Likewise, the application icons seem rather primitive, not at all lickable or even anti-aliased. That being said, Writer’s Café looks quite natural on Windows, and only slightly awkward under Linux. These issues mean little when contrasted against the value of the software, though.
While I probably won’t be giving up my cherished DEVONthink Pro or other professional tools very soon, I can certainly recommend Writer’s Cafe for those writers stuck in the mire of a story going nowhere, or for those trying to get along with only a regular word processor. Many professional writer’s tools –several of which are of inferior quality or hopelessly complex– cost several hundred dollars, so at $45 USD, Writer’s Café is a great deal. StoryLines itself is worth the cost of admission.
If you’re interested, the UK’s Practical PC site has a review of Writer’s Café with screenshots, and of course the Writer’s Cafe website has plenty of information as well as a downloadable demo.
June 30th, 2005
My wife Jennifer Pohl, a well-known artist, has launched her own blog, entitled the space above the couch (very tongue in cheek, no doubt). She’ll be exploring artistic, creative and inspirational matters, and will be posting another of her paintings each week. An online gallery of her work is also on its way. There are many truly beautiful pieces in her body of work, and I hope that others might find them as inspiring as I do.
I love you, darling, and wish you the best of luck with it.
June 29th, 2005
About 15 years ago, I remember one of my many trips to a little produce store in downtown St. John’s named Lars. When I asked a simple question about the differences between apples, I received a (not unwelcome) half-hour lesson concerning eight varieties of apples, including a sample tasting session.
Today, I was in a large supermarket buying some vegetables, and the cashier stopped and stared in bewilderment at the produce on her digital scale. She held it up. “Leeches?” she asked.
“Uh, leeks,” I responded.
“…Same thing…,” she muttered under her breath, no doubt thinking I was a know-it-all.
May 21st, 2005
A few years ago, I had a really bad bout of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) that made almost any typing or pushing quite painful, despite my careful consideration of ergonomics. Slowly, with a decrease in my typing workload, the problem alleviated itself to the point where I wasn’t worried about it anymore.
In the past couple of months, however, I’ve been creating quite a lot of educational content for an online course, and my wrists are seriously beginning to hurt again. The CTS has made a comeback and becomes more noticeable with each passing day.
I’m aware that are both short-term and long-term semi-solutions to CTS, but it’s far better to address the origin of any problem rather than treat its symptoms. So I took a careful look at what I was doing, and how I might address the issues.
Correct ergonomics (the placement of fingers, hands, wrists, back) can only do so much, especially if you already have CTS, but I was doing almost everything right, using various silicon and foam wrist rests, a proper chair, good desk elevation, and correct positioning of my hands. So not much more could be done about that: I was doing things by the book.
Upon careful consideration, I realised that –out of around 16 hours a day of computer work– roughly 80% of this is “hovering” my hands above the keyboard, poised to type, while I thought of the next sentence or paragraph. (When I do type, it’s in bursts ranging from 60 to 80 words per minute.) So why not take away my hands from the keyboard while I think? Well, there is a certain immediacy, even an urgency, of having the hands in such a position; it forces you to write eventually. So what to do?
Well, I mentioned that I often think better while standing or pacing (which is why I’m thinking of following Ed Bliss’ advice about a standing desk). Then I remembered something: about ten years ago, I used to always keep an inexpensive portable cassette recorder –you know, the little microcassette handhelds with a built-in mic– in my car so that I could dictate project notes while driving. I dug it out and started walking around, speaking my lessons into the mic, using the pause button while I thought of the next phrase or paragraph. Afterwards I sat down, plugged in a set of earbuds and played the recording back, typing the words at high speed. Now, it wasn’t perfect, but it gave me the first draft ripe for editing. Not only does this make matters more efficient and easier on my hands, but the extra brain-power generated by walking around seems to help me come up with and expand ideas that may not occur to me while sitting.
So my current “model of efficiency” for producing written content is:
- Create very rough outlines for the lessons on paper, essentially as prompts
- Walk around with the cassette recorder and paper, dictating the content, using the pause button for thinking
- Transcribe the spoken notes at high speed on my laptop
- Edit the material as needed, adding links and images
- Publish
I’ve only been doing this for a few days, but already my wrists are thanking me and my material seems to be better thought out and more imaginative. This is not to mention the potential for actually getting some exercise while I get things done. I’ll be pursuing this workstyle for the duration of my contract (not much longer now), and perhaps beyond.
May 9th, 2005
Just working around the clock….
On the plus side, I think I finally found my Holy Grail of personal content management, the new version of DEVONthink (Mac OS X only, I’m afraid). It hasn’t impressed me as an ideal solution in the past, but the last few iterations are amazing. It’s been quite an enabling little beast for my job at hand, allowing me to sift through thousands of pages of text (plain, RTF, HTML and PDF), find related entries, track my sources, manage all related media, and write various documents without bother or fuss. Its capabilities are constantly surprising me. Stay tuned for a write-up….
April 29th, 2005
Finally back from the road again. This was my last time for a very long while, as the contract requiring me to give train in the various corners of the province ends on Monday. I’m a little sad in a way, since I do like to travel, but it’s nice to be home and not have to worry about things like how low my gas tank was reading, locating the people who were supposed to be unlocking facilities for me, and trying to find decent places to eat.
Okay, I’ll admit it: I am a very big fan of nachos. Nachos done right, that is. Crisp homestyle corn tortilla chips, lots of aged cheddar and monterey jack cheese, cumin-spiced meat, piles of fresh tomatoes, japepenos, green peppers and onions, and then there’s the homemade hot salsa and just-whipped sour cream on the side. My mouth waters just thinking about it.
But… my time on the road has taught me a very important rule of thumb. The population density is inversely proportational to the likelihood that:
- The torilla chips are stale, no-name Doritos coated with salt and MSG-laden “flavour dust”;
- The “cheese” is a watered-down Cheez Whiz knock-off that glows in the dark and smells vaguely like my Jeep’s transmission;
- The veggies (if there are any) are the remains of a salad that someone couldn’t finish last week;
- The salsa has the flavour, consistency and spice of two-year-old ketchup (but not the good Heinz stuff); and
- The meat (if there is any) is only slightly softer than road gravel, but with less taste.
Such is my insomnia that I spent a full night staring at the ceiling and trying to create a mathematical equation to describe the above rule, complete with multipliers based upon the longitudinal and latitudinal distance from the Texas-Mexican border. I actually did get some numbers down, but the light of day –and a very cold shower– made it seem rather… uh… silly. However, at the time it seemed quite an important theorem I had stumbled across, and I wondered why nobody else had yet discovered it.
February 27th, 2005
Continuing my current fascination with bare tree limbs and sky….
February 27th, 2005
And now for something completely different….
A few years ago during the dot-com gold rush, I was shuttled across the continent for a weekend of consulting in San Diego. While the gig wasn’t anything memorable, two things were: my all-to-brief trip to the Natural History Museum there (my first face-to-face brush with dinosaurs), and a delicious never-ending supper at a little “mom and pop” Mexican restaurant on the outskirts of the city. The salsa, in particular, was so good that I brought a large mason jar back to the hotel, and I actually finished it off that night. It was symbolic of everything I love about good Mexican food: the “unprocessed” summer-fresh earthy taste, the zing of tomatoes, the heat of peppers, and its ability to induce my appetite to such a frenzy that I could eat three times my fill.
Now, most of the food I ate that night I could never reproduce with the limited ingredients available up here in Newfoundland, but the salsa in particular was something that I thought within my grasp. After all, most salsa is a combination of tomatoes, peppers, cilantro, sugar and vinegar. However, my efforts to cajole any recipes out of the waitress proved fruitless (my Spanish was certainly not up to the task), and I’ve never been able to find a recipe that captured that exact taste, despite some well-meaning help from a few friends south of the border.
Last night, o! miracle of miracles! — some slightly-withered sprigs of cilantro actually appeared in the produce department of our local supermarket, as well as some inexpensive greenhouse tomatoes. Seizing upon this rare opportunity, I gathered together some ingredients and brought them home for another attempt.
I think I nailed it this time.
The key to this recipe is super-fresh ingredients. I wasn’t lucky enough to find all of it fresh, and even had to default to a jar of pickled jalepenos, but it’s still quite delicious. Some of the ingredients were probably not in the original recipe, such as the celery, but I find that these give the salsa a little extra edge. Also, this version is tailored for ingredients more commonly used up here in the Great White North, and doesn’t really rely on “specialty” items or those with very limited distribution. Finally, a food processor is a boon in preparing this, as chopping all of this by hand might take you a little while.
The resulting salsa is pretty hot, so use less hot peppers and more tomato if you want it a little milder.
Summer-fresh Salsa
Ingredients:
- 6 large fresh ripe tomatoes (not beefsteak — those have less taste)
- 2 medium yellow onions
- 2 large celery stalks
- 1 large green bell pepper
- 1 375 ml jar of pickled jalepeno peppers, drained (or 1 1/2 cups banana/serrano peppers); or 6-8 fresh jalepeno peppers plus 1 tbsp extra vinegar
- 5 tsp (or cubes) of sugar (I use “plantation raw” golden sugar cubes, which give a slightly earthy taste)
- 2 tbsp red wine vinegar, preferably balsamic (substitute white if absolutely necessary)
- 2 large cloves garlic, chopped
- 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped (this cannot be substituted with anything else, especially dry cilantro)
- 4 tbsp lime juice
- 4 tsp chili powder
Directions:
Cut the green pepper and onions into eighths, and the celery into 1/2 inch slices. Put this, the drained jalepenos, the sugar, and 1 cup water into the food processor. Pulse until chopped to the desired size. (Some people prefer salsa more chunky than others.) Scoop into large bowl.
Cut top core of tomatoes out, then section the tomato into quarters. Put four tomatoes into the food processor with the vinegar, garlic, cilantro, lime juice and 1/2 cup water. Blend well. Add the final two tomatoes and blend again, slowly, leaving a little texture to the final mix. Pour into the bowl with the other blended ingredients, add the chili powder, and stir well.
Spoon into jars, and the flavour will continue to mix overnight. This recipe will fill 3-5 medium jars and will keep for weeks, if you can stop eating it. Serve with tortilla chips, nachos, tacos, etc.
February 16th, 2005
Going through the photographs of yesterday’s snowstorm, I came to the painful realisation that I need a light meter again: it’s a pretty essential piece of gear, even for digital photography. (By the way, the following info is for photography newbies only… more advanced folks will probably laugh their way through my feeble attempts at explanation.)
A lot of the better digital cameras nowadays can take manual exposure settings, so when the situation necessitates it, you can jump into the controls and set the f/stop (the aperture, or the size of the opening that lets light into the camera), the shutter speed (how long light is allowed onto the sensor), and the ISO (the film speed, or at least the digital equivalent). Now, most cameras have an automatic setting, and they do a pretty good job of figuring out the exposure by selecting the fastest shutter for the existing light situation. Some will let you vary the shutter speed, the f/stop or the ISO, and everything else adjusts for you.
But there’s a problem with this. Most cameras set the exposure by reflective metering — that is, by the amount of light reflected back onto the sensor from the subject. There’s a bit of mathematics happening behind the scenes to find the shadows, mid-tones and highlights, and spread the tones appropriately. (This is a simplification, I know, but bear with me.) But what happens when the tones don’t cover the whole gamut from black to white, or if there’s far more of one than the other? The sensor gets confused, and the algorithms don’t work. For example, almost all of my snowstorm pictures were overwhelmingly mid-tone (50%) grey where they should have been white. Consequently, all of the photographs needed to be brought into Photoshop so I could adjust the levels and curves and make them look somewhat acceptable.
Now, a good light meter not only offers reflective metering, but also incident reading. This is the amount of light actually falling upon your subject. Thus, it’s far more reliable for scenes with snow, glare, sand and other situations that would confound a reflective meter. You simply go into the same light as your subject, hold up the meter so that the little dome or cone is facing your camera, and you can get an accurate reading. Adjust to your desired shutter speed, ISO or f/stop, and the meter will recompute the exposure and show the settings that you can manually enter in your camera.
There’s a wide variety of meters, but you needn’t pick up a new, expensive digital one –about $250-500 USD or more– unless you’re shooting professionally (in which case, you already know all this). It’s often possible to purchase used analogue meters from pawn shops and pre-owned camera stores. Just make sure that it has incident reading (some only have reflective), and you can figure out how to use it — some of them can be a little complicated. I wish I had picked up a decent little one I saw in Nova Scotia for $25 CDN when I had a chance: the one I used back in high school went missing somewhere along the line.
I find it a little odd that several of the recent photography books I own don’t even mention the light meter (or, if they do, it’s a tiny paragraph in a sidebar); surely, digital photographers ought to know how to set a proper exposure without crossing one’s fingers and hoping that the camera gets it right. Constantly reviewing the output and histograms and reshooting is certainly no substitute for a decent incident reading in the first place. As I mentioned earlier, most cameras do a decent job with figuring out exposure settings. But grab yourself a light meter, and you’ll probably find a noticable improvement in your photographs, especially in winter conditions, on the beach, or near shining glass or water.
Anyone out there recommend a good but inexpensive meter, preferably digital?
February 14th, 2005
“Vanity publishing” tends to sucker a lot of wanna-be writers who don’t know any better. A regular publisher will take on the costs of publishing and marketing your book at their own risk, and give you an advance calculated upon their estimate of probable sales. Needless to say, it’s not easy to get a book published in this way: they have to be absolutely convinced of the quality of your work and its potential in the marketplace. Vanity publishers, on the other hand, will pass on the costs of publishing to you, and only offer a royalty as a contractual token (usually $1). Certain of these will pretend to be valid and respectable publishers, claiming that their crack editorial team will carefully adjudicate your book and pass their judgement upon its quality and suitability, but then offer contracts to publish materials that would give a Vogon Captain the shudders. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America conceived of a brilliant sting to shed light upon one such vanity publishing firm and what they would actually consider publishable material. From their page Atlanta Nights - The Worst Book Ever Written:
A collection of SFWA authors (and, ahem, non-authors) concocted to write a very poorly written book. Under “direction” of James D. Macdonald, each author was given minimal information from which to write a chapter (with no idea of the chapter’s location in the book, time of year, background of the characters, what the plot was, etc.), and encouraged to write poorly. It’s a truly awful book, a serious contender for Absolute Worst Book Ever Written. The result was submitted “for review” by PublishAmerica to see if “has what this book publisher is looking for.” It did. 
PublishAmerica offered a contract.
You can read the actual book (disclaimer: may cause spontaneous hemorrhage), the acceptance letter, the contract, and more. See also www.WriterBeware.org.
February 9th, 2005
Found via WOYP: 50 Strategies for Making Yourself Work. Although this is meant mainly for writers, there’s some good general advice there, too.
Work avoidance is one of the major paradoxes of the writing profession. Generally, writers want to write (or want to have written), but all too often we find ourselves doing anything else but. We’ll mow lawns, do the dishes, polish silverware–anything to keep from facing the blank page. At the same time we know we eventually have to get to work, so we come up with all sorts of strategies for forcing ourselves to the keyboard.
I can personally vouch for many of them, including the “put the wristwatch in the drawer” one, as I tend to overwatch the clock when I’m facing a blank page. Not knowing the time helps me forget about the long moments of nothingness, and keeps me focussed. Of course, on a computer this isn’t so easy.
January 20th, 2005
Great short article over at Newsarama about Neil Gaiman’s first foray into directing:
From cult author-cum-filmmaker Neil Gaiman — the endlessly creative genius behind the otherworldly film fantasy MirrorMask, the Sandman graphic novels, the BBC-TV series Neverwhere, and the U.S. adaptation of Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke — comes A Short Film About John Bolton, a darkly hip and hilarious film which explores the question that torments artists of every medium: “Where do your ideas come from?”
I have always been in awe of Gaiman’s writing, from the Sandman to his novels, from his blog to his Hugo Award-winning Holmes-cum-Lovecraft story A Study in Emerald. It’s always interesting to see people from one creative field leap into another, because they tend to do so face-first and completely blind, usually with only the vaguest confidence that their quick-thinking will somehow get them out of any jam they might find themselves in. Sometimes it is far better to know too little than too much, at least if you find creativity through chaos. Seizing a new medium also tends to re-awaken the spirit and yanks one’s mind out of the mire of stagnancy. Artists become writers, photographers become filmmakers, printmakers become sculptors, and expression is free again.
See also his essay Where Do You Get Your Ideas? for an insight into what makes the man tick.
January 10th, 2005
Had a sleepless night last night, so I started thinking about a few elements of the existing DIY Planner templates that still bother me. One aspect is the design: it’s solid and non-offensive, but it’s also very staid and blocky. I need to pursue a more modern design, but something that’s classic enough to not feel out-of-fashion in just a few short months. It also has to feel fairly professional. (That is, I’m not stringing daisies, dandelions and dancing bears across the top. 
) I had a few spare minutes during breakfast to do a quick mock-up. Any feedback?
By the way, I’ve now added a direct link to the DIY Planner to the sidebar at right. That will always point at the most recent release.
January 6th, 2005
I know I should be more concerned about other events in the world, but this man’s work has meant so very much to me over the years. From his ground-breaking work on The Spirit in the 1940’s, to the graphic novels he was producing till nearly the day of his death, you can never understimate the impact Eisner has had on the comic, illustration and film industries. His book on sequential art is considered by many to be required reading by anyone contemplating anything from storyboarding to animation to graphic novels. And some of the covers and opening spreads for The Spirit and other works have not only inspired and intimidated generations of artists since, but have even found their way into prestigious galleries and art history books. Dubbed a “national treasure”, he was the recipient of hundreds of awards (including several Eisners, named after him) and the creator of the graphic novel. His legacy of gentle humour, nonconformity, innovative graphic techniques and powerful storytelling will forever place him among the most influential artists and illustrators of the past century. And yet few people even know his name.
It’s going to be one of my great regrets in life that I have never personally met the man. Rest in peace, Mr. Eisner: you’ve worked long, hard and well, and you’ve earned it.
Links: Newsarama: Will Eisner Dies. His official website is at www.willeisner.com, but the regular content is currently hidden in memoriam (”back door” here. A biography (along with pieces of his work) can be found at Denis Kitchen’s site. Also see a recent article in the Washington Post.
Update : Further coverage of his death: Washington Post, a shorter piece from BBC News, and a nice in-depth article from the New York Times that tags “The Spirit” as the Citizen Kane of its genre.
January 4th, 2005
I took these pictures today near Twillingate, Newfoundland, en route to a training session. The only thing more beautiful than the place is the people.
December 1st, 2004
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