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The Smithylad/Crawfish
Stardust Weblog
14-May-2005
The Big Sort Out
I need a couple of full days to dedicate to Sleepwalker to take it from the mass of notes that it currently is into 5 coherent storylines, and as that is a daunting task to take on, I've taken on the sorting of my many writing files instead, which is a huge job as well, but somehow not as huge as trying to write a story.
There are similarities to the two activities. I believe that somewhere within Sleepwalker there is a definitive story - where all the parts interlock perfectly, and the logic of the tale is indisputable, and the drama unfolds beautifully based on the characters, their backstory, their predicament and my own imagination. And similarly, within the mass of files, there are definitive versions of everything I have written, however far the story got before grinding to a halt in a similar manner to that which has affected Sleepwalker. So I need to spend time digging through the files and finding those definitive versions, as I whittle down the massed amalgum of copies saved as back up in the safety of multiple locations, without the requisite labelling to make the sorting easier.
There is a lesson here, too, about a piece of writing not being worth a damn unless it's finished. I have got somewhat better at that of late, ever since Fi and I were in Venice and I was complaining that I never got anywhere, when she rightfully pointed out that I never got anywhere because I never sent anything off because I never finished anything. So the stories are forced to sit in the stack system of creative incompletion till some glorious day, sometime in a probably fictional future, when I call them in from this limboland, done and dusted and ready to vie for space on the bookshelf, or wherever. So hopefully this exercise will help me take stock of everything I've written and help me convert it from a walking undead piece of writing into a living breathing finished document.
Hopefully, too, if my plans go well, I'll write up each sidelined item for this site as I unearth it, including an explanatory piece and as much of the project as is readable. I have discovered Flashpaper, which is a bit like Acrobat, expect it takes a document and converts it into a flash file, rather than a pdf. This can then be posted online, which is as good a place to back up files as any.
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