What do those words mean

I like to listen to the today programme on radio 4 as I drive into work. Prime time for any news story is the 10 past 8 interview. Today it was a debate between Lord Falconer and Michael Howard about the legitimacy of the Iraq war given the new inquiry by Sir John Chilcot.

The key point appeared to hinge around the words used by the intelligence community to describe the quality of the information about WMD. According to Michael Howard, Blair was told that the intelligence was “limited, sporadic and patchy”. He is said to have interpreted or misrepresented, depending on your point of view, this to mean “Detailed, extensive and authoritative”

This got me thinking as to how important it is to interpret words correctly, especially in the exam room.  Although you could argue that the result of failing to interpret an exam question is not quite as serious as misunderstanding if a country in which you are going to invade has WMD. Some students might in fact disagree.

So to the point

When reading your exam question, take time to read the words in particular the verbs carefully. Is the examiner asking for a Definition which is to give the meaning of or a Description, which means to identify the characteristics. Are they asking you to Assess, To make a judgement about the importance, supported by evidence or to Advise which is to Inform or notify.

In order to help read the words, underline them as you read. Don’t underline all of them, just the ones that you think are important. This not only makes them stand out and so less easy to forget, it also sends a signal to the brain that you should focus your attention a little more closely on this part of the question.

Thanks for that Tony, very helpful.  Let’s hope you have interpreted your words correctly!

I wish I was the kind of writer who benefited from an outline before I write, but they never work out for me. My work changes so quickly from the outline that I just don’t bother. I know my destination, but how I get there is different from day to day. The thing is, writing my first novel like that has created a god-awful-mess of a first draft. I have written the same scene two different ways fifty pages apart. Scenes are out of chronological order, or some are missing altogether. While re-reading my draft I’ve been getting new ideas for the story, so I’m adapting a reverse outline technique. If you’ve got a messy draft and are looking for a way to manage it, this might work for you as well.

As I read my draft, I have some index cards nearby (the big ones not the 3×5) and made a card for each scene (not each page). On this card I write a title for the scene, what pages the scene is on, the setting and the characters. I also write a quick summary of the scene and where it fits into the larger whole of the novel. I write comments in the manuscript as well. I do this for the entire manuscript.

If you’re like me, your scenes are not in the right order on the actual page, so the first thing to do is to put the index cards in the order the scenes will be for the second draft. For example, if you wrote the last scene of the book into the middle of the manuscript, you move the appropriate index cards to their correct order. There are three reasons for this: 1) You’re going to write the outline using these cards 2) It’ll make finding the scene in the word processor document easier (because you put the page numbers in there) and 3) It’s easier to move index cards with a title of each scene around than chopping up a million pieces of paper and doing it.

Next, boot up your word processor (don’t do it by hand unless you’re good at judging space) and outline the novel you have based on your scene cards. Get the existing stuff down and then save it. Then re-read the outline, adding in new scenes and taking out old ones and save this under a different file name. Now you can always refer back to the original if you need to.

And now you have an outline of the second draft, with your planned changes. Sure, the second draft might not end up looking like that either, but it gives you an idea of the changes you’ll need to start on. Because that’s the thing about revision, especially of long works. Where the heck do you start? I know it sounds like work (and it is), but anything that helps you write a better novel is worth trying at least. Anyone who has other outlining techniques for revision, or even other revision techniques, feel free to share.

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I posted another short story I wrote for my semester work called Transplantation. It’s underneath the Pages section to the right. Don’t want people thinking I’m just writing about writing without having actually done it. And I hope someone else benefits from my reverse outlining I posted up there. It’s working pretty well for me so far. And I do know there are places where the process could be streamlined, but I’m one of those people who could never use the shortcuts in math either, I always had to work the entire problem out on the page.

Compliments of Carolee and Jill, ( and in this case Therese and Donna),  today’s exercise is :

Read one of your poems out loud to someone (yes, really). Ask that person to recall one line or phrase. Use that line as the opening of a new piece.

What I used was this:   my first (and just about my only) try at a sestina. (you really might want to skip this part)

The Nymph Refrains

I am not bright.
Not bright enough for you, Lucifer. The sun
will not stop in the heaven
at my command, nor will the blue
sea turn to gold
for me. I cannot dance on air.

You want a magic air,
Lucifer, one for transmuting straw and gold,
And I cannot for all your bright
and cruel beauty, sing down the sun.
Apples will grow blue
before I sing that song, or god will step down from Heaven.

I want the heaven
of your bright
regard. The blue
vaulting sky knows you are air
to me, and sun,
and more by far than gold.

But I could lose the sun,
Lucifer. And lose all promises of heaven,
If I cannot ignore your gold
and honeyed words. And even god can see your bright
sweet whisperings turn air
to mead and strip the sky of blue.

If ever suitor blew
hot and hotter, it is you, with your air
of I care not, and the heat of the sun
in your hands. You burn gold
with your most glancing touch, and give lie to heaven
making midnight bright.

You cannot, trickster, have what gold
is mine by right. My tunes belong to blue
day and sunlit air.
The gift of heaven,
and none of yours. You can not steal from me, Bright
Star, to quench the sun

I have no spelling air to call the sun,
to wrench the gold from day and steal the light of heaven.
My soul, I cannot write blue songs. I am not bright enough.

The phrase Jim liked in there

sing down the sun

( I think there was way too much mellerdrama in the sestina, so I went light)

.

.

The afternoon’s too long and bright

sing down the sun

and bring on night with music

use ukuleles, piccolos and chimes

to lift the stars

and when the time is right

bring on the moon

flute a sliver from behind a cloud

or sound out full and rich the sweet bassoon

.

(don’t have a title, and I’m a little iffy on the last line, or maybe the last two, but I like the idea)

I completed Ishi. I wish I had payed more attention to the amount of revisions I did for this 14 paged short story, but I didn’t. All I can say is that it was a lot. A lot of revisions. A lot. It has been about three months of work. Done mainly in spurts. Perhaps I could have taken less time if I was able to work on it more frequently, but I just couldn’t. Funny thing, I had asked someone (maybe just the internet on this blog) how do you know when you are done writing? Tonight’s answer is- it was just finished- there was nothing else to say or move. Now to submit, and to have my work lost in the mess, that is the mass amounts of people wanting to be published writers.

This leads me to my new topic: The world wants to be a famous writer. At least that is what Nathan Bransford has alluded to on his blog. I do like reading his blog, but sometimes I just can’t read what is going on out there in the world because the Stephanie Myers and JK Rowlings of the world do not inspire me. In fact, the very idea that they have driven every person to want to be a famous author, and saturated the publishing world, giving them even more reasons to criticize a person, makes me want to just remain ignorant, even if it means never getting published. I wish I could have as much, what is the word, faith? That just “anybody” can get published, or that there is an audience just dying to read my stuff out there. I don’t. Honestly, I’m not sure if I really care. I worked my ass off on this story. Changed it so many times, and even with the easy access of internet writing communities, I found it really hard to get some good feedback. Unfortunately for me, I need face to face contact for getting into the nitty-gritty, of why or why not, elements of my story work or not. I went through grammar books, went over syntax, proper punctuation, line by line with my story, and I know that I still could possibly get rejected because it still isn’t perfect. I think it is a percent hard work and a percent luck, and where the balance in the percentage is fluctuates. That’s my two cents about the subject.

I added a couple of new links to this blog, Nathan Bransford and Daily Grammar. I think they are pretty good links. Also, I finished reading Glimmertrain’s issue 72. In it I found out a way to contact one of the authors, who lives here in Portland, Oregon, and it turns out he is a teacher and he offers writing workshops. I went ahead and wrote him and he got back to me. I plan on doing his upcoming workshop in February. The cost is $180 for a 8 weeks, once a week, for 2 to 3 hours, which is so cheap! I would be an idiot not to save up and go. I haven’t had a writing workshop since I was in college, aside from the one’s I lead, but that’s different.

It’s sort of weird having a story really completed, like a little lack luster almost. I’m not sure what to do now. Which is funny because I have plenty of stories to work on but still I have this shrugging feeling of, now what?

Since I last wrote in my blog, many things have happened.

I got over my swine flu, but ended up missing the last week of lessons and the week of exams. I was so tired due to my upside-down sleeping patterns. Not to say I slept upside down, but rather if I went to bed it was at 5am-6am in the morning and I would get up at 3pm-4pm. Occasionally I didn’t sleep at all for periods of over 24 hours.
So I met with my teacher, Kanayama-sensei,  on the Friday at 4pm which was the last day of the exams. She tried to convince me to just resit the semester rather than take the exams, since I wasn’t doing very well in class anyway. Considering I was homesick, injured, depressed and tired for pretty much the entire semester ensured I couldn’t do better than scrape a pass.
Anyways, just after the meeting she mentioned that there was a party to celebrate the end of the semester, so I went along since my headache wasn’t too bad and I figured it would make me sleepy enough to sleep early.
It was a really fun party and I got to see my friends again. It was pretty cheap considering it was all you can drink and they gave us some nice-ish food. Best thing was socialising with the teachers (Song-sensei and Kanayama-sensei both sat at our table in the izakaya) and seeing Chanelle mix drinks while trying not to get caught by the izakaya staff, having brought her own selection in with the intention of mixing mojitos and pina coladas for the teachers. For some reason they had never tried them before.

I went home afterwards, having to wait half an hour for the bus (bought some cakes from the Little Mermaid bakery before it closed. They make really nice apple pies. Though maybe not as good as my nana Margaret or my little brother. Their apple pies are amazing.

I revised my butt off for the exams. Was in the library as much as I had been before I had the internet, though it was crowded a lot and I couldn’t get a good desk. I spent 6 hours there drumming causative and passive verbs into my head and writing out kanji after kanji. I even practiced speed reading, which came in so useful in my final exam, since I mistimed it and ended up having 10 minutes to finish the reading section.

I think, despite my mountains of revision, that I failed. Mostly due to my abismal performance in the speaking test. I’d just finished the 2 hour final exam and due to mistiming it I had been forced to miss out some grammar questions I would have otherwise been ablw to answer, and then had 10 minutes to read a 2 page spread of text and answer 2 pages of questions on it. I answered all the questions though, with the exception on the extended writing answer. It shook me up though, realising I had probably failed despite the fact I actually thought I did ok on the kanji and grammar until that point. I ended up with no break and went straight in to the speaking exam. My mind blanked, and the kanji readings in the text that I memorised that morning left me struggling. I made so many mistakes that I knew it was going to be a failure. I ended up getting upset and could hardly continue. I got to the interview part and got through that ok, except half way through I realised I was supposed to be using polite and humble forms and I wasn’t. So I failed again. Then I got to the roleplay. I had written out and practiced 2 of the 3 roleplays. I was better at the one on my experiences in Japan though, and knew I would do well if I got that one. But I was given the letter of reccommendation role play which I wasn’t as good at, and ended up forgetting how to speak any Japanese at all. So I gave up and didn’t finish it.

Kanayama-sensei said I only had around 50% before these exams and I need 60% to pass, so I doubt I will pass.
But she says I will be better off resitting JLP3, but it ruins my plans. I wanted to do JLP3 this semester, JLP4 next semester and intensive JLP5 and 6 in my final semester. If I have to resit, then JLP4 is the highest I can get, and it isn’t good enough to get fluent for my final year in Japanese at Newcastle University.
Also if I fail this semester, I may get my scholarship taken off me, and have to repay the 100,000yen I have already recieved. Though I can’t exactly help the fact I had influenza…

I have been pretty lonely whilst in Japan, but I am starting to get out more and make more friends. I went to Tokyo Disney Sea with the Soul Run people. I could only afford to go after 6pm (which is 3,100yen as opposed to 6,500yen for the whole day) but it was still amazing. I got to ride some fun rides and see a 3D Aladdin live show, and I bought some Minnie Mouse ears (they were 1,050yen though :S ) The fireworks were amazing. Everything was so Christmassy even though it is onlt November!
On December 2nd we are all going to Disney Land for the day. I hope I can afford it, since I am running low on money. I’m going to transfer more over this evening when the UK is up and running. I think it will be faster than last time, mostly because I actually know I need to go convert it from pounds to yen myself rather than waiting for it to happen itself. Maybe I will get a good exchange rate this time?

I went out with Gary and the guys from Canada House the other day. We went to a festival at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies not too far from ICU’s campus. We rode our bikes there, which was good because I needed the exercise. I hadn’t eaten all day but I didn’t like how small the food portion sizes were for the money they were charging. I gave in and bought some ゆず茶(Yuzu Tea) from the Korean food stall. Yuzu are a sweet citrus fruit that is very popular in Japan. It reminded me of how Lemsip would taste if it was actually yummy. Very sweet and tangy.
After the festival, some of us went off to Higashi-Koganei station’s side streets and got some Gyoza from this really nice restaurant. It only cost 500yen for 2 rows of gyoza (10 gyoza in totally I think. either 10 or 12) plus a bowl of rice, some pickles and some soup. There was free water on the table too. I had a really fun time and made new friends – some American, some Japanese.

I am hoping that I will spend the holidays going places with friends, but everyone seems busy going outside Tokyo. I can’t afford that yet. Maybe I can’t afford it until after Christmas, or perhaps not at all.

I am looking forward to Soul Run Video Night #2 (I was unaware #1 had even happened) and I really hope I have the money for Disney Land on the 2nd.

I think I’m done revising a flash fiction piece due for my Fiction Writing class on December 4^th.  Hills Like White Elephants by Hemingway served as its inspiration.  Instead of 3^rd Person Objective, I’ve written my piece from the 1^st person perspective of the woman.  The story turned into a beast that could have only been written by me – whether that’s good or bad – someone else will have to judge.   Each time I approached the ending as I wrote, my eyes would tear up.  Unfortunately I kept approaching that point while writing at a coffee shop with ear phones shoved in my ears.  The private made public.

It’s hard to know when revision is done.  That’s why readers, especially expert readers like professors and writing group members, are vital to a writer.  Writing can seem like the private work of the individual, but it’s been my experience that creating solid pieces requires interdependence.  A writer must develop the confidence to know when not to listen to the input of others.  That confidence and ability to discern takes time to develop.  I’m just beginning to struggle with it.  Interdependence also shows up in the research phase of writing.  Whether working on a piece of fiction or fact, I interview people who know the subject I’m writing about. 

I love the work of revision.  I love the refinement, the work of finding the perfect word.  On another recent piece of Flash Fiction in progress, Advance Cash for Your Art: Millions of Dollars in Government Grants, I debated between the words “sarcastic” and “sardonic.”  Then I read the etymology of sardonic and was sold.  The piece is meant to be a cynical and humorous look at the world of visual art and has death serving as the main character’s inspiration.  With sardonic alluding to the Sardinian plant which was said to produce convulsive laughter ending in death.  Every time I think about it, I think of the scene between Vizzini the Sicilian, and Westley.  I think of how Vizzini laughs like a madman until he dies and wish that I could remember what was put in the drink.  Could it have been Sardonis?  I’ll have to take the time to watch it again. 

Revision and Research, a Writer’s work never ends.  Tomorrow I need to do the final revision on Advance Cash for Your Art.   I also need to call a few of the clients Nicole Hansen has worked with to ask them about their experience working with her, so I can put together a first draft of the article I’m working on for Rochester Women Magazine.   For school, I have to stop by the Learning Center to sit in on a Tutoring Session for Tutoring Theory and Practice Class and I have to start my final short story for my FictionWriting class.  Then, there’s the query a day plan to start.  I’ll share more on that later…

Last Wednesday night I attended the monthly Boston STC meeting.  The topic was “Documentation in an Agile Environment.”  The discussion panel consisted of two writers, a doc manager, and a QA tester.  At the beginning of the evening the moderator polled the audience and the vast majority of the audience was not working in an Agile environment. From the questions they were asking, it seemed that many of them were completely new to the concept of Agile programming.

During the question and answer period at the end, one of the older members of the audience asked a question about writing process.  She said, “It seems like you start with the outline.  When do you have time to do the brainstorming?”  That struck me as an odd question.  The way she asked seemed to imply that an outline was NOT where you start.  I got the feeling that she thought the proper process for writing was to brainstorm, then write an outline, then start writing.  It made me think a lot about my own writing process and how it might be vastly different from writers of a previous generation.

I learned the craft of writing at the University of New Hampshire. My four years at Phillips Exeter Academy had given me a solid foundation as a writer, but it was at UNH where I developed an appreciation for the mechanics of writing.  And that was probably due to the influence of Donald Murray on the UNH English department.

My freshman composition class used his Write to Learn as our writing text.  And it was through this book that I was introduced to the idea of the writer’s toolbox.  A writer can have many different tools, some that they use all the time, and some that they may only pull out for particular projects.  There is no One Right Way To Write.  And that’s an important thing to remember.

One of the panelists answered her by saying that when you’re doing Agile writing, you work during the sprint to document the feature, then during the next sprint you work on the next feature. “You write it.  It’s done.  You don’t come back to it.”  Which got me to wondering, when do you have time to write conceptual information?  Almost everywhere I’ve worked, the procedures (“how to”) are adequately documented, but what is lacking is information about “why” you use the feature and the “when” or best practice information.  I’ve spent most of my writing career trying to fill these holes.  And it takes time to be able to determine what needs to be written in the overviews and develop enough customer and product knowledge to be able to write examples and best practices.

Donald Murray also wrote the Craft of Revision which also holds a spot on my bookshelf.  While I don’t write nearly the number of revisions that Murray did (he was almost a compulsive rewriter) I do often return to things that I’ve written, give them a re-read and revise my work.  I don’t often do full fledged revisions, but there are often small improvements that can be made. Especially when there is content that was written under deadline pressure where I didn’t understand a feature well enough to write a solid overview.  Or when I have learned something new about how customers are using our product and can add real-world examples. 

I don’t think I’ll be able to write something and then never come back to it.  Luckily there will be sprints when the developers are working on architecture stories or something else that happens behind the scenes and doesn’t need user documentation, and I’ll be able to go back and tweak my documentation.

One of the things I’ve been struggling with is how my writing style fits into an Agile development process.  I’ll be writing more about that in upcoming posts.

*****

Post Script

In writing this post I learned that Donald Murray had died in 2006.  While I was never his student, I learned a great deal from his books, and read his column in the Boston Globe for many years.  It is because of Donald Murray that I think of writing as a as a craft, and myself as a craftsman.  I also discovered this wonderful appreciation of Donald Murray.

A riff is an improvised solo—a musician going with the feeling of the moment to create some original music. Some riffs become part of a studio recording. Others live and die on the stage.

A couple years ago I took a workshop with Elizabeth Lyon, and she introduced me to Riff Writing. I was pleasantly surprised by the results.  Now Riff Writing is part of my revision process.

Here’s how it works:

Start at a specific spot in your manuscript, maybe a character’s feeling or attitude, or a memory, or a specific setting. Just jump off from that spot and start writing. Dig deep and follow it where it goes, however illogical it may seem. Resist your first impulse to stop. 

Instead, keep writing and see what you produce. Maybe a brilliant analogy. Or a cutting phrase as sharp as obsidian.

Yes, you’re going to overwrite, and that’s okay. Later you can go back and decide what’s suitable for the studio.

I highlight my riffs in green. I cut much of what I write, but often end up keeping the last parts, words I wouldn’t have written if I hadn’t done the riff.

Riff Writing has helped me with characterization and scene building. I’ll take a scene that I’d considered finished and let the characters keep interacting. That new material sometimes becomes the bulk of the scene.

I applied Riff Writing to the fifteenth draft of a novel that I twice had thought was finished. I let my characters run with their thoughts and feelings, and pushed scenes that I had thought were imbedded in stone.

 Riff Writing helped breathe new life into my story.

Have you ever tried Riff Writing or something similar? How did it work for you? Or if you haven’t, are you willing to give it a try?

Something is there, wriggling.
It is moving, under the surface.
I can feel it, just there.
My head is spinning, it is you.
Please please please, give me a break.

Scientists have found that hearing specific sounds during deep sleep can improve memory and recall.

The technique could also help anyone studying a foreign language or actors trying to learn their lines, they believe.

The findings add to growing evidence that we consolidate memories as we sleep and that we can influence which ones we will later remember more strongly.

Scientists asked a group of students to look at 50 objects, including a cat and a kettle, which were all paired to a specific location on a computer screen.

They then asked the volunteers to lie down and as they slept played them a series of sounds related to half of the objects, including a miaow and a kettle boiling.

Tested later the students were better able to correctly place an object whose sounds that had heard with their locations.

“The research strongly suggests that we don’t shut down our minds during deep sleep,” said John Rudoy, from Northwestern University, in Chicago, who led the study. “Rather this is an important time for consolidating memories.”

The team behind the research also believe that the same process could be someday be harnessed to help people forget unwanted memories.

The findings are published in the journal Science.

Despite my posts that would seem to indicate otherwise, it’s been a while since I got in here without any notion of what I’d write.  I’ve written a lot today, nano and otherwise, and it feels like maybe I don’t have anything left for Zebra Sounds. And yet…

I’ve been toying with a question-of-the-day post. Let’s try that. A while ago, I read this writing prompt that said, “Write your daydream.” Until then, I’d never given much thought to what I daydream. When I did – think about it, I mean – I was surprised to realize that my daydreams generally fit into one of three categories.

1. Romantic. I know, me. Maybe the least romantic girl I know. And yet I dream chick lit. (See what happens when I come in here not knowing what my post is about. I get all revelatory and embarrassing.)
2. Argumentative. Sometimes I daydream arguments. I take the arguments that get skirted in real life, and I have them in my head. In my head, I never worry about anyone’s feelings, or whether, when the argument’s done we’ll still be married or friends. In my daydreams, I’m ruthless.
3. Revisionary. I am constantly rewriting life. In real life, things don’t happen the way I think they should. People don’t cooperate. I think they’re going to do or say one thing, and they go another way completely. In my daydreams, I right the wrongs. In my daydreams, you are all behaving just as you should and we’re all living happily ever after (see #1)… or we’re fighting. And you’re losing (see #2).

So, do you daydream? What about? Are any of you slaying dragons? I think I’ll start dreaming of that. Dragon Slaying… in my hot pink chick lit armour.

Las notas verdes vivaces que recuerdan a los olores de la naturaleza siempre han sido un sello en las fragancias de Annick Goutal, pero también el acercamiento inusual a ciertos materiales, creando perfumes realmente únicos. En esta línea, la perfumista de la casa, Isabelle Doyen, lleva años trabajando en la combinación de notas de iris/violeta unidas a nuevas notas verdes; siguiendo los frutos de su investigación, podemos ver la evolución del tema hasta llegar a Mandragore Pourpre:

-La Violette (2001) de Annick Goutal ya presenta el tema al trabajar una fragancia soliflore de violetas a la que añade la nota verde y húmeda de la hoja de violeta como una pequeña travesura.

-Duel (2003) de Annick Goutal, aquí la combinación es más explícita: iris y una nota verde aterciopelada de absoluto de mate verde, pero también recoge un aspecto importante en la salida que seguirá trabajando después, una faceta cítrica-dulce-ácida que aquí consigue con Petit Grain Paraguay principalmente.

- Mandragore (2005) de Annick Goutal, que como decía en la revisión anterior trabaja en torno a la hoja de violeta que facilita recrear el aura de una fragancia chypre, aunque predominan más las notas amaderadas, junto con diferentes matices verdes de té y de hierba buena.

- The Unicorn Spell (2006) para la casa suiza Les Nez ( no comercializada en la Península, pero accesible online) donde ahonda en el tema de las violetas verdes, etéreas y heladas-mentoladas pero añadiendo aquí matices lechosos, trabajando las disonancias mediante puentes muy vibrantes para integrarlas en la composión de modo armónico.

Y de nuevo para Annick Goutal, Mandragore Pourpre (2009). Esta última fragancia, manteniendo características de las anteriores es, sin embargo, una nueva exploración en ese territorio de nuevos chypre ( sin extracto de musgo de roble) construidos a base de patchoulí+hoja de violeta. Si bien muchos de esos nuevos chypre pueden dejar indiferentes por su falta de rigor- ya que muchas veces se limitan a crean una base muy pesada con algunos nuevos almizcles y la nota terrosa del patchoulí…sin cuidar más- en Mandragore Pourpre podemos ver que I. Doyen hace un auténtico ejercicio neoclasicista. Decía Luca Turín en su blog hace años, que Coty, con su perfume Chypre de 1917, había redefinido el género de los chypre al descubrir que la bergamota, el musgo de roble y el labdanum tenían en común una faceta resinosa que los hace aglutinarse muy bien, creando una idea abstracta muy directa; pero además ese concepto se transformó en una estructura y esa es la clave que Isabelle Doyen retoma en Mandragore Pourpre: creando una columna resinosa-canfórea gracias al romero ( aquí una nota inmensa y profunda), al incienso ( aquí trabajado en sus facetas mas resinosas y cítricas sobre todo) y el patchoulí ( que en su oscuridad terrosa también encierra matices canfóreos).
Mandragore Pourpre, en comparación con Mandragore es una fragancia mucho más oscura y profunda,con notas amaderadas más difusas, de una oscuridad refrescante y de un verde frondoso pero aún cálido, difuso pero algo picante, con una textura terrosa empolvada ligera que recoge la idea de raíz de mandrágora y cierto dulzor que aquí explora matices afrutados, anisados y algo cinámicos. En conjunto es una fragancia penetrante y refrescante, con notas herbáceas trabajadas en una dirección muy limpia y aérea, que recrean la sensación de aire puro, con un carácter muy compacto y muy buena fijación (es un EdT).
La salida nos habla ya de las profundidades del bosque, de la umbría en la que crece la planta de la mandrágora, con un carácter verde amargo y fresco increíble, con una nota de menta piperita deliciosa porque está trabajada en la dirección limpia pero también saca a la luz esas notas azucaradas de fondo tan características de esta planta; rápidamente se presenta el romero y la pimienta negra, mientras que el anís estrellado se mantiene como nota de fondo que centellea de vez en cuando ( aún así aquí está más definida que en Mandragore). El corazón de la fragancia mantiene un tono floral muy abstracto a base de geraniol y eugenol; también deja entrever algo ácido frutal que se pierde entre las notas resinosas ( incienso y mirra) y alcanforadas pero que continúa en la base con la heliotropina y el mirto,ambos ingredientes ayudan también a que la corriente verde hacia la base se suavice en la dirección del heno (cumarina) y se endulce, se afrute ligeramente y se vaya fundiendo suavemente con la piel transformándose en algo más cremoso y sutil ya al final de la evaporación.

Sin duda, este es un trabajo muy purista en cuanto a concepto, muy pulido en cuanto a técnica y francamente muy bien balanceado, además no pierde su carácter a lo largo de la evaporación.

1) i bought a cushion cover from IKEA. best thing ever. Makes my bed look less like a dirty student’s bed
2) I’ve been listening to The Man’s Machine, and all of Kings & Queens in general, all day. Jamie T, i love you.
3) Copied up all my 102ILA notes. introduction to Post-1945 France. Economy ftl. I have a mega essay to write as well. Fuuuuck :/
4) Sorted out my bedside table. and stuff. For weeks there’s just been a pile of rubbish on top of there. Now it looks kinda cool. Also note: new plant. i didn’t plan on buying that tbh. It just sorta…happened
5)  I started reading Stupeur et Tremblements, which is my set novel for my degree module. It’s suprisingly erotic for a story about a Belgian woman who essentially grows up in Japan. That’s why she’s dressed as a geisha on the cover. She’s not that crazy. Well…she is. But that’s Chapter 3. Seriously that woman had a breakdown. lmfaooo.

That’s about it. My day hasn’t been anything special. i’ve basically sat at home doing sweet bugger all. I kicked Kiran’s arse before because he threw a frisbee at me, I nearly ended up pushing him down the stairs by accident. oh and i’m installing Windows XP on my Mac. i’ve been revising German as well, but i can’t be arsed to take photos of more books. lol

gros bisous x

I did it. At 6:13 this morning, I typed word # 50,002.
I am most pleased with the ending, which just dropped out of nowhere. As I was thinking that it would take a couple thousand more words to bring it all to a conclusion, I suddenly saw the end. I may add a short epilogue, just to clarify a couple things, but I am happy with the way it turned out.
The writing needs tons of revision.
The plot is fine, and with some re-working, will make a good story.
The characters are okay. Now that I have a better idea who they all are, it will be easier to go back and look at their dialog and actions and fix inconsistencies.
But it’s done.
It’s not five chapters, meticulously honed to perfection and nowhere near completion. It is a complete novel. I have no pretensions about it being a great work of literature, but it has potential.
Now what?
I have several unfinished projects that might benefit from some of the discipline I’ve taught myself in the last 19 days.
As far as the Nano goes, January is National Novel Revision Month, I think. By then I may be ready to look at it again.
Till then… ?

Okay, crit partners, hold me to my big talk. Here’s my thoughts on story arc.

Is story arc complicated? What does it involve? How can a story be full of tension, yet not really have a satisfying “feel” to it? How can cool characters go through great changes, yet leave us essentially unmoved?

Here’s a great article on story arc. Trust the gamer world (okay, Mr. Hirst, digital media production is broader yet) to summarize it about the best I’ve seen.

What is Arc?

A story is nothing but a series of moments showing change from a character’s starting state to a different end state. For novel-length work, there will be many minor changes, or stories, leading up to the final, overall effect. They can and should overlap and flow between one another for continuity.

Plot arc or story arc is the art of layering several small, growing stories, complete in their basic elements, together to form a larger one.

What Arc is Not

Arc is not just escalating plot tension. It works together with escalating tension, but is not summed up in it.

Arc is not just plot exposition. Arc is exposited, and it is driven by plot exposition, but is not summed up in it.

Arc is not just character development. It does involve character transformation and growth, but is not summed up in it.

In the total picture: Relying on any one of these to the point that the others are excessively diminished or omitted will cause a flatlined novel.

In the scene-by-scene picture: Relying on any one of these to the point that the others are excessively diminished or omitted will weaken or break the overall arc.

What Arc Is

Arc, then, is the expression of the writer’s sensibility towards the overall state of change. It’s the interwoven threads of rising plot tension and minor denouements; the gradual changes revealed in characters and setting; and the revelation of new obstacles to overcome.

Good arc is the total forward motion of the story, expositing the meaning with which you, the writer, wish to impact the reader’s life and change them forever. As such, it’s the combined motion of every technique you have in your toolkit.

A Cord of Three Strands

While there are numerous areas of technique you can look at, let’s take plot, dialogue and character development as examples.

Plot events may reveal things to the reader; but we’re making the most use of those things when they also change the character in at least some small way.

Dialogue may cause or reflect character change, but to separate that from plot events will break the arc.

Characters may demonstrate reactions to events, or initiate actions, of course; but if they’re only partaking in a set of actions for the sake of pushing the plot, the story will lack the depth it could have.

Depth is Height

When I started my writing journey, I began with poetry and learned foundational things that apply to all writing. One, always anchor your metaphors; and two, leverage every sentence at least three ways.

While this is quite the task in a novel-length work–we don’t craft and hone every single word the way a poet does–this is a good principle to keep in mind for the general task of storytelling. Every scene should be leveraged at least three ways. This drives development, and will cause the story arc to sing.

In this tutorial, we watch Lisa Detweiler-Miller coordinate a peer review session with her students.

Her handout is available for you to download here: SRP Peer Review.

This peer review session is specifically for the “Stakeholder Research Paper.”  But you could adapt it for any of the papers in 101.

If you are interested in learning more about using computers for peer review, check out this Google book: Virtual Peer Review.

Please post your questions, comments, and ideas!

Music courtesy of Portmanteauteau.

Filmed by Bekah Hawrot-Weigel; Created by Jay Dolmage.

I had a look at Xtranormal about 6 months ago before I came back into teaching.  It could see it had great potential in the classroom but it slipped off my radar.  Then a wiki post by @dominic_mcg showing how his year 9 pupils were using Xtranormal brought it back to my attention.

Xtranormal is a free online resource which lets pupils build high quality animations really quickly.  The real wow factor is that any text entered into the script section gets converted to audio and read by one of the animated actors.  With a simple script, some screen directions, and a selection of camera angles, pupils can quickly develop engaging and professional looking animations.

I decided that a good way to use Xtranormal was as a revision tool.  I discussed with my class the broad topics which we should be revising, and I then asked them to work in pairs to develop a script.  The first “actor” was to play someone who wanted to find out more about the chosen topic, while the second actor attempt to teach them.  The class is an S2 Intermediate 1 Computing class studying Multimedia, and the 4 areas for revision were: input devices; output devices; backing storage; and file types.  The process of writing the scripts, and designing and building the movies to get to the current stage has taken about an hour – the class will add a bit more meat to the bones next week.

Once the movies were complete, we played them on the IWB and this gave the rest of the class the opportunity to discuss the content, and debate any omissions or misconceptions.  Clearly this approach with Xtranormal could be applied across all subject areas, and I will be trialling it with a Maths class in the next few weeks.

I have provided links to a couple of the movies below.

Input Devices

Backing Storage

Output Devices

So between real life fun like car accidents, new car shopping, and illness (mmm colds are so much fun, really), I’ve gotten just about nothing done writing-wise.  I think I’m going to just write November off as a lost month, though I suppose two short stories isn’t the worst outcome.  I’m working on another one, but the science part of it is tripping me up.  I’m not a hard sci/fi writer, but this story really wants to be a hard sci/fi story.  I solved one problem, theoretically, now I have to figure out how to solve one other sciencey issue and then maybe I can write the damn story.

I’m looking ahead at workshops and WoTF submissions.  I have a novella planned that is supposed to be my first quarter submission, but if I don’t get it written in the next couple weeks, I’ll have to do something else, since I need a week or two break between writing and editing things.

The bad news is that with the car stuff, I might not be applying to any of the big three workshops this year.  We had to clean out our funds to replace the car about a year sooner than we were planning to (it was a very old car, so we were going to replace it, but not for a year when our savings had been built up for it).  So the money that was getting put away for the workshops has been used on a car.  That’s life though, sometimes it doesn’t go according to plan.

I might sign up for one of Dean Wesley Smith’s weekend workshops instead.  They’d be easy enough to get to and I’ve heard good things about them.  Mostly I’m looking around for ways to really take my writing to the next level.  I’m getting plenty of “positive” rejections, which tells me that while my writing is good, something might be missing.  I want to figure out how to push past the “good but no thanks” stage and get to the “here’s your check” stage.  I know it’s not a perfect science and that even famous writers get rejections, but I want to get at least my first sale someday.  I need a little push, I think.  Something.

For now I’ve been reading books on fiction editing and selling a novel.  Gearing up to revise my novel and get my submission package ready to go to my chosen agents.  I’ve got a top 5 list put together, so hopefully by January I’ll be ready to go on that.  First though comes the hard part, the actual revising of something that is many thousands of words long.  I’ll just tackle it the same way I wrote it; one page at a time.  One page at a time.

StressOMeter: Freaking high.

My yearlies. Exams. For the next two days. Totally exam-crammed. Rhyme not intended.

Blahhhh.

~ Things that make me feel utterly unprepared and unfocused ~

1. The cold I’ve had for the past few days. Imagine that. A cold. In summer.

At freaking 40 degrees. Story. Of. My. Life.

2. Me not factoring in getting a cold a few days before exams. Result: Left a lot of work to complete

week before exam. Note to self: Never do that again.

3. My two trip to the North Coast and back for brother’s grad. Exactly two days before yearlies start.

It was more a dinner in the end really and I didn’t really need to be there.

Never should have told mother I could go.

But I need to get myself together. In order to do the best I can on this thing. Any kind of revision will ultimately count. So here’s the plan for tonight:

1) Review notes on history and answer outline questions for WWII.

2) Review science notes.

3) Complete two Maths revision assignments.

4) Take a shower.

5) Not panic – I believe it’s during these deadlines that I really need to remain focused. Begone panic hysteria.