ENTRIES FOR MAY 2002

31 May, 2002

Have had a good week. Got stuff done. Used a javascript to make a little hypertext using the story so far of Branded. Take a look and tell me what you think.

29 May, 2002 back

I've learned a lot in the last couple of days. Took a decision to concentrate on text, and not worry about images for the time being. This has freed me, and stopped me from panicking. Of course, in the context of html and javascript (which is what I'm learning) text=image, but we'll ignore that here. Despite my problems with The Computer Retailer Who Will Not Be Named, I've got on with it and feel slightly clearer about the way ahead. Fog will no doubt descend upon me any moment now, but that's okay.

My pre-occupation with the link and what it can mean to hypertext and hyperfiction is shifting a little as well, as I see that the creative works I respond to best don't use the hyperlink in the conventional sense, to create choice. Instead, they use the link to move the narrative forward. Of course, the element of choice remains (you can always go backwards if you feel like it, or to some place else entirely), but the narrative logic of these pieces demands you move forward. That placates the turn-to-the-next-page reader and writer in me.

later on 27 May, 2002 back

Today I have had the luxury of a whole day to sit back and try to gain perspective on the projects I am currently undertaking. I've thought some more about 'Branded', my no-longer-public-work-in-progress.

Initially I put the project online from the very beginning because I was intriqued by the notion that publishing in the future could be a continuous process. This was one of the many ideas discussed at the ELO conference I attended in LA. When you publish electronically the work can remain fluid; the writer can return to it and continue to revise and rewrite, making each new and improved version available to her readership. So there could in fact be many versions of the work co-existing, depending upon what you, the reader, had downloaded and when. Even if the work is a print-based book, with print-on-demand all the versions could be available at the same time. You could download and print the version of 'The Great Gatsby' that Scott Fitzgerald wrote in 1926. Then you could download the reworked version he took it upon himself to write in 1939 when things didn't look quite so rosy.

Diana Slattery, one of the academics and artists at ELO, talked about her work 'Glide', as a continual work-in-progress that she adds to and adapts all the time, that she has been working on for a number of years. As a reader, and as a writer, this is appealing and could, potentially, add many layers to one's reading experience of any given work.

On the other hand, Fitzgerald laboured to make 'The Great Gatsby' the jewel that it is, and would I really want to read another version, one that he'd fiddled with on the web after all those lousy years in Hollywood?

Of course that's like comparing apples and lemons. But still, if you knew you could always fiddle with it, what happens to that moment - the big moment in the life of the writer up until now - when you think, enough, it's finished?

Maybe that is my central problem with so much that is webby - is it all just too much of a good thing? Does the fact that it is so easy to publish on the web - even an idiot like me can build a simple webpage and, presto, voila, there it is and people actually read it - mean that people feel free to publish any old thing? I guess that's true; however it does not mean that none of it has any value, and that there isn't something remarkable to be done, that is being done, with the new technologies.

I feel as though I'm endlessly repeating myself in this journal.

I guess that's why, ordinarily, I don't keep a journal.

'Branded': what I want to create is a series of scenes, linked to each other, leading on from each other, like a stack of hand-painted porcelain plates. I'm still not sure what I want visually. I'm increasingly tempted to work only in text. Text that's been carefully designed, but text only.

Or is that like cutting off my nose to spite my face?

27 May, 2002 back

Getting back on track now, and trying to think through what I want, creatively, from this project.

In July, I'll be attending trAce's conference Incubation and while there I'm going to attempt to ask a number of the artists, writers, and programmers present what it is about the link, the hyperlink, that most appeals to them. 'What does the link mean to you?' - that kind of thing. I hope to explore what it is about this space, this tool, unique to computer-based work, that excites them.

As I continue to look at more hypermedia work, I see clearly that my initial reader's frustration with too much choice (in terms of being offered many opportunities to click and go in other directions within a single work) is based on something more profound than a novice's irritation. It is to do with desiring a certain kind of structure in narrative; it's to do with a longing for narrative itself. The pieces of hypermedia I like best don't offer a great deal of choice, or if they do, are structured in a way that allows me, the reader, to opt for narrative.

One such piece is Lisa Bloomfield's Trilogy. This was presented in the Gallery at the ELO conference. I didn't see it then, but Lisa Bloomfield recently e-mailed me a response to this journal and I looked at 'Trilogy' as a result of that. A simple, elegant, work.

24 May, 2002 back

I've been away - five days in southern Italy. Lovely. Why don't I live in a Mediterranean place? It has everything I love - olive groves, cherry trees, vineyards, sunshine, cafes, and wild driving.

But as well as that, I've had a minor sea-change in thinking about this project. Decided to take my very basic experiments in hyperfiction off-line, and no longer make it public. This was promoted by two things - Randy Adams , who has been giving me tuition in html and javascript etc, suggested that making it public so early might be hampering its progress; and a student at a lecture I gave at The Women's Library asked me if it didn't feel weird to be writing in public after all my years of private solitary writing labour - writing that ends in publication or broadcast, but only after years of behind-closed-doors consideration. Her question made me pause. Well yes, I had to answer. So that was it. I cut the cord.

Ongoing problems with my computer and my broadband connection have also been a too-boring-to-mention complication.

But now I'm back. I've got a free week next week to devote to this project. I'm going to push all the other things that crowd in on me away. And try to make some progress. Both in public, and in private.

14 May, 2002 back

Decided to have a few days away from the online world after my brain-scramble of last week. Luckily for me, the trAce university server went down over the weekend, so it meant my time off was enforced by circumstance. Which was convenient, given that I am prone to guilt over these things. There's something about the online world that reminds me of my brief time as a university student; I felt that I should be studying all the time and when I wasn't, I felt guilty. It's the 24 hour nature of the web that makes me feel as though I can and therefore should work all the time.

However, when I was a university student I did no work at all and spent my time in pursuit of All Things Bad for Me. And then dropped out. So what does that tell me?!

I feel rejuvenated again now. Have had some further thoughtful e-mails from people who've been reading the journal, including one from an old friend of mine in Montreal who works in the dot.com industry.

Am putting tables in and trying to organise this journal a little better.

And have small developments on the digital drama front.

My mini-crisis last week was sparked by my same old problem: I can't get my head round the visual side of things. The idea of having to learn how to make my writing visually interesting on a computer screen makes me grind to a complete halt.

Will continue to think this through.

10 May, 2002 back

Had my day at trAce on Wednesday. Had a brief lesson on how to use a scanner from Helen and a discussion with Simon, the web designer there, about design and graphics in general. Also had the basics of putting sound on web pages introduced to me. And further talk with Sue Thomas about this project overall. Felt thoroughly confused by the end of the day.

Now I'm at the stage where I'm wondering why on earth I'm going down this road in the first place. Why don't I just turn off my broadband and creep back to my novel, my print-based novel, my novel that will hopefully be published one day on pieces of paper bound together by glue, with a spine and a cover, etc. (I'll let someone else do all of that - I'll just worry about the words) The whole business of figuring out how to make webpages look good, how best to manifest the link structure, what kind of fiction this might produce, is currently making me feel - what? - crazy? weary? like hiding?

My friend, the writer Catherine Byron, said the following to me in an e-mail the other day: 'I am always torn between the creativity of the writer and that of the reader when I try to construct something with those extra dimensions and routes... ' This struck a chord with me. However I am currently so confused I have no idea what chord that might actually be. So I am stalled with my hyperfiction, unable to move ahead because of knowing how far there is to go - and how many new skills I'll have to learn, or at least come to grips with - before it will resemble amything that I might be happy with.

As I said to Sue Thomas the other day when she said that some new bit of information I was about to be given would open up a whole new world to me - I'm tired of whole new worlds!! I don't want anymore whole new worlds to be opened up to me!

7 May, 2002 back

Am suffering from headless chicken syndrome. Both broadband and my new monitor have had teething problems - spent about three hours on the phone to BT yesterday trying to sort out the broadband; and the new monitor which I bought myself as a huge treat last week remains slightly out of focus - every other line is a little blurry. Dell have agreed to replace it, but that conversation took an hour, and there will be the business of packing this one up and unpacking and installing the new new one...

But these complaints are typical of the information age.

I'm travelling up to Nottingham this evening; will undergo a further day's training at trAce tomorrow. I'm going to have some tuition on further basics, like how to use a scanner and manipulate images, and some slightly more sophisticated things, like how Cold Fusion CMS works. The latter will be useful if I get the Women's Library web-based collaborative project I'm hoping to run off the ground. More on that later.

Plus time to talk things over with Sue and Helen at trAce . Very useful.

Later on 3 May, 2002 back

One further pre-occupation regarding hypertext: just exactly how esoteric is it? Is it 100 people talking to the same 100 people? Or is there an actual, growing audience for it?

3 May, 2002 back

I'm all over the place with this at the moment. Too many ideas all floating round, unable to settle down to anything. Except this journal, and its new off-shoot, Drama Journal - wow, two journals, when I've been unable/uninterested in keeping any kind of journal for years.

I had my Paint Shop Pro lesson with Randy via Chat, I've got more stuff I want to add to 'Branded', I've got more fiddling to do with this journal, I need to come up with a training plan for my day at trAce on Monday... plus endless other bits. I'm tempted to leave my desk, and go shopping.

Speaking of shopping, I am now connected up to broadband, and Dell are going to send a replacement for my brand-new LCD monitor which is blurry and out of focus.

1 May, 2002 back

One of my big questions about hypertext and/or hyperfiction has been: What's in it for narrative? I realise now that a second question could be: What's in it for prose?

Even with my incredibly basic hyperfiction, Branded, barely qualifying for the word hypertext, I find myself preoccupied by the possibilities of the link structure and all the fancy things I could learn to do with Paint Shop Pro, etc. I've got the basic six page story set-up now, and want to move on to creating frames and manipulating images etc.

However, if I was writing a straight-forward print-based story called 'Branded', or a script for a drama called 'Branded' I would be much more concerned with the quality of my writing in that story and all my energy and effort would be going into improving the content and the prose itself.

So, I've already demonstrated to myself, while being fully aware of the pitfalls, that it is all too easy to forget about the actual writing in this process. Which is surely not a good thing.

Is this a beginner's disease? Or is this the reason why I so often feel that the quality of the content delivered online is low?