Never too late

As I browsed through my pictures for some inspiration, I found something I drew for my good friend for Christmas, which I haven't shown you yet. But I figured it's never to late to do that, right?  ;)
The picture is some fanart of Shikamaru Nara, a character from the series Naruto. I used SAI for this. Any opinions? :D

Writing Exercise 059

It's time for another writing exercise. This week I wrote a double drabble about a feeling that has always been written and sung about, an emotion so profound that people never cease to be intrigued about it. So here are my thoughts:

2017/01/26 – about love (double drabble)

Love is such a mysterious and curious little thing; and yet it is able to fill you to brimming. I won't attempt a definition, nor will I claim I understood it completely.

It comes in so many shapes and forms; some of them tender and gentle, some of them overwhelming and forceful. You love your family, you love your friends, you love your partner, you love your pets and hobbies and maybe your job. We love life and life loves us.

Love is blind, they say. Maybe it is true. You will find yourself being more forgiving, more tolerant, more generous when you love. Love gives you courage to love and be loved in return. Yet incidentally it makes you anxious, as you worry more for those you love. Ultimately love has you put your beloveds' happiness before your own.

Love is self-sufficient. Love is unconditional. Love is pure, yet complicated. Love makes your heart overflow or crushes it completely. It can make you feel pure bliss or have you cry bitterly. It enriches your life. And even if you think you don't know what love feels like, I'm sure you will recognize it once you are struck by it.

The Art of Magnetism

My fiancé received a quite intriguing present: a cube made out of 6 x 6 x 6 tiny magnetic beads. You can rearrange them and build a lot of different shapes, both in 2D and 3D. Once you start you'll find youselves pretty fast pretty occupied with playing around and trying to form new patterns. :o

And while it is quite hard to rebuild the cube, there are geometric patterns that are much easier to form. And from them you can build almost anything.

Have a look at what I did.These are but a few examples, but aren't they some kind of art! And I had a lot of fun building them, too.

Writing Exercise 058

When I wrote this week's drabble I remembered the evening I described in the blogpost from Monday, the 5th of December 2016. But you may have very different memories or impressions. Feel free to share them with me. :)
But first of all, here is the drabble:

2017/01/19 – campfire (Drabble)

A light in the dark, quietly it chirrups and cackles. Flickering and flaring, the flames dance rhythmically. Tiny sparks and flakes of ash billow up into the night sky. As the fire feasts on the logs, it emanates so much soothing heat. Come, warm your freezing hands and huddle closer. Come, lose your thoughts as you watch the fire burn. There is a place for you by the bonfire where people sing and tell stories; you're among friends here – the campfire unites them all. Until the flames are down to smouldering embers and the last whispers bid you good night.

Writing as a group project

As I have told you about the literature project I joined, writing is bound to happen.

Then how do you create texts as a group?

There's the proverb that too many cooks spoil the broth. But it doesn't necessarily have to be like this. You can write as a team if everybody knows their part and acts accordingly.

The easiest way to write together is the RPG approach to split and interact; this means every participating author chooses characters they want to write and writes only these characters. Now they let the characters meet, talk and act. Soon a rough first draft will spring into creation as every author only has to react to what another wrote in the previous paragraph. The text will be pretty dynamic and dialogue-heavy, but this is a nice by-product.

This setting works best for groups of two to four people, so there won't be confusions when one's turn to write is. There will be breaks when only a few characters are present, but this gives the others time to reread what has been done by now.
Generally, four is a good group size. And while text creation happens relatively quickly, editing is also very important. The first draft needs to be polished until it can be published. This process can be split also: this time the authors take turns to comment and edit what they have so far.

Like this writing as a team is not as hard as it might seem. And the result is a consensus with which everyone is satisfied.

Writing Exercise 057

It's time for another writing exercise. This week's double drabble is about probablilities, about life and space. It is meant to make you stop to think for a moment so you might appreciate life on Earth more. Here ist is:

2017/01/13 – coincidence (double drabble)

There are countless stars in the sky, billions and trillions lightyears away. They are coming to life or dying or are somewhere in between. Some shine so much brighter than others; others are just like our sun. Planets might orbit them, large gas globes or tiny snowballs.

What are the odds that there are others like our Earth? Planets that circulate around their star in an inhabitable zone, neither too hot nor too cold? Planets that consist of all the necessary elements needed to create life? Planets that are encased by an atmosphere which enables life and protects it? And if such places exist, what are the odds that life would bloom the way it does on Earth?

Time made monads and protozoons evolve into plants and fish and mammals and insects and amphibians. Extreme climate changes eliminated whole populations and made room for new species.

And from them humankind emerged and spread over the world. There are 193 states in the UN, and 13 more stare-like territories exist. According to statistics there were 7.39 billion people living on Earth last year.

Then what are the odds that you and I exist at the same time – that we meet?

Coincidence.

Now what?

As the new year has started you might either be exhausted from all these holidays or energized with good intentions.

Either way, after completing NaNoWriMo in November your work isn't done yet. You may have a first draft but don't make the mistake to publish it as is. Please, don't! A draft is a draft, and it needs serious polishing to become the shining gem it is supposed to be.

January is the perfect time to do this polishing as it's often ugly outside and you usually feel both drained of creativity and motivated to start the year fresh.
You probably haven't touched your work in about a month. So when you open the document again you likely will be surprised what you have achieved to write in November. You will see your story with a fresh set of eyes.
Now read, and read carefully.
As you go, catch all those typos and puctuation errors, reword where necessary, cut too long paragraphs or add to them where they are lacking. You will see, there is much to do.

Be critical, but don't butcher your story.

Get help when you're stuck or story blind. You will want to introduce your draft to your betas soon. Let their comments help you edit. Don't take their criticism too much to heart, but learn from them, accept and adapt. Remember: they want to help you, not harm you.
And by the end of it you will have an improved new draft.

Writing Exercise 056

The first writing exercise this year is a song, or more precisely a lullaby. It has no melody yet, but it might get one perhaps. I only wrote the bridge and the chorus once after the fist stanza in order not to bore you with a lot of repetition. But a song is a song, so imagine them being sung after every stanza. Enjoy. :)

2017/01/06 – write a song

1.
When my evening falls
And all the lights of day
Are declining to dusky shades,
I remember
All the way that I’ve come,
All the chances that have passed me by,
And all the choices that I’ve made.
And I see what I’ve become by now.

Bridge:

And I kiss them all good night,
I kiss them all good night…

Chorus:

And as the last star
Has fallen that day,
I close my eyes in ease.
May the night lead my dreams,
May darkness accompany my heart
To the promised place.

2.
There’s a mirror in front of me,
The surface of the seas
Is almost as smooth as glass.
As it flows
The waters ease
The long forgotten memories,
Just leave me silently
Within total calm of mind.

3.
A lovely breath of air
Surrounds me tenderly,
Caresses me with love,
Just makes me feel
Like flying.
It sings a sweet lullaby,
As it carries away
All the sad thoughts in my head.

4.
The tiny flame
Inside my heart
Keeps still on burning,
I can see it slightly
Shimmer in the dark.
The flickering heat
Melts away all the pain
I felt for so long.

5.
Under my restless feet
The earth is beating
With a slow pulse.
There’s still plenty of power,
It still gives me strength.
On the solid soil
That will protect my sleep
I lay my head to rest.

Something to read

As promised in another blog post, I'm going to bring you into the loop of what I'm currently up to:
recently I joined a German literature project called Dembelo.


So what is Dembelo?

The concept takes a different view on authors: they are not some genius in their quaint room conjuring up brilliant words, but service providers to their readers.

The idea is to provide episodical stories (text knots) with the length of approximately 20 minutes of reading -- something which shortens the time waiting on the bus or in an anteroom or on a train ride or when nothing is on TV an you don't want to read a whole book. At the end of the text the reader decides how the story should continue; they click on one of eight choices to keep on reading for another 20 minutes, and another, and another... if they so wish.

The readers fund the text knots they want to read via micro purchases and see their wishes come true as soon as the worth of another text knot is reached. Theoretically like this an endlessly deep-rooted tree of stories is created as more and more episodes are created and the possibilities branch further and further; the contents of these episodes are supposed to reflect the readers' demands. So everyone can read what they want to read instead of paging through something that doesn't interest them.

Any excess profit is invested in new jobs to support the author teams working on the stories. We believe in social growth rather than profit. The system also considers that authors are creative, so coworkers are paid according to their efforts instead of fixed working hours.


Isn't this exciting and new? Doesn't that sound like something you might want to see?
If you like the idea you can support us on Patreon so we can make it happen (the page is in German though).