check

anyone
stuck at home
faced with

stillness
silence
boredom

uninspired
waiting for government
stimulus

generate it
yourself

systems and service

I live inside a certain closed system wherein one is not trusted, one is held accountable to high standards which are enforced relentlessly by teams chosen based on work ethic and other high quality merit marks, to oversee the delivery of services to the general public. Sometimes I question my decision to live there for it is not always a friendly place. What I love is how I am challenged and pushed to my limits, and not one day ever looks like the next. It is an exciting and dynamic environment, and because I have earned rank and respect over time, I do have freedoms and work is creative. I care for my team and am aligned with the mission.

type.writer -xv

one morning you sit down
to your work with your coffee
beside you and

the tides have been broken 
they have turned on the ocean!
this is what you came for
so suddenly
emergent

disciple to words
the reading
the writing

the sea and the healing
fresh atmosphere replaces
the ceiling! an absence of the world
you recollect so unfeeling

your voice is upon you
you've found yourself! finally
the struggle is gone
you no longer push into page

strangely awakened
enveloped by an undercurrent
you sing the song you were born to sing
you come thrashing to surface!

like faith
you cannot see it
you only feel it
you know

these are the moments a writer lives by!
when time loses interest
appetite gone silent
and the sentences form on their own

full of spirit!
making meaning
full of feeling!
with rhythm and rolling

you collide with the page
like a strike
when you're bowling

thank the stars
thank the gods
you got lucky
kid

digital ink child

maybe the sweetest moment of writing a book
 comes when      the intangibles
                            the tangibles

coalesce into a unified

tale
whole fiction
       re.creation
    en.vision


abstracted (out) then dropped back (in) to the world

the conveyance
your child of
digital ink

 surrounds

like an atmosphere
like an aura
like a concert
like a principle
like a faith

maybe even warms a heart
or two

finally makes sense
and not only
to you

creative confidence

can be elusive. good thing is you (the artist) will know when you have it. all the rules they ever taught you, muted. taking risks does not feel so scary. nobody knows what you are doing more than you.    the work is mutable not sacred. you can see the whole thing moving through the smallest fragment. it is alive and tugs at all your pulses.

the art of the state of the art

You want to slow down the ball so your eyes can ride the seams in and out of the station, otherwise life goes by so fast you die as soon as you're born. There's no contact. I learned it from the black cat. Which only means you have to wait for the next pitch; good adwords catch phrases. Then accept it like a child. Or a sentence. Already there are so many possible contexts to the story, you're not sure which way to go and getting anxious. You might be locked up again. Walk your worries home to the heart of it, and we can hang up our coats and our hats and the art of the state of the art, sit down together and listen to it. I mean talk. In about five seconds time, everything... now pass the first tension and back to what we live for.

The magnus.

The opus.

the scrivener corkboard (writing tools)

I have the outline to my book now available to me at the touch of a key, on Scrivener's corkboard feature. The screen background looks like a corkboard, and there are index cards created for each chapter, which have the chapter heading and space for you to write summaries or whatever you feel you need for a quick visual outline of the larger narrative. I only seem to require the corkboard when my story expands. In this case, I'm playing with about 100,000 words, or about 50 chapters averaging 2,000 words. When I'm working out of the body of the narrative, on Scrivener, I have the chapters descending down a left column, and clicking on any chapter will take me directly to it. When the cursor is brought to the super heading 'Book#3' under which lies the cabinet of sub-chapters, the entire narrative will appear and you can scroll through it as a streaming passage. Often I find myself cutting and pasting and creating new chapters and recreating old chapters. And all you do is drag and drop a chapter in the cabinet to place it in a completely different location in the narrative, so I love the facility the ease of relocation, it almost inspires creativity or open-endedness in the editing process. Yesterday I filled in the corkboard summaries that were missing (new and recreated chapters), and found myself adding notes to the simple plot outlines, including notes about the feel of the narrative from one chapter to the next (ie humor, dark, heavy on action, descriptive, light-hearted) so that I can keep tabs on ups and downs and graduate the voice of the story into a consistent diversity of mood or feelingstates. I also embellished the summaries with  theme-related developments and character quirks or relationships I am hoping to keep tabs on. I hope this helps give you an idea of what Scrivener offers you to enhance the writing and editing process. Thanks.

Q&A -- Writing Process

Q  Can you describe your writing process?

A  Coffee. I like to get closer to a place where my mind is free-associating. Sometimes just after waking up. I usually write without much of an outline, but ideas which have some sorta emotional connect. My work is character-driven, meaning whatever happens is colored by the POV (point of view: thoughts, feelings, biases, dreams, wishes, desires, interest, sensations, internal experience, intuition) of the main character(s) in relation to their world. I use visual mapping applications and sometimes Scrivener to help see the various parts of the whole. I usually do a little freewriting before I know where I wanna locate myself in the narrative for the day. By freewriting, my heart is given a chance to tell me where in the story I can make the most impact. Because I come into the experience of writing with whatever thoughts and feelings the day has inspired, I hope to use the immediacy of my own life to come to bear on my story. Of course, the process does not always play out this way! That is a best case scenario. I try and stay as flexible as possible with scenes from a first draft, often cutting and pasting chapters relentlessly in my edits until the puzzle comes together the way that feels right. This keeps the editing process fun and sometimes, magical!    - KatYa