Ted the Caver

Happy Halloween!

I was recently directed to Ted the Caver, a re-envisioning of Thomas Lera's "Fear of Darkness" (PDF Link). While I was unimpressed with Fear of Darkness in its entirety (it attempts to tell too much of the story, and resolves around ideas stretched for me too far beyond my willing suspension of disbelief [probably based on the quality of writing] for its conclusion).

Ted the Caver shares some similar short-comings. Purporting to be the annotated caving-journal entries of a hobbiest spelunker, much of the presentation is weak - critical elements to the story are built into the same way one would do when writing prose fiction, not the way personal experiences are typically conveyed. In my own journal writing, and what I've seen in limited reading of those of others, elements from experience deemed important are granted priority and emphasis: brought up early in the entry, with associated events or ideas splayed out conceptually from that one center and expressed in terms of their relationship to it. The chronological prose and persistent use of limited perspective, when such is limitation is purely artificial, comes across as disingenuous and interfered with my ability to fully immerse in the story.

But only with the full immersion: I was still able to get into it, and at times became frustrated at the pace - I was impatient with the process of reading itself as I wanted to move ahead in the story without having to bother with the intervening language, but knowing it would diminish the delivery to skip ahead and stuck with it anyway.

That's partially where I want to give props to how the story is being presented on the web. The forced pacing lends a certain degree of realism, and helps make the characters more believable. The limited coincidence with factual events (which I'm sure acted as the story's genesis) also helps lend a degree of credibility. The choice to omit the (far-fetched) ending leaves an unresolved suspense and contemplation with the reader, a mental itch in need of resolution not forthcoming (very 1950's-horror-flick).

The other part I wanted to commend was that, in editing out fingerprints of the incredible conclusion, the remaining content becomes almost completely plausible. Gravity, geothermal vents, sulfur dioxide or hydrogen sulfide, and post-traumatic-stress disorder (based on the stress and fear during oxygen deprivation and attendant effects of volcanic gas inhalation) are sufficient to explain away the mysterious events. None of this diminishes the humanity of fear in the described reactions, and in fact made me that much more sympathetic.

All in all it's a fun read, and for Halloween is definitely recommended.

In the Can

As of shortly after 7am (MDT), all scenes for Chapter 2 are finally committed to the manuscript.

I tend to work on scenes piecemeal, having broken down the chapter into the events which need to occur to move the story forward, and then refining that into the appropriate narrative context and voicing for the characters and what have you. Usually a small text file for each, edited on the PDA or whatever machine I can get to. Stitching these together and officially adding them to the manuscript document (OpenOffice - don't trust MS Word with something of this magnitude) always leaves me with a little hesitation - once in this form, massive edits become more like reconstructive surgery than sculpting, and is likely to be far messier.

It's done, though, which still sees me making progress of a sort (however slowly). I've allowed a lot of things to interfere with the pace of my writing, and in hindsight I don't know if that's a bad choice.

I'll just keep doing what I can for now, and hopefully the work won't suffer too much as a result.

Cheers!

Life on the Outside

I'm still having the occasional "less than stellar" day, but that has mostly to do with being out of shape and trying to do more than I once could. The results have been positive regardless, especially the lack of cumulative fatigue from exercise; every day the routine is getting a little easier.

Apparently during the years of reduced activity I relied heavily on my lead foot (right) for support, to the point of neglect on the left. As a result, the muscles in the lower left quadrant of the back are less developed than their right-hand counterparts, and while I'm not limping have still altered the pattern of my gait so as to not aggravate the disparity. This has led to some mild atrophy and loss of flexibility, which I'm attempting to address by altering my walk and intentionally shifting more responsibility off to the left. It takes some concentration, is a little weird, but after a full weekend of activity is already showing improvement.

Opportunities to work on the book remain fairly scarce and typically short, but I'm making progress nonetheless. The last main scene of Chapter 2 reached its conclusion last night, and after a couple rounds of editing will be committed to the manuscript. With a small lead-out scene and a short reflective conclusion I'll be into Chapter 3 where the tension just introduced launches the story forward.

One of the ill effects of being able to think clearly more often, however, is that I've become more aware of the significant amount of editing the book will require in order to have consistent voicing and good flow. I'm reworking some of what I've already penned in the interest of ongoing refinement, trying to fix those problems and concretely establish my own style. I won't go overboard though - I'm not trying to make it perfect out of the box, just correct the most glaring defects.

Obviously I've been continuing in my neglect to the blog (for the sake of the book). I do have some thoughts on upcoming posts though, if anyone would like to vote one way or the other:

• Hypnosis and Trauma
• Spending to Save: Investment and Return in IT Labor Economics