Random thoughts

[BronzeOracle]

I'm still discovering aspects of my synesthesia that leave me baffled. The other day, I was talking to someone in my math class. We were discussing multiplication, and the tricks for remembering different numbers' tables. I was complaining about seven, and I said something like, "Seven doesn't have a logical pattern, the little b******. He's so unpredictable."

It just sort of...slipped out of my mouth. The other person sort of stared at me, and asked, "Why did you call seven 'he'?"

Up until that point, I had no idea that I had assigned genders, personalities, and associations to numbers. Once that comment called attention to it, I started noticing myself doing it all the time. I also, for the first time, drew out my number form, and realized how insane my idea of numbers is. :O And for years I thought this was how everyone saw the world. This...this is almost mind-blowing, guys.

P.S. Here's a number form, for anyone who doesn't know what it is:

That is amazing Tom, its a window on how differently people can see things. Its great you can put it down on paper to understand it - has it shaped your creative expression? Different perspectives, when expressed respectfully and artfully, can bring incredible richness to society.

 

[Tom]

It definitely has. I've painted a few pictures over the years of the "soundscapes" of different songs. I'm also more likely to use personification, anthropomorphism, and symbols in my writing, just because I do those things in real life to numbers, letters, and other things. I also have a magic system lurking in my notes somewhere that's based on synesthesia. I haven't figured it out yet, but I really want to put it in a story someday.

I love seeing people's unique perspectives. It's just really something to step back, and see all the different views of the world fall into place and become a beautiful mosaic.

 

[Tom]

In other news:

I hit a raccoon tonight while driving home from fencing. Poor little thing...I'm usually not a crier, but I sort of have a soft heart when it comes to animals. All I could hope for was that it wasn't in pain before it passed.

It made me think of that Calvin & Hobbes storyline where the two of them find an injured baby raccoon and take it home.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

Had a dream I went to work, some weird electrical storm thing happened and I was jettisoned into a post apocalyptic future where my parents were separated but living down the road from each other, my mom was in hospice care too, I had to track down my wife and kids, and I somehow had to save the world from the "green eyed man" (his eyes were a pure metallic green). To make sense of this I had to find some physicists (who were hiding from view because physics was outlawed, not the laws jus the study) to explain how I got there and how to get home, which coincided with me fighting the green eyed man. Then my baby woke up during the middle of a jackbooted raid on the apartment the physicists were staying in.

This is the weirdest dream I think I have ever had.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

For all you first-person present tense narrators out there, I just discovered something today. Divergent is narrated in first-person present.

I also noticed the author with a movie deal is guilty of a major FPOV faux pas: the very first scene in the book has the character sitting in front of a mirror.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

Just saw an ad for the dating site cougar life. And the older woman, cougar if you will, is mocking the younger women for being immature, catty, and dumb. But she comes off as the same. It seems counter productive to me. Unless they're going for irony, in the which case it was poorly done.

Here it is if you have a need to watch it. CougarLife.com - Bar Commercial - YouTube

 

[Tom]

For all you first-person present tense narrators out there, I just discovered something today. Divergent is narrated in first-person present.

I also noticed the author with a movie deal is guilty of a major FPOV faux pas: the very first scene in the book has the character sitting in front of a mirror.

XD That's why I never got into those books. Because of the dystopian setting and the first-person present-tense POV, I've always thought of them as the off-brand version of the Hunger Games--cheap, derivative, and ultimately not as good as the name brand.

 

[Reaver]

For all you first-person present tense narrators out there, I just discovered something today. Divergent is narrated in first-person present.

I once collaborated with another author on a story about time traveling brothers. I had to write in second person p.o.v. as one of the brothers who left a sort of diary about future events to himself.

It was incredibly fun to do but it was tough.

 

[Tom]

After going to three weddings this spring (all my cousins seem to be getting married at once!) my mother told me, "I always get so choked up at weddings."

And I replied, "So does Joffrey Baratheon."

She didn't get it. Nevertheless, I felt very proud of myself.

 

[StoryTypewriter]

I'm still discovering aspects of my synesthesia that leave me baffled. The other day, I was talking to someone in my math class. We were discussing multiplication, and the tricks for remembering different numbers' tables. I was complaining about seven, and I said something like, "Seven doesn't have a logical pattern, the little b******. He's so unpredictable."

It just sort of...slipped out of my mouth. The other person sort of stared at me, and asked, "Why did you call seven 'he'?"

Up until that point, I had no idea that I had assigned genders, personalities, and associations to numbers. Once that comment called attention to it, I started noticing myself doing it all the time. I also, for the first time, drew out my number form, and realized how insane my idea of numbers is. :O And for years I thought this was how everyone saw the world. This...this is almost mind-blowing, guys.

P.S. Here's a number form, for anyone who doesn't know what it is:

I so know what you mean! Seven is also a 'he' in my mind. I am bilingual Spanish - Catalan and we give gender to all words... including objects, foods... you name it. It wasn't until I moved to an English-speaking country and became fluent that I realised that it's not the case in English. For what I understand, it happens in Latin-based languages (not sure about the others). My partner (an Aussie) doesn't speak either one and cracks ups everytime I explain that fork (tenedor) is masculine in Spanish while is femenine in Catalan (forquilla). I know, it's a mess... Thanks for sharing!

 

[SeverinR]

After going to three weddings this spring (all my cousins seem to be getting married at once!) my mother told me, "I always get so choked up at weddings."

And I replied, "So does Joffrey Baratheon."

She didn't get it. Nevertheless, I felt very proud of myself.

But Rob and his wife got the point at his wedding, and it was cutting edge.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

Tomorrow I am taking G-money, my 8 month old, on a 5 hour flight. May heaven bless and keep this kid asleep and barring that may the people on the flight understand our terrible plight.

 

[ThinkerX]

Turning into a sucky week.

This morning I realized the resolution to the climactic scene in my WIP was a sort of blurred carbon copy of the resolution in the previous novella. Drat and double drat. Worked out a fix, though not a great one.

Then I heard my cousin in San Francisco died over the weekend, apparently in his sleep.

Added to the make-work paperwork at work...not a looking like a great week.

 

[Reaver]

My condolences ThinkerX.

 

[StoryTypewriter]

Sorry for your loss Thinker X

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Turning into a sucky week.
Then I heard my cousin in San Francisco died over the weekend, apparently in his sleep.

I'm sorry to hear of your loss, Thinker.

 

[ThinkerX]

Thank you for the condolences.

I had not seen my cousin in years, though we spoke occasionally, and he was about the closest I had to a Beta Reader. Back in the day - early 80's - we collaborated on a project or three, one kind of fun, another a long SF work that went nowhere. He spent the past couple of years working erratically on a novel featuring angels (interesting choice, as he was an atheist.)

He was an early computer guru in the late 80's, and wrote half of one of the original books on email. Later he was a programmer and IT guy for a number of corporations. When the tech bubble broke back in 2000, his whole world broke along with it - he'd just spent a very long time crafting a complex program of great use, and then had to watch it be destroyed. This turned his controllable bi-polar disorder into borderline paranoid schizophrenia, resulting in suicide attempts and long periods of institutionalization, along with lots of very powerful meds. The last few years he stabilized, sort of, spending 95% of his time in an apartment about the size of an average bathroom, emerging only for food or doctors visits. I tried various things from a distance to at least keep him mentally active, with occasional small successes...but last time I saw him in person, the writing was on the wall, so to speak.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

I'm in a memorial park in the South that has several monuments to the U.S. Civil War. It's interesting how the South depicts the War versus the North. The former calls Lincoln's actions an invasion and the latter calls it a quelling of rebellion. This is just one difference. There are so many smaller differences as well. Its so interesting I think I could write a story about two people on two sides of a civil war and how they view each other and themselves. Eventually concluding with them meeting at a battlefield as old men to end the book.

 

[Tom]

You know you're an artist when you catch yourself googling things like "David Tennant's hands" for references.

 

[SeverinR]

https://twitter.com/omgthatspunny/status/574688602233376768

for anyone interested in proper grammar.