Here are five short, sweet reasons why I make this bold statement and chose a cat to be today's awesome tool:
1. Muses love cats. What did you think your cat was staring at when you saw nothing but thin air?
2. Many famous authors have cats, so you know 1. is true. (see author photos below)
3. You'll look cooler in a bio photo with your cat and people instantly love you for it (well, maybe not dog people).
4. With proper training, your cat will read your WIP, offering valuable feedback before presenting it to your human critique partners.
5. Cats are there for you when you're feeling blue or sick. They soothe your soul and help heal your body, offering inspiration, comfort and companionship.
"I put down my book, The Meaning of Zen, and see the cat smiling into her fur as she delicately combs it with her rough pink tongue. Cat, I would lend you this book to study but it appears you have already read it. She looks up and gives me her full gaze. Don't be ridiculous, she purrs, I wrote it."~ from "Miao" by Dilys Laing
Are you looking for ways to organize your writing projects? Does your creative write right brain strike at all hours of the day and night. Do you have sticky notes, scraps of yellow pads and pages ripped from spirals produced from what I call 'napkin moments'.
Writing is a messy business. Ideas often come when you're not sitting conveniently at your computer. You could be on your way to the dentist when you suddenly discover your Antagonist's mother was a gypsy. Or you're making spaghetti and you realize your Protagonist, unbeknownst to you, has befriended someone most people would consider a scoundrel. You must write these things on the closest piece of paper available or take the risk of having them float forever off into the aethers.
So I was cleaning up all those paper bits of flotsam and jetsam, trying to figure out what to salvage and how in the world I could avoid the time-sucking job of entering them on my computer. TaDa! A brilliant flash of light appeared, proving that my right and left brain occasionally cooperate.
The answer? Clear poly folders. They're wonderfully low tech and the method involves absolutely no organizational skills, other than deciding what color tab to use for which project. I've been using these in my non-writing life, so I don't know why I hadn't thought to use them like this. It was one of those, I hate to say it, 'duh' moments.
Here's what I'm talking about. This particular design has color strips extending on the side with a writing strip for labeling. They're sealed on two sides only, easily accessible and feel nice in a heavy duty, but see-through kind of way.
They're only $5.99 for a 10 pack from Staples. I think Office Depot carries them too, but they like to hide them at the stores so I'm ordering the next batch online.
How about you? Do you have 'napkin moments' and a lot of messy scraps of paper that are just too good to throw away? What do you do with them?
After careful consideration and a short consultation with my advisory board, I've decided to alter the title of my book. Nothing too drastic, but I thought I would make it official here and use this chance to share a useful Google tool.
Advisory board
For the last year, the title of my book has been Guardian Cats and the Lost Books of Iskandriyah. The story is based on a mystical book saved from the burning of Alexandria's legendary library.
'Iskandriyah' is Arabic for Alexandria and I had originally decided to use that version, because I liked the exotic-ness of the word and it fit well with the fantasy genre. But for a long time, something has bothered me about it, so I stopped to analyze it.
First of all, although I love the word 'Iskandriyah', it's really hard to spell. More importantly, Alexandria is a real city and the Library is a real place. The burning of the library was a famous historic event, so although my book is fantasy, it has a reality base.
There's also city in Iraq named Iskandariyah and I thought that would add to the confusion.
This next part has to do with very practical considerations, that of searchability. There is a cool Google Insights Tool that lets you enter keywords and compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. You can tweak this or use the simple results for a quick check. Here's what I found for my search terms:
'Alexandria' yielded 87 out of a possible 100.
'Library of Alexandria' yielded 51 out of a possible 100.
'Iskandariyah' yielded 20, but they all had to do with Iraq
'Iskandriyah' yielded 0
If I was still had any attachment to the exotic name, this pretty much decided it for me. Besides, if I could never quite get the spelling of Iskandria Iskandriyah down, I certainly didn't want to burden my readers with such a cumbersome name.
Writers have good imaginations, but sometimes we need help visualizing details if we've never been there or done that. Here's a few tips which can help you take it up a notch as a writer creating fictionalized reality.
Give your stories interesting settings. Think outside the box. Take your readers places they'd probably never get a chance to see. Imagine for a moment that your Protagonist and Antagonist meet unexpectedly at the World Egg Throwing Contest. Who knows where that could lead? Need a whole slew of odd events? Try odditycentral.com
Is your antagonist a car thief? You don't have to go out and steal a car anymore to make it real. Most of you know you can learn how to steal one on YouTube, but maybe not like this.
A great boost for describing places you haven't been to can be found on Virtual Tourist. Photos and user reviews give you first person descriptions of their experience. No one will know you haven't been there.
My favorite site for settings is Panoramic Earth which is an amazing tool that gives you 360 degree up-close views of thousands of places, including people who happen to be present at the time. I have a character who works at the British Museum and I was able to get a real sense of his daily environment by using this tool. It is highly searchable and maneuverable, as opposed to Google streets views can be good, but often seem to have a mind of their own.
How do you visualize your characters? There are lots of lists that help you create their personality, but can you see them? Here's a site that lets you choose facial profiles in a drawing format. Nicer than it sounds, http://www.pimptheface.com/create/ you don't end up with a Zwinky cartoon. There's another site which allows you to make alterations to facial photos called Face of the Future.
Have you thought about what your Protagonist wears? Is there one item you can dress them in that helps create an instant impression in your readers mind? Something distinctive that identifies him. Most of my characters wear cat fur, but one of my human characters is a natty dresser, who spends his entire paycheck just to make a good impression. He always wears a full length Harris Tweed coat, but I actually like this sporty one better.
Don't forget the audio aspect of your story? Give your writing an extra boost by including more auditory senses. Is it the 4th of July and you need to describe fireworks? Need a barn owl sound? Got a scene that could use a little extra drama with some thunder and lightning? Listen to these and more at: FindSounds.com
But my favorite place for great images is Flickr. Your search on Flickr will yield high quality photos that beat a Google image search all to pieces. I always link back to the image if I use it in my blog or FB page. But another way to use it is by creating a collection of pictures that evoke the people, places and moods in your book. For an example, here's my Flickr folder I created for Guardian Cats.
If you love browsing through used book stores, you're gonna love the Internet Archives. My previous visits to IA online were interesting but not very productive as I'm too google and wiki-spoiled for their 30 second search results.
But I've recently rediscovered the Archives as a result of a trip to San Francisco. A friend asked if, while I was in the city, I could 'pop in' and request a hard copy of some texts they had online. With the aid of a GPS and two iPhone aps we found the Greek-columned building with its copper stamped doors which made, I thought, a lovely backdrop for a photo op with my daughter and grandkids.
Inside was a soft-spoken young man, just the sort you'd expect to find in a library. He wasn't able to fulfill our friend's request but told us we could get everything they had ...well, online. Of course we knew that, but there were rumors they had one of those Espresso instant book machines and I wanted to see one in action. Not all was lost though. It was kind of a kick to see the actual physical location of this gigantic digital library that scans over 1,000 books a day. And it inspired me to delve further into the Archives when I got home.
So here's my report. The Internet Archives, which provides free access to books and information that might otherwise be lost, has almost 300,000 video and moving images, 579,000 audio recordings and over 2 million books. They've even archived 80,000 live concerts. No wonder I had little luck trying for quick searches before.
Their home page has a Curator's choice in each category, in addition to its famous web page archive known as the Wayback Machine, currently sporting 150 billion pages. The non-profit IA is very much into preserving as much information as possible to prevent its loss or destruction, even referencing the Library of Alexandria, a place that's near and dear my heart, since it is the jumping off point in my upcoming book, Guardian Cats.
I've spent a good deal of time rummaging through the Archives now and have made some pretty interesting discoveries. If you're an Abe Lincoln fan, there's an autographed copy (1917) of "Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln""including many heretofore unpublished incidents and historical facts concerning his ancestry, boyhood, family, religion, public life, trials and triumphs; illustrated with many reproductions from original paintings, photographs, etc."
But don't think the Archives are just about obscure old books though. Take a look at this offbeat but intriguing machinima animation, a strange love story called Cuckoo Clock, the first in the Cirque du Machinima series.
Maybe you're searching for actual radio signals from celestials objects? You can find them in the Star Journal, which features ambient music composed around a series of field recordings made from a radio telescope. The Archives has lots of ambient music, but if you want to experience a live Grateful Dead concert instead, there's no shortage of those either.
I've barely scratched the surface of this vast digital library but it's making me rethink any biases I may have had. Although I'm adamantly opposed to transforming our public and college libraries into 'bookless' libraries, these digital archives with their high quality scans are an invaluable resource towards preserving many books which would be otherwise lost. Anyone can upload texts, audio and video images to the library, if they have the rights to share.
Before you take your own journey through the Archives, here's some suggestions to make your online 'field trip' more enjoyable:
First, get a cup of coffee and be prepared to stay awhile so you can enjoy all the cool things you will discover.
Create a user name and password so you can bookmark your findings. You'll lose stuff, the same as if you set a book down and went wandering down another row of stacks. It labyrinthian.
If you see something interesting in the Curator's Choices, you'd better click it right away because the links change each time the page is refreshed. I learned that the hard way.
Everything is viewable and downloadable in a variety of formats including Kindle and something called Daisy, which is an audio book format for people with print disabilities," including blindness, impaired vision, dyslexia or other issues.
Do try reading the 'online' book formats with their clean, clear images and clickable pages that include every page, even the old book covers and bookplates.
Be aware of the large variety of searching and sorting options to help you find what you're looking for.
Some more of my discoveries I wanted to share:
From the audio files: crime classics, horror and Old Time Radio
From the video files: Here's one of those 'fun' education films some of us will remember from the 50's. This one's from 1949 called Dating Do's and Don'ts
Something from the Children's Library: A Subject Tag Cloud which is a pretty cool way to search.
From the text files: an example of the quality of a beautifully scanned book with rich color and superb illustrations from the Victorian era, Abroad (1882) is about 2 children on a voyage from England to France and Europe.
And last but not least, I couldn't resist including this little gem called 'The Private Lives of Cats'. The Guardian Cats rated it five star.
