Software I've Been Trying

First, I'm not a computer geek. I'm an online geek. There's a big difference. Computer geeks are heroes, for one, because they can bring back my computer from the dead. They can read and write in obscure languages like ASCii and Java. If I asked, one could probably figure out why my HTML code for my labels is not working here.

Online geeks are people who can use the computer, but can't talk to it or fix it or even know the difference between a motherboard and a wake board. We're like race car drivers who can't change their own oil.

Half my friends are fully "online" friends, and I even met my husband online. I get all my entertainment on-screen; I don't even own a TV. News: internet. Phone: internet. Shopping: internet.

But even so, I don't know much about software. And of course, the challenge I've set myself for this PhD is going to involve a lot of software. I can't create a digital novel unless I can create digital art, edit film and audio, animate text, and throw it into some order and format that other people can access.

So I've started my journey into software exploration (note: I'm running everything on Mac Leopard). So far, I haven't hit much that involves art, photography, or film. In this first 4 months of my degree I've been focused on research and getting back into the academic life, so this initial software briefing is primarily focused on tools for research and writing.

1. Zotero. This is a Firefox add-on that saves references. I can add notes, group references in folders or with tags, create separate libraries for each project, look up books. With just one click I can store a reference directly from a website, rather than typing all the info up in a database or list. More, it will export to Endnote, so that once I've collected my references, I can use all of Endnote's functions to create reference lists for my papers automatically. I love this little piece of freeware.

2. Scrivener (only available for Mac). I'm still in my trial period for this software, but I already plan to purchase it. I love the organizational capacity - I can write sections or chapters and store them separately, yet together. It's like each one has its own room in a very large house, rather than each having its own separate dwelling (as when you save them all as separate files), or everyone crammed together in one tiny shack (as when they're all in one file). It has a cool corkboard outlining function for notes, like electronic index cards. I'm sure there are a lot of other functions I haven't discovered yet, but so far this is working fabulously for my organization and logical progression. Once I get to the novel, with it's separate but interwoven storylines, this will be a lifesaver.

3. Notebook (only available for Mac). Adore. This is an electronic notebook that allows you to add, delete, and rearrange pages. It has an automatic TOC and several indexing functions. You can add files directly into the notebook pages. You can publish the notebook online for sharing. It's proven intensely valuable to organizing my notes for the PhD, as well as novel outlining and notes, and my teaching notes. It has a few bugs, but it's a worthwhile little program that I couldn't live without.

4. C-maps. This is freeware, a mind-mapping program. I've used it for outlining, for putting together a presentation (it has a slideshow function). You can add links and notes, pop-up messages, expandable and collapsible nodes. It's great for brainstorming and keeping the flow of ideas in a logical order. I think it's going to be a great tool when I turn to my digital novel and have several storylines that link - or network - in various ways, so that I can see how things are connecting. I haven't quite figured out all the functions for creating presentations, but I'm sure I'll work it out eventually.

5. Open Office. I own MS Office, but I won't even load it on my computer anymore. OO has everything I need, and doesn't try to trip me up with exclusionary file formats and BS. Free helps (hey, dirt-poor student over here).

Over the next few months, I'm going to be exploring a number of new programs: digital photography processing, graphic programs, film editing, audio editing, digital storytelling platforms, and web building programs. It sounds really daunting to me at the moment. If anyone has any recommendations to throw my way (or would like me to beta test new programs), please throw a link at me!

I'm in school again. I'm a student. It's so cool, and yet so weird at the same time.

I haven't really been a student in a long time. My Master's was an experience in "this is how it's done and I have little statuettes from academies, so everything I say is gold!" No debate, no real thought.

But here, it's a good thing if you stand up and shout about what you think of something. It's a good thing if you tell the head of the department he's full of crap (as long as you can back it up, of course).

I was in a class a couple of weeks ago, and we reviewed a rather crap journal article, IMO. Some felt it had merit merely because it was interesting, and we went back and forth, back and forth over what has value in our field, what other schools perceive about our research, etc. We all shouted over one another and made points and trotted out examples. I had an amazing time.

In the induction week for postgrads, they kept telling us what a lonely experience PG life would be. How we would be depressed and isolated. I don't feel that way at all. I'm making friends, making contacts, making allies (and okay, making nemeses). I feel like I'm back in the world again.

As far as my own work, I'm 80% done with my first paper. I'm sure once I review it, I'll feel it's disorganized and crap, and needs a lot of work, but at the moment I'm pretty happy with it. I feel as though I've thought a lot on the topic and done some good research, and drawn some connections that I haven't seen elsewhere.

In fact, I haven't seen much of what I'm doing elsewhere: people examining the transition from a print literature to a digital literature. Digital literature is totally fringe at the moment, either to specialized for the masses (like some of the hypertext novels), or too dumbed-down to be considered literature (make a story from your digital pics!). People throw digital fiction out there like it's going to explode all by itself, but it won't. Not for a while anyway.

So I'm hoping the things I'm doing will be important, not only to academia, but to the creative writing industry as well. I hope I can make that apparent to the funding bodies I'm applying to - research councils as well as industry.

My goal for the next month is to set myself out a plan - a plan for the course of my PhD, a plan for obtaining funding, and a detailed overview of my research, as I see it at this stage. I want to apply for a couple of opportunities (the Knowledge Economies Strategy Scholarship, and the Pitch to Win Comp, among other things.

When I get it put together, I'll post it here so that I have tangible evidence, not just some note tucked away in a file.

I'm getting into this, all of this. The study, the classes, the papers, the discussion groups. I like it, dammit. Maybe I won't be a hermit after all.

On Being a Postgrad

I finally got sick of it last week. Not being a postgrad myself, but hearing so many others whine about their experience while simultaneously not doing a darn thing about it.

Note to PGs: no one in this department is psychic. Everyone in this department cares. Talk to them!

NIECI is a brand-new department, barely out of diapers, really. Last year, they had a handful of PGs. This year they have over 40. That's a big adjustment, particularly when the department doesn't have dedicated administrators. Our head and director of PGs are both busy with their own research, in addition to running the department and helping all of us out with our studies. They've got a lot on their plates.

I just kept hearing MA student after MA student (most in creative writing) complain about lack of direction, that they don't know what they're supposed to be doing, no one is teaching them, and they're wasting their money. Meanwhile, none is asking the department for help, or even attending the events the department does host for the benefit of the students.

Part of the issue is that they all have the same supervisor, who also happens to be head of the school, head of the research council, writing books, teaching courses, and doing way more than any one person can fit into a day. Oh, and he's personal tutor for everyone in the department. There's no way he can meet regularly with everyone, or do everything people are asking him to do.

So we're all going to have to step up and be self-managed units. If we want something, we need to ask - ask for solutions, not just whine about what we're not getting.

Yes, a new department has holes, stumbling blocks. It's going to be disorganized as we grow and feel our way. But the beauty of this is that we students have the opportunity to form the direction of the school. We can tell them what we want, and they'll do their best to meet our needs. We can make things different for later years in the program. We can be pioneers, as it were.

I encourage all who have issues with the services they're receiving to sit down and list all that you feel you're missing. Then list out all the things the department can do to help you fill those gaps. Don't just complain and make them think of everything for you - ask for what you want, and you may just get it.

I let the department know about what I'm hearing. Why? Because they ask. They want to know what's going on, how they can make things better. Hopefully, things will start to shape up in the next couple of months, and people can get on with their research, instead of screeching over how abandoned they supposedly are.

Over the next few weeks the department is hosting several discussions for the students to air their concerns, and for the PhD students to offer what little wisdom we have to the disgruntled MA students. I think we'll get some good solutions for future actions and feedback loops from those, and we can move forward.

The Allure of Research

I haven't posted in a while. One, because the job that is paying for my PhD suddenly jumped the bounds of its original job description, and I lost my marbles. Two, because life itself jumped the tracks there for a little while as we lost our car to the bureaucracy of road safety, and all other activities came to a screeching halt as we tried to replace it (tried to go without - not feasible in our situation. Sorry, Earth).

Anyway, I am now a week behind my self-set schedule for writing a paper that I need to submit by the end of the year. I have spent my weekend furiously flipping through pages and web journals (BTW, if anyone from the BU library is reading this, your journal selection BLOWS), then tap-tap-tapping the info into some semblance of cohesion for the paper.

I find myself drawn to the topics in the books I've checked out, repeatedly distracted by their applicability not to this particular paper, but to my PhD as a whole. Ideas about what draws an audience to a multimedia project, what form collaboration takes, structures that work in hypertext environments, how to transition from print to digital. I have to constantly police my own excitement, restricting it to the subject of the paper: online communities formed in the interaction between author and readers of print novels. They're finite, it's sure, but I think they're a significant step in the evolution toward a mainstream digital literature genre.

It's been a really long time since I wrote anything of an academic nature. The writing itself I don't find difficult. Rather, I'm worried that it's too simplistic, that I'm covering ideas everyone knows like the back of their hands, that they'll be rolling their eyes at such a sophomore effort. Yes, I am aware that my writing will improve, and I will eventually get a better feel for the literature of my area, what level to cover subjects at, what is common knowledge, etc. But as I noticed at the Creating Second Lives Conference, the field is still quite new and I'm not sure there really is a common ground. I guess I'll see.

At any rate, I'm enjoying it all greatly. I love the atmosphere, that ideas are important, that a discourse is being created. I don't feel like I've had that in a really, really long time. I feel like my brain, on some level, was in sleep mode for a very long while. My MPW course at USC didn't ever really make me think about anything; nothing was ever up for debate. We weren't encouraged to contribute to the field - only to write well, get published, and credit the program as much as possible.

But here, I already feel like I'm contributing to some new area of understanding. That what I think about it is helping to shape this new field. My ideas will be challenged, and I'm sure that will deal quite a blow to my intellectual ego the first few times it happens, but hopefully I'll adjust and be able to hold my own.

I like this academia gig.

I Want To Be Neil Gaiman When I Grow Up

I played hooky last night. I played fangirl. I giggled madly throughout the evening, like I imagine my mom might have about Paul McCartney, back in the day.

I've lived in LA, worked in movie studios, met big stars. None of them made me giddy the way meeting Neil Gaiman did.

Neil Gaiman!

His book American Gods inspired my current work-in-progress, and his cross-media talents have fed into my desire to create a multi-media visual novel for my PhD. What I would be working on now, what I would be writing without Neil's influence is an existential mystery beyond my puny powers of imagination.

It was an experience all about the fans - some had expressed dismay that a favorite music act (Paul & Storm and Jonathan Coulton) were playing Manchester the same night. So Neil calls the musicians up, and has them play "the world's shortest set" to open up the reading. They set the tone for Neil's reading from The Graveyard Book nicely with songs about how hard it is for mad scientists to find true love.

Neil's reading was, of course, phenomenal. I usually buy the audiobook versions of all his books because they really take on an entirely new level of life when he reads them. It wasn't until I saw the video of his US Graveyard tour, each chapter's reading caught on tape, that I realized how much seeing Neil read adds to the experience. Even his small facial expressions help you see each character, to imagine this small boy named "Nobody" gagging over beetroot soup.

I was also struck by how eloquent and masterful his oration is on the fly. Me, when I have to think on my feet and actually speak, it comes out as so much stammering and verbal diarrhea. Neil thoughtfully and thoroughly answered each question, usually adding some anecdote or story that let us see into a bit of his life. Stories about how his children influenced his writing, about his son riding his tricycle in the nearby graveyard, his daughter asking him what happens next in the Graveyard story, propelling him to finish. About meeting Steve Ditko, how he was as awed by the "creator" of Spiderman as we were by him. Even about the love of sweaty, unkempt comic book storekeepers for his "sexually transmitted" Sandman series ("You brought women into my store, man!").

I love how he answered every question as though it were of the highest importance - a direct contrast to another recent experience I had at another big-name author's reading, where the guy's best answer was "Hmm, that's interesting. I'll think on that for my next talk."

There were definitely more questions than there was time for, and I found myself rooting for a nice girl with lime green hair. She raised her hand patiently every time, but never got to the front of the queue. I hope she emails him her question. :)

The book-signing line was miles long; we were about halfway back, and it took us an hour to get to the front. The wait wasn't bad, actually. We met some nice folks in line, and got to read the books we were having signed ("My other books are so on the back burner now," said my friend M as she gobbled up Chapter 1 of Graveyard). We could see how tired he was, but he always signs for everyone who waits, and that says a lot for a man who is living for the moment off room service.

I had wanted to ask a question during the Q&A session, but found myself a bit too nervous, so thought I'd save it for a later email. Honestly, I wanted to kidnap him away somewhere and talk to him for hours, like he was my BFF or something. I wanted to tell him how thoroughly I connected to American Gods, how fascinated by Neverwhere. I wanted to tell him all about my PhD, see what he thought, tell him how it was all thanks to his imagination.

But I just got to the front of the line, set my books down (one old copy of American Gods and one new of The Graveyard Book), and let him get on with the business of signing. He signed Graveyard, drawing a little tombstone with my name on it.

Then his helper picked up my copy of American Gods and waved it at me, a worried expression on her face.

"Is this yours? This really is too much for him to write."

"Whah?" I said. My name's only four letters!

Then I looked. Just inside the front cover was a mini-stack of post-it notes, the same exact ones they were using to write everyone's name for Neil, filled with scribblings.

"Oh, no!" I said in a rush. "That's just PhD notes. Just my name is fine."

Neil grabbed the book, already signing. "What's your PhD?" he asked.

Brain blank. It wasn't quite BFF time, but he'd asked about my brain child!

"Creative writing," I said. "I'm writing a multimedia visual novel, based on Welsh mythology."

"Cool."

As we walked out of the hall, heading for the long car ride home, I opened the book to see what the "PhD notes" were. First, they weren't even mine, though I am using the book as a reference for my studies - I'd bought the book from BetterWorldBooks.com, and had never noticed the post-its in the front. The book's previous owner had clearly began a little short story on these slips, detailing how her parents were zombies, but that was all right because her dad died of a heart attack while having sex.

How much more strangely perfect a cap on a Neil Gaiman evening could there be?

Okay, he didn't exactly stand up and shake my hand and tell me how much I'm contributing to the field, but it was enough for me. I giggled at random intervals all the way home. Even through the freak North Wales snowstorm that whited out the roads and threatened to leave us stranded at some Shell station near Prestatyn. Brr.

In the end, it cemented for me why Neil Gaiman is my favorite author - he's all the things a writer really should be. Plus, he's hella cool.

Neil, thank you for all you do for the fans, and to inspire other artists (not just writers!). You're my favorite weird guy ever.

Ironing Out My PhD Pitch

What exactly am I trying to do? On a basic level, I can call it a digital story, or digital novel. I will have "digital" elements such as photographs, audio, possibly film. But when I google "digital storytelling," what I come up with are all these classroom tools and teacher articles for getting students involved in digital arts. These stories aren't much more than a picture slideshow with captions and music. Not exactly what I'm going for.

So...Interactive narrative? These stories primarily seek to engage the reader on an intellectual level. Games, for instance, are often interactive narrative: they have a storyline, and the "audience" interacts with the text by playing the game. Again, not the focus I'm looking for: I want some interactive elements, yes, but to me the story and its emotional engagement are more important to me than any "quest" or puzzle.

Multimedia novel works, too, but carries the same incompleteness factor as "digital novel" - you don't get a sense of the interactivity I'd like to include.

There will be some hypertext as well - links to follow, paths to choose. It could ostensibly be a "hypernovel" in the sense that it is simply more than a novel. But the issue gets confused when we consider what "hyper" has come to mean in modern lexicon, its relation to the web, as well as its definition within the new media research community. The word "hypernovel" suits, but only in its most literal sense; the many meanings various individuals will assign to the word make it a poor choice.

I want to post it on the web - does that make it a web novel? What then happens with my print novel? They will be related.

Which leads me to:

Multimedia interactive hypernovel.

That's just plain ugly. And scary. Who would want to read/watch/play with something they can't even get their mouth around? Those who shy from technology won't even touch it; those who love technology won't be able to figure it out.

I haven't found a suitable example yet of what I want to do. Inanimate Alice comes pretty close, and I see they faced the same issue: nowhere on the site do the creators name the type of story. The reviews they have quoted call it an interactive narrative, digital storytelling, e-book, flash fiction (which could be confusing - it uses flash media, and I suppose the word count is below 1000 words, which lets it fall into the definition of flash as a short short story), multimedia, flash-based kinetic novel (I like the "kinetic" bit), story/flash vid, animation, hypertext story, digital drama, web-based interactive games/art.

You see the problem. What the hell do we call these things?

I would start with Espen Aarseth's umbrella "ergodic literature" - text which requires a bit more effort to traverse than your ordinary book.

From there we fall into genres. From there, we create an insane Venn diagram where every genre leaks over into every other. Bookstores couldn't sell us - it's far more complicated than figuring out where vampire romances go.

Wikipedia, for the moment, lists:

Electronic Literature
Hypertext Literature
Collaborative Literature
Participatory Literature
Digital Literature
Interactive Fiction/Storytelling
Kinetic Novel
Cybertext
Hypermedia
Visual Novel (fits my idea very well...though the history of the concept is, er, not terribly lofty - they began, it seems, as "dating sims" in Japan - dating simulation stories)

If you're a bit more visual, like me, it helps to look at them this way (click the image for a larger, readable version):


At the moment, I plan for this novel to fall under both print and digital. The digital version will be electronic, participatory, kinetic, interactive, and likely hypermedia. Perhaps the best term to use for it is Visual Novel. It doesn't immediately connote every meaning I intend, unless of course you are familiar with visual novels – and at the moment, it's mostly only the Japanese who are, and fans of anime and Japanese visual novels. But when the novel began, I'm sure no one knew what anyone else was talking about, either. Forget about paranormal romance (which I still don't really get, BTW – when did bloodsucker come to equal sexy???)

My definition for now?

Visual novel: a digital text incorporating hypermedia and often participatory elements such as game play, forums, and collaboration. Visual novels, unlike many ludic narratives, place high importance on the reader's emotional connection to the story, and therefore character and story are the primary focus, rather than game play and experimental format.

Intro to the Other Life: Creating Second Lives Conference 2008

I just spent the last two days looking at still shots of avatars and raids, learning about first person shooter games and suicide bomber games, and pondering the gender-imbalance issues in World of Warcraft. I sat in (or chaired) every possible session in this past weekend's Creating Second Lives Conference at NIECI, Bangor University. What did I come away with? A burning desire to live in a fairy land in Second Life, and an impression that so far, researchers in New Media are often forced to make things up as they go along.

It's a new field, game study, online anthropology, virtual world sociology. We had many discussions on how difficult it is to explain what we do to people not involved in the creative industries: often we're reduced to "those people who play online all day and then try to write a paper to justify it." It only takes one weekend among these researchers to realize that is not at all the case.

Many are not gamers at all (many are, of course). All, gamers and non-gamers alike, are interested in the effects of this paradigm shift to "virtual" worlds on communication, sociology, gender-relations, power of the individual, the economy...You name it, online activities shape it somehow.

It's a new area, not only to the world, but to research. It showed up in a lot of places this weekend. Almost every presenter introduced their paper with a slide on terminology – each one had to be explicit about their understanding of the same terms (reality, virtual, actual, etc.). Almost all had varying definitions, nuances of understanding. This field is so new we haven't even agreed on the definitions to the basic terms we use when speaking about it, even to each other!

I have firsthand experience of this difficulty: every time I try to explain my PhD topic to anyone, it runs about 5 minutes of pure explanation of what a digital narrative is, what it can be.

Other items of interest to me were the notions of world forming the story, not just the experience. Espen Aarseth's talk (regrettably cut short by his need to catch a plane) touched briefly on this topic, but it really resonated with me. As a writer, I know how important setting, i.e. world, is to a story, how it can influence the mood, the tone, the characters, the plot. So it makes sense that in a virtual setting, the world is just as important. It's on my task list to email Espen for his paper (if any) expanding the topic.

I was also intrigued by Joseph Clark's paper on Nature in virtual worlds. He pointed out that many of our real life experiences with nature are on some level artificial - gardens, parks, set up for scenic vistas, funneling you to certain areas. Even the real thing is often manufactured to a certain degree. The lack of rich nature and ecosystems in virtual worlds is a little disturbing. Maybe the complexity of programming a natural world, even a small one, is more than most developers can handle. On the other hand, maybe it's an indicator of how little we think of anything beyond the surface of pretty views.

In the end, it was an enlightening - if exhausting - experience, and I got a lot from the weekend to inspire me. I have a lot of avenues to explore now, and I look forward to them.

Ancient Anglesey

Paul and I had a free day today - no rugby, no work, no errands. So of course, we spent the first half of the day trying to decide what to do with ourselves.

We finally decided on Anglesey - I've been wanting for a long time to wander around the island to the various antiquities, the burial mounds, the stone circles. I've sorted a list for myself from the BU Library catalogue of Wales & Anglesey histories, mythologies, and folklore. Monday I'll head to the library to actually check them out.

I very much want to set this novel here in North Wales, maybe even on Anglesey in particular. My short stories lately ("Wish on One Hand" and "A Queen for a King) have been set on Anglesey. There's just such a beauty about the place, so compact, wild, cultured, ancient...I can't help but want to set something magical there.

We made it around to a couple of burial mounds (Bryn Celli Ddu and Barclodiad y Gawres), then checked out St. Gwenfaen's Holy Well on Holyhead (and only after looking it up at home have I discovered we never actually found the well). Picture album is here.

The burial mounds struck me less, moved me less, than did the landscape itself. Harsh, rough, murderous coasts...and then you turn around and find lush rolling green hills, fluffy white sheep snoozing like animated puffs of cotton. The people can be rough, but we asked directions from two different old men out walking with their border collies, and both were so friendly and helpful.

I don't know yet what shape the story will take, whether it will touch on Grail myth, Celtic myth, whether it will be inspired by the story of a Welsh peasant boy or driven by the tale of a king. I just know that I'm drawn to Anglesey over and over, the same way I'm drawn to Chaco Canyon back home. Maybe it's the mystery there, maybe just the beauty of standing in the only remnant of a long-gone civilization, one unshaped by kings' edicts.

Recording the Process of Practice-Led Research

The ICCWR in the form of Graeme Harper gave a little session exploring the topic of practice-led research (PLR) for we folks at NIECI, which is of course what I am doing for my PhD. I'll be writing a novel, which is only the initial phase - I then want to turn it into a "special edition" digital novel, complete with hypertext, images, audio, perhaps film.

I'm starting this log because of some topics Graeme brought up during the talk, one of which is the importance of the process in PLR. Academic research typically focuses on the end product, and when you turn in your thesis/dissertation, no one really much cares how you went about tracking down your information beyond the fact that it's useful and ethical.

But in PLR, it's all about the process. Yes, the final product is important, but it's about the exploration of how you got there. What did you learn, what did you have to adjust, how did your philosophic core evolve as you got deeper and deeper into the project.

Also mentioned was the issue of archiving. Pre-work and complementary work (work you produce just prior to, in preparation for, and concurrent with your project) are also important elements in PLR. They show how your PLR is influencing you as an artist, how you evolve overall. But in traditional archiving, you print up only your final product and the library stashes it. There is no thought to the context of the piece.

I'm interested in online or digital-based archiving, using hypertext to link all elements of the piece. I intend this blog to be a central core of that - to not only describe my process as I go through, but to include links to complementary work, notes on my life in general (as that always informs a writer's work), threads to my research, etc.

I want to do this as well because I love getting into a really phenomenal book, engaging with characters I love, wandering in a world that fascinates me, and then being able to continue with that by visiting an author's website or blog to learn more about them and how the story was created. Neil Gaiman blogs constantly, and has supplemental pages including bibliographies for his novels. Jasper Fforde has a website that allows readers to further explore Thursday Next's world through games, writing their own pieces, and interacting. I think having this rich source of contextual material will only increase my project's impact.

My plan at the moment is to blog at least once a week, if not more, to keep up with everything that's going on. It won't be a blow-by-blow description, nor a repository for my notes; rather it will be reserved for thoughts I have on the process, interesting tidbits, complementary work, and the like.

I will tag each of these entries with "PhD" - so any readers of the blog uninterested in my academic ramblings can skip these. Or not.