Tractors: Writing Tools

Google City Streets

allows the writer to explore streets that they then can use in their writing.  One can find a place and explore the streets without really being there.  A cost effective way to put realistic ideas into your writing.

The book I am currently reading, Looking for Mr. Gilbert, has listed addresses.  I can look up the houses on Google Maps and get a sense of the place the author may be trying to describe.   It would be awesome if Google maps and some gamer came together and made virtual maps of fantasy places, or not.

Excerpt from Wikipedia:

Google Street View is a technology featured inGoogle Maps and Google Earth that providespanoramic views from various positions along many streets in the world. It was launched on May 25, 2007, originally only in several cities in the United States, and has since gradually expanded to include more cities and rural areas worldwide.^[1]

Tractors: Haiku and Baiku

WPA Posters for Indian Court

Haikus and Baikus help a writer minimize words to make an impression of a specific time and place.  It is a great exercise in being empressionistic in writing.

Mechinical as a pipefitter: he tries to fit his own experience to the tradition of his art.

-John Gardner

The Baiku is:

Stanzas of :  

8

4

2

2

It's a little different than Haiku:

5

7

5

Haiku on - 5+5 = Things to Haiku About

1. Worried blue-tint
2. notes. Dreams, sunny days fishing,  
3. for future recall.

Tractors: Writing Tools Set UP Mix Up End Up

Revisers Toolbox: 3 Acts of My Story



Set Up
Mix Up
End Up
The following is a think aloud for the revision of a piece of my writing.  I wrote the piece a year ago, and am not content with the whole piece. I plan to make it gothic and something to do with Gargoyles.  If you are interested read the rest of the piece here.

Page 36 Paragraph 1 Sentence 1 (Gary W. Babb)

Here is something fun. Choose any book in your library (fiction is best).  With the book in your hands, turn  the page to your current age.  Mine is 36, so I will be using page 36 of that book.   From the first full paragraph on that page, type/write out the first sentence.  Then from that sentence write, for one minute, (start out small) timed.  Allow yourself to write anything that comes to your mind, for a whole minute. Do not self censor.  Music may aid in this discover writing. Written to the Podcast Ones and Zeros.
  Rush type it. Don't work for quality, work for continuous writing.  Just keep typing the whole minute.  Don't stop.  Don't think, just write.
One site that is really good at this is the One Minute Writer.

Here is my example: from Earth is Ours by Gary W. Babb:


In spite of everything, life had been good and he had been blessed with another soul mate to share life after he had lost Linda.
Losing Linda was traumatic one day she was there, the next day she was gone.  One day on the counter, there was a not that read: Dear Gregorio.  I can't stand this anymore.  You have been lazy, refusing to help me with the chores.  You sit there all day in front of the computer, and do not say what you said you would do.   We use to have such fun together and now you have become one of those ugly mean who wear wife beaters to K-Mart.

Self Rubrics

When writing reviews I attempt to go over a rubric I made for my writing, here it is… I would love to hear some insight into what you thought about it?

Writing Criteria	Points
Flow/Spark	Are enough words used to be clearly understood but not too many as to make it boring. Do you bring along the reader into your world… or just start the review in mid sentence of a thought…
Shares a definite POV Transparent in Political Allegiances	One can easily tell the POV of the author. The author shares where they are coming from.
Digestible by everyone, anyone, not just lit or history majors	One does not need a degree in Political Science or History to understand the book.
Usefulness	Was the review Useful? Research needed to see what makes a useful review.
Introduction	Summary Sentence. Author shares the motivation that was there to begin to read book. Author outlines the evidence collected in telling the tale.
Word Choice	How well did you communicate Do you have a mixture of 8th Grade and Collegiate Words Did you define all uncommon words.
Sparking Interest in Buying Book: Why they need the book.	Did you answer why would anyone be interested in this subject? Are their links to outside resources? Quotes outside authors and their material.
Desire to share with others	The Reviews rewarding enough to share with a friend without a fear of embarrassment. And not something the execs at Publix would frown on.
KISS	Keep it simple short and sweet. Do not meander through the daisies
Title	Does Title both engage and clue in the perspective reader
Assumptions Made	Be Specific: Were assumptions made about collected knowledge, should not be Publix but Publix Grocery Stores. No one in the PDX knows what Publix is….
Integrity	Are the examples real or are you attempting to look smarter than you are?

Writing Lessons: Where did you get that name?

Where do you get ideas for names of places and people?
One can use real names but this is very very very dangerous.   So one suggestion could be to use the names in the back of a good dictionary, in the section titled Biographical names.   Then change the name slightly.   It is also a great place to find out the main character traits of a personality.  Deffaund, Marquise 1697-1780 nee Marie de vechy Chamround Fr. Woman of Letters.    So now you can change the name to Margaret Deffaud who is a women with a black book in her back pocket, who is always jotting down notes.    Then you can place her in modern times but with a value system from the 1700's.  She can feel disjointedness from  time because she really belongs to the old time period, this will create personal crisis in her life, conflict builds up the story.   Try this next time you are stuck with finding a person's name.

Kareuac on Food and San Francisco

San Francisco is a food hunter’s paradise; even the United Wing of the San Francisco Airport has a plethora of delights.    Jessica (my wife) and I had so many choices for lunch, there was Clam Chowder in San Francisco Sour Dough Bread Bowls, Japanese Bento lunches, mission style burritos, good micro-brews, and probably a lot more; I was unable to see it all because my senses were overwhelmed.    

Jack Kerouac wrote of the bounty of food in San Francisco:

From on the Road by Jack Kerouac (Part Two - Chapter Ten)

In the window I smelled all the food of San Francisco.   There were seafood places out there where the buns were hot, and the baskets were good enough to eat too; where the menus themselves were soft with foody esculence as though dipped in hot broths roasted dry and good enough to eat too.  Just show me the bluefish spangle on a seafood menu, and I'd eat it; let me smell the butter and lobster claws.  There were places where hamburgers sizzled on grills and the coffee was only a nickel.  And oh, that pan fried chow mein flavored air that blew into my room from Chinatown, vying with the spaghetti sauces of North Beach, the soft-shell crab of Fisherman's Wharf- nay, the ribs of Fillmore turning on spits! Throw in the Market street chili beans, red-hot, and french-fried potatoes of the Embarcadero wino night, and steamed clams from Sausalito across the bay, and that's ah-dream of San Francisco.  Add fog, hunger making, raw fog, and the throb of neons in the soft night, the clack of high heeled beauties, white doves in a Chinese grocery window.

On the Craft of Writing: Notes from Winesburg, Ohio

 I don't really have the money to get an MFA in writing.  But I know one way to improve my writing, read great authors, and those that influenced great writers.   Sherwood Anderson influenced Henry Miller, and now I know why! I have taken some writing notes on Sherwood's techniques that I hope you will find helpful.    I am not looking for a formula, but understanding the frame of the craft allows the writer to express his/her thoughts well.   

In order to understand (the man or woman) we need to go back to an earlier (period/day/era)
Root the Character to the American Spirit: By the standards of the day
True to the traditions
"He was a man born out of his time and place and for this he suffered and made others suffer." 
Everyone retired into the background.
He could master others but he could not master himself. 
Show desires, what moves the person, motivations
did not intend (Specific Evil) Show that the man is acting naturally and that naturally this is what comes about.
How does the Character see the times?
When you take the character to the wall pan out and give a panorama of the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age.
Describe the setting of the Character.
Show motivations through a glimpse into private prayers said with the doors closed, and the lights turned low! One can also do this by revealing the words said in a conversation, words twittered, emails, letters etc.