Sunday, June 16, 2013

A good day crashes

Yesterday was great until mid-afternoon. Then the day crashed, and it's sucked ever since. Up and restless now.

2 comments:

Scout Finch said...

There's magic in the hours after sunset. I do some of my best work at, well, now. I think it helps to be a little manic, too.

Your earlier comments about content are right on. No one cares. It's the culture; it's Big Data vs. Big Ideas. I mean, what would people make of Einstein today? What would people make of original thinking, making leaps and bounds?

Today, as long as there is enough data, who needs insight? It's all in the box. I say, "Tell me something I don't already know." You see, Big Data can't do that.

Anyway, I couldn't format for Kindle then upload to Amazon. That kind of stuff drives me crazy.

I mean, it's the story. It's what you have to say, and how you say it. I really believe that's what matters--as it always has.

For what it's worth, Book Number One reads well on my laptop. You're braver than I am, getting into this data driven future.

Charles Deemer said...

It's not bravery, S, it's regression. I was a math whiz through high school and my first publication, as a college sophomore, was in a math journal, re a number theory problem.

In 1997, releasing my screenwriting tutorial, I HAND CODED the whole thing in html, this before editors for coding had appeared, over 1000 pages, a monumental feat in retrospect. Again, regression.

What I totally love about math, still, is you are never in doubt. You either solve the fucking problem or you don't! You always know where you stand.

I agree, the story is, should be, the thing. I would say this is a passing phase but I don't know how many phases the old species has left given the mess we've made of the planet. But the story being the thing is why I'm trying to "rescue" these stories from oblivion! Nobody would read the suckers as old unproduced screenplays, that's for sure. So we'll try recycling the stories in a variant way ... and see what happens. It's an experiment, after all, and it's also a marathon. I don't expect instant anything. But I do think, in my gut, easy reading on smart phones (speaking of form, not content), will continue to be a big deal.

I had several former students read it for form. One grad student of mine said, "Awesome!" (of course) "This reads like it was made for my smart phone!" I hope there are a lot of readers like that.