A spray of tiny atomic bombs

I was reviewing my journal, where I sometimes make notes in a category of "Kids Say the Darndest Things"...and I found one that happened last summer. I had just returned from trip to San Francisco with my wife, and we brought my older daughter a silk outfit from Chinatown, complete with a parasol.

She put it on and proclaimed herself Parasol Girl, who can fire beams from her parasol, and when she spins it, it spits out a spray of tiny atomic bombs.

That's my girly-girl. This is, presumably, not a girl who is going to grow up having nightmares about giant bombs that are ticking over and preparing to blow up.

Best reason to use XML for casual writing: diffing

I've been experimenting with using an XML system to do my fiction writing. I started a story where I'm doing the draft in XML. I didn't do this lightly, and I would until recently have advised anyone who asked that XML was too much trouble for short or one-off projects. I use one all the time at work, and I still would have said that. Two things changed my mind: the XMLmind editor, and the Dopus system.

Dopus is a system that makes installing a DocBook-based XML system dead simple, and XMLmind is a free XML editor with a usable GUI and built-in support for DocBook XML.

Those tools made it possible for me to set up a home system without a lot of effort, and then edit the files in a GUI similar to an ordinary word processor. Plus, DOPUS includes support for RTF output, so that meant I could convert the XML to something a publisher might expect.

At the moment, I'm not using many XML elements; I don't need them. I'm using the DocBook article document type, because I'm writing a short story and that seemed to fit best. I've done some very minor customizations to the output...things like making elements disappear, so that I can have hidden text notes in my source. I love that.

But the deal clincher was this weekend, when I had some trouble getting net access. I hadn't updated my home files with the ones from work, and I'd worked on the story file during a lunch break. So ordinarily, I wouldn't want to edit the story file, if I'd been using a word processor file.

I still didn't want to edit my file, because of the way I merge changes between home and work. But I made a copy of my original file, and then when I sat down today after having synced my home and work file trees, I simply used a diff tool to compare the old and new files. It was easy to move the new text to the older file, while retaining the changes I'd made in the old file.

I often daydream about developing special XML elements for use in stories...things that would store the chronology of the story, or mark character names for retrieval. I kind of hope I never get around to any of that, because I think I'd use markup as an excuse to avoid writing new stuff. But having all of your data in easily-manipulable text format, and yet being able to output it as RTF, PDF, or HTML, is a big win.

Homemade play dough is worth it

I've made homemade play dough twice, and it is super worth it. If you don't have kids as an excuse, then borrow some. That's what I did when people first started making those big indoor playscapes and I was too old to go in but too young to have kids of my own. But I digress.

I needed to make pink playdough in quantity for my daughter's third birthday, so I dug up this recipe, which I'd stored a couple of years ago. The proportions are simple and it works great. I got the recipe from a page which calls it "Cooked Play Clay II."

Here's my version of it.

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup water
1/2 cup salt
1 tsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
food coloring

Toss the ingredients directly into a saucepan and mix them. Add the food coloring last; you can control the color by adding a drop or two, stirring, and then deciding whether to add more. You can also add more late in the processs, and you can try adding some and not fully mixing it, for a fun effect.

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the consistency changes from a batter to a dough. Cool until able to handle and then knead on a floured surface.

That's all there is to it, but the magic is when the consistency change happens: it happens fast. As an adult, I get a bigger kick out of making it than playing with it, because I'd rather use a clay that holds details better when I'm working on sculpting something. But the kids love it, and I don't worry about them using it up...I know I'll make more.

It's odd, in a way, that anyone would make and sell play dough as a commercial product. I mean, people make and sell all kinds of things that we could make for ourselves at home. But play dough is odd because one company has heavily marketed and sold it and I doubt most people ever consider making their own. And it's just not rocket science. It's fast and easy to make, and it's satisfying. Give it a try.


Here's a page that has the cream of tartar recipe and a couple of others.

Here are some other recipes; some of these look interesting, but I haven't tried these.

A month of writing and a draft to show for it

Last month I vowed two things...to write every day, and to work on my "The Wonder Kid" story until I had a draft I could send to friends to read.

I'm happy to report that I did both of those things. And the combination of the two goals worked pretty well to get me to do more work.

This month I'm going to try for something similar, but the new goal is to finish a draft of a new story, "Dragon Hunter". Whereas "The Wonder Kid" is one I've been working on for quite a while and a longer one, about 18k words, "Dragon Hunter" is really new, I've only had the idea since about May, and is intended to be short, around 5k words.

Heh. I thought "The Wonder Kid" was going to be really short too. In fact I wrote a fairly complete draft of it in short order back a couple of years ago when I first had the idea. And then I reworked it and nuanced it and complicated it and wrote an ending and then replanned the whole thing around a different ending and...meh. I hope I won't be doing any of that rigamarole with "Dragon Hunter" but I can't promise that. What I can do, though, is set a goal to have a readable draft by the end of this month. Like I just said. And maybe that will make the difference.

Let's hope so, because I'd like to prove I can write a short story in less than two years.

I was gonna end this post there, but I don't think I can do that. I have to defend myself against myself. :) I can write a Madrigal Dinner play script in a month, month-and-a-half. The difference is structure and outside requirements/outside deadlines...deadlines outside of ME. It's harder to resist an episode of Law and Order if the only deadline enforcer is me. Whereas when I know I have to turn something in to another person, I'll skip all TV and write for two to three hours a night for a whole week. I know because I did that this May. :)

The pink party

My youngest daughter had been clear about it for weeks: she wanted a pink party, and daddy was going to make it. We interrogated her repeatedly on the subject, and she was (unique amongst all other two year olds in my experience) consistent: a pink party, and daddy was going to make it.

My wife was looking at being out of the country with my oldest for the three weeks prior to the party, so she was going to have to leave the party prep in my hands anyway. She kept trying to resolve the pink idea to something more specific: pink princesses? Pink unicorns, maybe? Maybe she was all about the singerPink?

But I was pretty happy with the pink theme. It was wide open, really. I spent an enjoyable afternoon with my 8 year old daughter cutting pink construction paper into various shapes: a couple of fairies, some mountains and sea gulls, dragons and bats. I even made a couple of princesses, although they ended up looking more like the Burger King.

My wife returned from her three weeks away (never again, I say, never again!) and was rather pleased with my preparations. Had I sent out invites? Yes indeed. Did I have presents for the pink princess? Certainly. Decorations? Of course. Was the barbecue grill fueled up and ready? Naturally.

Then she bumped into a friend and discovered that friend had been left off the invites. That revealed that there were three families, out of about ten, whom I'd failed to notify at all. So, not so impressive at that point.

But we had a blast. We were frantically cleaning and decorating when people started to arrive, and so we just merrily drafted them to blow up balloons and tape streamers to the walls. After ten minutes of that, I asked the Pink Princess if the place was pink enough.

"No! More pink in here!" she said. So we added more pink to the living room.

Folks wore pink by request. My giant of a neighbor had a Real Men Wear Pink T-shirt ready for the occasion.

The final coup, though? Thank you notes. I took the construction paper decorations off the walls and used them to make the notes, and had them done the very next day.

Big momma slider turtle

Saw this turtle on the path while biking to work; have seen it a couple of times. One time, I startled it when trying to get close for a photo...and it was climbing a concrete embankment...and it yanked in its legs and slid down the steep slope.

I mean, I'm assuming it's the same turtle. It didn't have a bar code or anything.


My birdwatcher friend Mikael, my go-to guy for wildlife, says it's probably a red-eared slider and that it's probably a female looking for a place to dig a hole and lay eggs in.

I think that's great, and it's likely to keep the deadbeat male turtles away, too. I mean, picture the scene in a turtle singles' bar:

"Hey, baby, what's your sign?"

"I'm looking for a place to dig a hole and lay eggs in."

Turtle guy just walks away. Slowly, of course.

Possums in daylight

On one of my morning bike rides, this one on 3/24/08, I saw a couple of possums frolicking, or whatever. I actually got a shot of one of them. They moved too fast for me to get anything better:



They were pretty entertaining to see as they ran away from me. I wouldn't have noticed them if I'd been driving.

Writing a Madrigal script; Character Matrix

I'm working on a script to submit for the University of Texas' annual Madrigal Dinner production. I've written several of these before, and they've even used a couple of them for the show. It's a dinner theater production with a choir, and the feasting has to be integrated into the story.

Last year I wrote one that I was just inordinately happy with, but they didn't choose to use it. Now Madrigal script time has rolled around again and I've decided to write another script.

In a way, I'm surprised at myself. My usual pattern would be to let last year's rejection get me down, and skip it this year. But writing last year's script was such a positive experience, and I was so happy with the result, that I don't feel that way at all.

A Madrigal Dinner, in the UT style, has a very specific format. It has a constrained set of scenes and length and several clear dramatic unities. It must take place around a feast. It must include a king, queen, and assorted nobility. It must provide specific opportunities for the choir to sing.

These limits are not negatives; they make a Madrigal writing project go very quickly. In fact, there was a post on 43Folders recently about how limits can be used in creative projects. For me, I find the Madrigal limits kill a lot of my problems in finishing a story.

Here are some of the things that I waste time on in story writing that are nonissues in a Madrigal project:

• I used to waste a lot of time choosing a point of view, and would sometimes write half or more of a story in one point of view, then try another. I don't do that so much anymore...but you really can't worry about this one in a Madrigal: it's a play. It's not about point of view. You can use the point of view of whoever's on stage.


• Flashbacks and timejumping. I've seen Madrigals that had complicated time jumps. I don't like it; it's complicated. It's a big complicated production as it is, and it's not worth risking confusing the audience.


• The setting and characters are fairly defined already. It's gotta be a court, you need a king, queen, prince/princess, probably a jester, that sort of thing.

And then there's a technique I now want to use in all my stories, that I developed while writing madrigals. Basically, I make a character matrix. I compare all my major characters to each other and make sure that for each, I develop an overall motivation, a specific goal, a conflict, an epiphany, some dialogue tags if possible, that sort of thing. This year I've got a theme of stated goals versus real wants, so for each character I'm trying to develop those...the wants may develop into the epiphanies, as the characters realize that what they think they want isn't what they really want.

I usually do this with separate sections for each character in my notes; doing it in a table, as a matrix, somehow makes a lot more sense to me. The act of aligning and comparing the characters story-relevant properties seems to move development along better.

City box done: "Daddy, you made this for me?"

I've been building a toy box that's designed to look like a row of buildings. I built it while my family was out of town for a week during spring break. When they got back, my youngest daughter, age 2.5, walked right up to the box and said, "Daddy? You made this for ME?" She sounded so excited. That was a lot of fun. Below are some photos of the 'finished' box.

I really meant to paint some black shadows between the buildings, but I haven't gotten around to it, and it's already in use as a highly successful toybox reducing the clutter in our living room, so I don't know whether I'll mess with that delicate situation. I used a piece of poplar 1x2 to make the handle. The rest of it is MDF, except the base, which is 1/2" plywood. Really it's all just scrap that I had lying around.