The first thing I see when beginning to write is my computer screen. It’s “The Lone Wanderer,” exploring a world that makes no sense. That’s writing, isn’t it, an endeavor to make sense out of the world? As anthropologist Edmund Carpenter said, “That’s what people do: make sense.”
The fine line between creativity and fantasy is my writers world. Adding fiction to life compels us to see things differently and that too, is what people do. To escape, to reexamine, to better understand our world, are the reasons why writers have readers.
The iconic “Lone Wanderer” is a constant throughout history, a part of all times and cultures because the struggle to better understand our world is always with us. I like the obvious symbology, that a writer is a loner. And also the deeper hope that writing serves a human need.
What is on your desktop? Does it help you to write?
Mines just a picture of a pond on the farm taken one spring 🙂
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My background is strictly utilitarian: solid black. Provides a sharp contrast to the Word docs arranged on the screen. (BTW: I’ve played every Fallout made. You should see the 5-story HQ I built in Sanctuary.)
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Mine is also utilitarian: a solid dull brown that does not have bad clashes with the colors of icons.
What it says about me is that I am a big fan of Occam’s Razor.
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Mine too, for the very utilitarian reason that battery autonomy is longer with a plain background. So I read.
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Had not thought of that. What U read is plausible.
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WoW, Carl! If you happen to play ’76 on PC, friend me? My son tells me that my Steam name is Editor.
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You might lure me back in, GD! Confession: I just can’t get into MMOs. I bought and returned Fallout: ’76 this summer. Encountering characters named “WTF4537”, “Ilikebigbutts&Icannotlie”, and “Allnamesrejected” catapults me right out of the world’s alternate reality. (To say nothing of the player characters who keep running up to me and–through interpretive dance, e-motes, gesticulations–either want something from me or wish to give me something; I’m never quite sure. It is all very awkward and embarrassing; I flee from all such encounters like a bourgeois banker encountering ecstatic Krishnas at the airport: “Err, sorry; too busy just now to embrace oneness-with-all-that is. . . . Perhaps later? BTW: Have you seen any jack-booted cannibal raiders I can grenade and machine-gun? Need to level up and get the PISS GUN OIL perk.”)
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Oh. I agree. That is why I play on a private server. Only friended players may join. No jumping emoting idiots allowed. We speak on team chat. Just my son and I at this point, and you are welcome to join. Occasionally, we join up to seize a workshop. But mostly we play on our own. It’s a big world.
The game continually improves. It deserved the bad rep at release but we now have NPC factions. Raiders prey on the Settlers -but, “We don’t want to wipe them out. We’re not farmers. Who would grow our food if we did that?” The voice acting is superb. Neither group trusts the Brotherhood of Steel, of course. You can build a good rep with all three factions and play them against one another.
Construction is full-blown Fallout. You build a camp -similar to settlements. With a robot that retrieves useful items from the neighborhood. Mine likes to point out, “I know where you sleep at night.” And you can build within your own underground vaults, which cannot be breached. All in all, F’76 is a good Fallout game.
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On my desktop, I have a photo of Cape Neddick Lighthouse, along with files and folders my husband complains about.
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I like those thoughts and that is exactly why I write. To try and explain the world to myself. So far I have failed in that task but keep hoping.
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On my laptop’s desktop is a starry field with a spiral galaxy (probably Andromeda) spread across it. That’s fitting, since I write science fiction. HOWEVER, the screen is filled with icons and open windows. I hardly ever close my computer down. So I have lots of stuff piled atop my starry field.
Do you think possibly this says something about me?
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Mr. Van Horn: I think it does say something about you; I think it says: “Against a backdrop of infinity this brief spark of sentience flaring in the merest flicker of time book-ended by abyss dares to work and think and thus in some small, quotidian–yet nevertheless critical and vital way–concretize in .doc form a bit of the cosmos seeking to know, celebrate and memorialize itself.”
Or it just might mean you’re too f–king lazy to drag docs into categorizing folders and sub-folders.
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I think both are true. The Desktop is my Miscellaneous folder. “I can’t figure out where to put this. I’ll just stick it on the Desktop and move it to a folder later.”
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Heh!
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My Safari desktop is a photo taken by a Hawaiian photographer friend of a once-in-a-lifetime shot of a double rainbow arcing over the ocean embracing a lava flow beach. My Chrome desktop is blue sky and clouds. My Pages desktop is a starfield with an unknown orange-ish crescent planet/moon taking center stage. I keep the projects I’m working on open, but I like having the stars showing at the sides of the screen. My fourth desktop is an abstract I created, bordered by groups of folders containing a variety of things I want close at hand. What does that say about me? I think it’s evidence that I like to surround myself with things I find stimulating.
But GD, I would like to hear more about your “fine line between creativity and fantasy”. I’ve always considered fantasy to be a product of creativity because fantasy doesn’t exist until we make it out of our imaginations — the drivers of our creativity. Or are you seeing fantasy in a different way?
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Oh, I’m no expert on fantasy. So, true to my craft, I resort to making stuff up: I basically see creativity as a function of intelligence and fantasy as a function of imagination. There is a fine line between what is really possible and what is not. And that of course, is just an operational definition for my use in writing hard sci-fi.
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At the moment (and this is typical) I have 22 folders and between seventy and a hundred files on my desktop. I have them stacked in piles according to subject. Currently: Rats and mice. Pharaoh-style clothing. Story templates. Necklaces/gems. Movie posters (left over from the last illustration I worked on). One stack is of washed-out blue jeans, from my in-progress art for Maisie in the sixties.
And I have multiple versions of my project, every time I make a change I resave and rename it. I sort the mess out later, consolidate, delete, etc.
I don’t care what image I have on my desktop. I ignore it.
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