On People Watching, Haiku and What I Found

PEOPLE WATCHING 101

When you sit in a Barnes & Nobles, you don't expect to hear a man read aloud from his unpublished manuscript, repeating various lines to get the language exactly right. You don't expect to hear four convicts discussing their jail time and how the system screwed them over. You don't expect to see an obscenely overweight nine-year-old shuffle-running through the aisles looking for a quarter she misplaced among the books.

But my friends and cohorts, see these things I did. Yesterday, my mom and I drove down to Shreveport to spend the day and witnessed all of the above and more. We had a smashing good time people watching and trying not to laugh.

A Few Haiku for the Port of Shreve

Under Construction!
Pedestrians dart and dodge
your reckless driving.

Power lines swoop low
new buildings in old downtown
murals of mute jazz.

Muddy river swirls
Slot machines clack, good times roll
Your city is broke.

New grown shopping malls
Eateries and car dealers
Hustle and bustle!

Shreveport, your streets wind
through boulevards of green shade

I watch, sip my coke.

PLATONIC FORMS OF PERFECTION AND ORGANIZATION

As we have already seen, I have a habit of looking for the perfect pretty notebook. What I didn't tell you was that this strange habit carries over into software and organizing stuff. Somewhere on some astral plane, there is a Form of the perfect program, notebook, organization tool - and I can't hope to find it in this world (yay Plato).

Anyway, these urges to look for the greatest (insert thing) only hits me near the start of each school year. Probably because subconsciously I know I'll live in chaos for the next nine months and I'm grabbing desperately at some measure of civilization and sanity :D

Anyway, here is a product of one of my searches, and I thought some of you writerly types might find it fascinating. Because not only is it cool. It's free.

THE NEXT BEST THING

This new program I found is called Keynote - you can look it over or try it out, whatever strikes your fancy. It's like Microsoft OneNote, but free and open source which can allow you to do some pretty awesome things.

So far, I've added all of my characters, their info, the back-stories of their respective noble houses, some world-building stuff and a scratch pad for ideas with a to-do list. Sure most of that is for me to stay consistent in the story, but it also helped spawn a great slew of ideas.

I also imported the current WIP, and so now - EVERYTHING - I've written on this project, from concept to finished product is all in one place. If I need to search for some obscure detail, I have the ability to cross-reference everything to find it. While I'm not trying to make a sales pitch for this program, I figured a few of you might be able to use it and get some inspiration like I did.

HERSTORY WITH SVEN

As far as Sven goes, today I begin my heroine's story and I'm incredibly psyched about it. She's maybe one of my favorite characters and this will give her brother, the hero, a chance to chill out for later revisions.

So say we all.
Bri