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Daydreamer Mode By: Mark Morgan on 4/11/2010; 9:13 PM I wasn't born with common sense. Whatever part of the brain that tells you not to play in traffic, I don't have. I use my brain for other, more important things. Dreaming up fantasies to startle the imagination. I can get in my head and create an entire world filled with people and places and things. My ex-wife used to complain that people thought I was stoned. Hardly. I was in Daydreamer Mode. That lack of her understanding was the cause of a three year winter of our discontent. Life will teach you the things you need to know, not the things you want to know. Life has not actually gifted me with common sense. But occasionally I get a Reality Check. It's a helpful thing, as writer and creator of dreams to know just when your reader or viewer or listener will go "Now, just wait a damn minute!" The day they decided that Batgirl should be Alfred's daughter. Ping! Reality check, holding on line one. The oft-quoted foolishness that Data, an android who can remember the position of every card in a deck of cards, who learned an entire sign language in one sitting, can't handle the basic grammatical structure of the contraction. The otherwise wonderful movie True Lies where Arnold just has to have one scene where he's running in full view and spraying bullets everywhere causing carnage but apparently immune to bullets himself. There are other kinds of reality checks. In my life, it's taking the written word way, way, way too seriously. I'm still weirded out that I have friends I've never met in person. Emotional connections made online, through the medium of the blessed Word. As the Web brings the light and flash and color of other media to the Internet, at its heart is still The Word. And I love the Word. And I get emotional about it. My first virtual home was nitcentral, back when it was more than a bulletin board hangout for bored SF fans. The place has always had its ups and downs, but mostly its civil. It still amazes me how ardently people can argue about trivial things, myself among the most ardent. Over the years the tenor of most of the board has remained the same. There is the occasional flareup, but it's mostly civil. The owner, Phil Farrand, is not as active there as when he began because he's doing those things that are necessary to be happy and successful in his real life. Good for him. The preceding as background material. I no longer participate at Nitpicker Central save for the board I moderate for the television show Angel and the one for its associated program Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Some time in the near future Phil will hold a meeting of moderators. Between now and then I have to decide if I'm going to hand my moderation duties off to someone else. And leave forever the place where I met most of my online friends. The place where I first discovered the joys of the instant gratification of Internet publishing. The place where I first drafted The Morgan Dilemna. The place where I met the woman I love. One day I got so angry with another poster, it triggered a Reality Check. The details are largely irrelevant. We all have our personal lines that we don't believe should be crossed. It's part of being a healthy adult, the ability to say "This far, and that's all you go." I got there, and then some. A burning fury. An anger so deep it shocked me. I looked into myself and saw that I'd become far too dependent on the connections that are brought over my phone line. Perhaps the most important lesson I learned while being offline for the past two weeks is that I really did need to work on getting out in the world. Being a writer is a lonely occupation. Hiding in my home office alone I'm well within my comfort zone. Master of my own domain. Compromising for no one. Alone has its advantages. But I am rediscovering how much I love the rest of the world. And I will share a secret with you. Since I got divorced five years ago I've hardly written anything that you don't find here. A scribble here, a scribble there, that's it. And offline, after having sampled the joys of the world, I sat in Powell's Books (the most wonderful building on Earth) and started writing again. It's the most wonderful feeling in the world.
RE: Daydreamer Mode By: Evan on 4/8/2001; 9:15 PM Really writing causes loneliness for you? I actually find its a good way to talk with people. I show them my work, they say I'm seriously messed up, and I get new story ideas from them and the cycle continues. I manage to avoid the deep anger you talk about online by the simple fact that my memory is almost non-existent with regards to such matters. Try having a huge log dropped on your head and stick your fingers into two electric sockets at the same time. Your memory will be wrecked but everything will seem much better. At least it seems to have worked for me. As for going into an internal world while writing, I do that too. People have trouble communicating with me and its doubtful that I will notice anything going on outside my writing until I pop back into the real world for story ideas.
Re: Daydreamer Mode By: Sean McMains on 4/10/2001; 8:56 AM And offline, after having sampled the joys of the world, I...started writing again. Whooooo! Good to hear. Perhaps you'll have to buy your online time at the rate of 5 words of good writing for each minute we let you online. Purely as encouragement, you understand. The 'bots could help. Sean
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