A-sketching

I sat at my computer staring at the blankness of the screen, wondering what to write. So... coming up blank my self, I turned off my computer. Then an Idea hit me! I quickly turned the computer back on, and gathered my new ideas into a cohesive thought. With the blank page again before me I put fingers to keys….and...I forgot what I was going to write.

Frustration flooded my mind and I cursed out “Damn you, you blank screened tyrant! this is the fifth and last time you will do this to me today!” Strangely, as I cursed, I thought about the cold heart of the snow queen as written by Hans Christian Anderson. I wondered if he had ever had the blank page problem I was suffering...then another idea hit me square in the brain, “Why not do an exercise, whenever the blank page befalls me, in the style of Hans Christian Anderson?” I picked the first object I saw and started writing about it as if it had life. I would write its thoughts, feeling, points of view. I took it a step farther and wrote a short story about the same item five or more times using different points of views and voices.

                        I called this writing technique A-sketching (Anderson  sketching) and I use it whenever I get writers block. Here is a small example  about the computer I am writing on.

#6

Number six slept and dreamed in slight flashes of ones and zeros as inner programs quietly maintained pre-ordered tasks

He was awakened rudely by a surge of energy blasting into his mother board, booting up his systems. He opened his eye and saw the gooey life form that pounded on his delicate power switch. He knew that his function was to serve these mobile porous messes, yet his sore hard drive reminded him that after every encounter with these grease-extruding-malfunctions that his short term memory was going to get erased, while his long term memory held the abuse.

There was a line of fourteen other gateways (A name he read off the others.) and he lived in the computer room of the "Library". He could only surmise he and the others were "computers" Other than that he didn’t know of any other world.

As Number six waited it started to hybernate, then, he felt his keys get banged on. A big ugly shaved headed brute was sitting in front of him picking his nose. “Please let him have the wrong code” number six pleaded but the passcode was true letting him onto the desk top.  Number six could do nothing about what the brute did, or what he looked at. He knew this was his job, and he had to do his job. He lived in a harsh world of abuse in the computer room of library and if he couldn’t do his job he would be taken out never to be seen again, like the others. This fact was more frightening then the tasks he was asked to preform by these uncouth users. So he did his job….and waited, because soon the user was finished and logged off.

                   Number six hated the next part, mostly because he felt it was a  violation of his consciousness, yet he felt the warm burning sensation of his memory being washed and soon he didn’t even know that the brute ever existed.

As I wrote this, I thought of many different ways I could have told this story. The point is to pracise your writing skills in a safe enviernment, and notheing is more safe then storys you don’t have to finish, or thay you can change because you just dont give a crap. When you get your real project you will be more confedent and be more productive.

            You can A-sketch about any thing you want, last night while I was reading a book, I was disatified with how the writer handled a certain consept, so I did an a-sketch about it. After writing two or three different versions of the concept, I forgave the writer because the concept was really hard to write the way i thouth it should be done.

            I get stuck while writing all of the time. Some times I have trouble getting my supporting cast, or landscapes to act right. I’ll A-sketch the parts I’m stuck on  from the other charicters point of view, or the land scapes point of view. Now the blank page dosn’t frustrate me any more.