I spent some time this afternoon (after doing some cleaning!) tweaking some sample templates for the soap opera blogger. Once I have the idea ready to write, I don't want to spend time trying to make the blog look "right" so I'm doing that now.

There are currently three templates available to view. Take a look at all three, then come back here and leave me a comment as to what you think. They all have links to each other and back to this page, so take your time and look carefully for errors as well as the overall "feel" of each template. (click each title to go to that page.)

• Scribe Test = #1
  
• Scribe Test 2 = #2
  
• Scribe Test 3 = #3

Remember: your input is important and I'll take it seriously (if you're serious in offering it), but, in the end, this is my baby and I'll make the final decision. As with all decisions I make, I'll consider all factors carefully, so give me factors to consider, please :)

Well, it's now 3pm and I haven't made it off line. I talked to a few friends, made a new one, and deleted an old blog--after saving one entry to another site. My mind keeps working on the story lines in the background. I just need a name and a few characters, then I can start putting pen to paper.

That is how I usually write, btw. I use spiral notebooks and pen, usually blue or black ballpoint, though sometimes other colors or rollerball pens. Rollerballs are harder though. They bleed through the notebook paper and it's hard to read when you write on both sides of a page. Sometimes at work I'll use a legal pad and whatever pen is available. I've been known to write fiction on napkins, store or bank receipts, the margins of newspapers. In college I used to write in the margins of my notebook when I was taking notes in a lecture--or worse, on the exam questions pages during midterms or finals if I wasn't doing well on the test itself and had time to kill.

I guess you can tell I'm a procrastinator. I need to log off and do some of that house cleaning, maybe it will help clear my mind and get it rolling more actively on the story process.

With all the stress at my day job, I figured I should take this weekend to catch up on housecleaning and paperwork. I've lived in this apartment for almost nine months and there are still things I haven't unpacked! So, of course, after making those plans I wake up this morning with ideas for the soap opera.

I don't know if it came from dreams or just my insistence that I stop thinking about work (my cat woke me at 5am and it took me awhile to fall back to sleep because my mind started spinning on what I have to take care of at the office on Monday), I just know that when I finally woke up for the day, I was thinking about the TV soaps. I remembered soaps like "Texas" and "Capital" and "Loving" which I think turned into "The City" or something like that. Even though I never watched any of those, I distinctly recall reading and hearing about them. I remembered "Santa Barbara" as being about a place, likewise "Port Charles" then I thought about "Another World" and "Days of Our Lives" which are the two soaps I watched the longest. I started trying to remember which characters were married to which in what succession. Which character reformed the other, who was the "love of their life" that when they died, devastated them and took years to mourn. Who was the secret daughter/twin/sister of whom. Amazing how such trivia remains embedded in your memory even though you stopped watching soaps at all five years ago and one of the soaps was cancelled years ago.

Then I thought: I need a moment, and event, someplace where the story will start--preferrably a common gathering that will bring together a lot of the characters in one place so that we can learn about them as they interact. What one thing would bring together a large number of people in a bdsm group? A collaring ceremony, of course. So, I'll start with a handful of people preparing for the ceremony, then the ceremony and reception/play party afterward...held at the local dungeon which will be the center of a lot of the activities in the future. That will play well with the idea I was tinkering with earlier this week about having someone who has just moved to town be the focal point of the early segments. She will only know one, maybe two people, so she can be the device for learning about who everyone is and who they are with -- for the moment. Then I thought....and maybe the reason she moved to this town is a cover and she has some secret about herself, or some trauma she's escaping.

It's a very good start. As I'm writing this entry, I'm thinking about the role the dungeon can play. I know some soaps use workplaces as a core: a hospital, an office building, a mall, a restaurant, a park, a school in the case of the teen soaps. You see people in their homes, of course, but there is always one or maybe two places that bring them together in larger numbers to interact. A dungeon is the obvious choice here. A dungeon that has support meetings and workshops as well as weekend play parties. A dungeon that you can rent for a few hours to hold a session. A dungeon that has an attached store that is a gathering place during the daytime. A dungeon that pros and lifestyle alike frequent, though maybe not at the same times. Now that would make for some interesting tensions. A dungeon that is, perhaps, owned by a wealthy couple who run the store and the daytime activities, but rent it at a very cheap rate to a local bdsm group that holds the meetings and evening gatherings there--maybe something to do with the need for play parties to be non-profit events while the actual "business" of the place is simply a store and renting "meeting space".

As you can see, my mind is suddenly in a creative flow for this project. It still needs a name and some defined characters and storylines before I can begin writing. After all, I won't know what to name the blog if the story doesn't have a title! I just have to be careful in my eagerness to make progress, not to neglect my other plans, namely cleaning my apartment and getting stuff unpacked and settled. If I want to be disciplined in my writing, I need to be disciplined in all areas of my life.

Or maybe I'll just go (re)read some porn stories on the web for ideas and procrastinate the cleaning for another few hours--or days.

I slept okay. Stayed up a bit later than I should have, but did get into a good sleep-dream cycle. I woke up a little groggy, but quickly shook it off. I feel ready to write.

One problem is that I'm not ready to work on the project. Instead I want to write about the nature of the soul - karma, reincarnation, twin souls, soul mates. It's something I have been planning to write for my Unsuspected Depth website. The Sept. 11th attacks disrupted my mental progress on that one. Now I think I'll try to finish it and get it posted.

The creative mind can be coaxed, but it doesn't always go in the direction you hoped. I'm just glad it's active and, with a little discipline, I can get some of the excess to direct itself towards this project as well as the Depth article.

My day job. More to do. More stress. Not negative, just busy and issues of confidentiality. Nothing like knowing someone is going to be asked to resign on Monday when they don't have a clue themselves.

Last night I felt wonderful. Tonight I feel distant. Dis-connected. I'm tempted to go ballastic on one of the people I love. Displaced emotion I guess. What I really want to do is find out why she doesn't talk to me directly, but I guess I'm afraid of what her answer would be.

Sometimes, it's hard to focus on a project. Discipline in my writing is something that definitely needs work. Maybe a title that has to do with discipline would work. I'll have to make time to brainstorm. Make time to formulate some characters and story lines. Maybe after a good night's sleep. I have found that my dreams have been more vivid the past week...and some of the dreams have had SM themes...perhaps I can latch into my creative self and find something.

Yesterday there wasn't much visible progress on the project. That doesn't mean my mind wasn't working. It's just hard to explain that all these swirling ideas are swirling in a more organized pattern than previously. You can't quantify it in percentages or predict how much longer it will take to organize.

There are now situations and characters moving into a more organized form. Instead of this amorphorous pool of "someday I should write about this or that", there is definite separating as some things moving toward "include me in the soap opera". But, as I said before, it's not quantifiable or recordable at this point. My mind is doing the work on a less-than-conscious level.

I'll try to get some more names brainstormed. It just depends how tired I am after my day job.

Coming up with a name is sometimes easy. A character sometimes comes with a name in the original inspiration. Sometimes the name comes first and in asking "who is Mister Zee?" the character and story fall into place. Other times it's a struggle. Like when I spent weeks trying to find the right name for my vanity website. It had to encapsulate a good part of who I am and what I wanted to reveal on the site. I was hoping it would reference something important to me. I played with dozens of possibilities and, in the end, it was an inspiration from a sci-fi movie and a conversation with Caliann that led me to a name that referenced one of my all-time favorite movies, and yet would stand alone.

I've spent several hours today working on a name for the new project. I have a spiral notebook page with three columns and side notes. At this point it's single words that may be combined in the future. Some are place names: Hills, Lake, Glen, Falls, Springs, Fields. Some are organizational: Clan, Kindred, Company. Some are dwellings: Castle, Palace, Plantation, Tower. Some are lifestyle related: Collar, Bound, Dominion, Authority.

My best friends when trying to find a name are well-worn copies of a Thesaurus and a Dictionary of Classical, Biblical, and Literary Allusions. I also have a book of goddesses & heroines, a book of animal symbols, and my latin textbook and dictionary. They've been used to find screen names for myself and friends, characters for stories, and website and chat room names. Then, of course, there are books, television, and friends. Skim through a book or surf tv channels and a word will catch my attention...or a phrase...or a character...which will associate into more possibilities. Talking to friends or straight out asking for suggestions always leads my mind in new directions. Eventually, I'll narrow it down to one or two and then pick one...after checking the numerology and lexigrams. Or, more likely, I'll narrow it down to a half dozen and then get an inspiration out of left field that is perfect.

Just the dozens of words I've scribbled so far are fermenting in my mind. Most likely some that aren't in the final title will end up being names of characters or streets, businesses or clubs. And let's not forget that a bdsm soap opera is going to have to address the issues of anonymity, so some characters will need scene names or screen names as well as their actual names. Also, some words are spawning ideas for the history of the town, the character of the local groups, the personalities of potential characters.

It will all gel, in time. At this point in the process, patience is key.

I started this one yesterday...

The writing process always begins with an idea. Sometimes it's a character or a situation or an event and sometimes it's a form. This one is a form. Starting with the shell and trying to fill it may be much harder than starting with content and then finding the appropriate form. I have literally dozens of ideas that may turn into characters and story lines, but at the moment I'm not sure where to start.

Plot, of course, is not as important in a soap opera. At least that's what I told some people in an IRC channel earlier today. I asked them what would be a good name for a BDSM Soap Opera and they asked me a few questions about location, type of story, and plot. I said that the good things about soap operas is that if a particular story doesn't work as well as you hoped, you can easily change it or dump it for something else. Individual story lines may be important, but there really is no overall "plot" to a serial story. I can dump a few story ideas together and see where they go.

Yet, there's only one of me. Televised soap operas have teams of writers to generate story ideas and do the actual scripting. Maybe, someday, this project will evolve into a group effort. It would be ideal in the blog format. Each writer would be responsible for two or three story lines that they would post on their own schedule. The reader would see posts from several different stories in one day, just as you see different scenes interlaced on televised soap operas. The difference is on the blog, you'd know which writer was responsible for each entry! Then I'd be the Head Writer in charge of coordinating the various story arcs and making sure that major events happen regularly tying the story lines together. Every now and then most of the characters should end up at the same dungeon party or bondage cruise. Of course, this blog is where you'd see that evolution, should it actually happen.

I want to start with a name. While soap opera characters and story lines come and go, there needs to be an underlying thread holding it all together: location, tone, occupation, event. Something has to make it a single entity. Once I get a core identity for the project, I can decide which of the dozens of characters and situations swimming around in my head might belong there.

Some of the names tossed out in the IRC channel yesterday:

• As the Wheel Turns
  
• The Young & the Collarless
  
• The Bound & the Beaten
  
• All My Subs
  
• Leather & Lace in the Afternoon
  
• Obedience School
  
• Pain and Pleasure
  
• City of Pain
  
• Lifestyles of the Sadistic & Submissive
  
• Simply SM

I won't tell you which ones came from my mind. That might be too embarrassing.

I will do some more brainstorming on title. Perhaps there will be a location that generates a name. Or maybe the opera will revolve around the members of one family and be named after them. We'll find out together--I'll just know first.