Small Questions: Making Sausage
It is time for another exciting installment of small questions. Specifically, let’s discuss the packaging of sausages. Now I’ve seen sausage being made, and when it comes out of the machine, it differs from how it looks when you purchase it. For example, when you look at the sausage that you buy from a major distributor, all the sausages in the package are curved. So, why are the sausages curved? Is this the natural state of the pig intestines (casings) and the sausage eventually bends to this basic structure or is something else at play?
In this case, I think I have the answer – marketing. If the sausages were straight, the package would be smaller. If one of the competitors had a package with the same amount of meat in it, but the sausages were curved, the package would have to be bigger to accommodate the different form. Thus, an illusion is created. Your eye sees something larger and you assume you get more for the same price, but you could read the packages and know that they contain the same amount of food. Who knows, I could be wrong.
As always, Theodore asking the tough questions.
Read MoreHow I Manipulate Myself
My arms are killing me, so, I haven’t written new fiction in two weeks. A little bit ago, I talked about how I wrote three short stories in a week. I’ve been editing and revising my work since I can’t write for extended periods of time. However, I found it fascinating how I manipulate myself in order to write certain feelings. I had to do this heavily for one of the pieces I wrote and there are two things I will do in order to achieve the feelings necessary to write a character.
The first one is simple, I think about the situation that I’ve put a character in and then I become that character. I flood myself with the emotions. So, if a character loses a loved one, I think of someone I love, close my eyes, and imagine they are dead. I run through the interactions I would make with others and how I would behave. I drive myself to actually crying, and then, I write. My mind is back to what it was before the exercise, that way I can write, but I have created a pool of emotions to drag into my piece.
The second way is more of a high level overview. If I am going to write a sad piece, I don’t need the emotions to be there, but I need the text to be representative of sadness. This is done through vocabulary choices and other techniques, but I begin the process before I even start writing. During the initial phases, I pull an acoustic album and play it. I will find albums that have the “vibe” needed to imbue me with the necessary tone. Then, I will start writing. After about twenty minutes, the needle will retract and I will be left in silence. I won’t notice the lack of music, but I will carry those tracks through me as I keep writing. Then, after I take a break, I turn it back on so I can get back into the right mindset. It allows me to take breaks but never lose the tone of my pieces.
I’m sure I manipulate myself in other ways, but those are two ways I consciously modify my mind’s state.
Read MoreA Week of Productivity
Over the last seven days, I’ve written three short stories that comes to a total of roughly 15,000 words. Some of these have working titles, but the three pieces are: Two Brains ~7,000 words, Filling Gaps 3,399 exactly (it is for a competition that only allows 3,400 words), and Multiplying Secrets ~5,000 words. All three are different than my traditional short fiction, due to the fact that I applied my manuscript writing style to them. This means, each one was heavily outlined, had a specific flow, and had research behind it. A traditional short story for me was a way to workout different mechanisms, technique, and narration to better my manuscripts. After four years of writing short stories with their goal of being experimentation, I have decided to apply what I’ve learned to the next batch and see what I can get published. All three are strong and have been sent out to trusted sources for review. One, Two Brains, is actually in the universe of my some of my manuscripts and is mostly prepped to be sent to a magazine. The other two are still going through the “chute” to be reviewed, commented on, and edited.
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