19 Aug 2009, 8:58 pm
19 Aug 2009, 9:38 pm
20 Aug 2009, 10:34 pm
21 Aug 2009, 6:44 am
21 Aug 2009, 8:56 am
I was thinking more about the categories of things that many of us with AS get into. And I find the pattern interesting. Since it is a popular AS trait to not see the bigger picture, I would like to see how many of the rest of you have collected like I have. I will add some more of my AS collections.
Pinewood Derby Cars (up thru the early 1970s because I like the narrow wheels and longer wheelbase)---I have a dining table filled with them that I have bought off of the internet. Have I raced them? No. Will I race them? Probably not.
Airstream Campers (vintage)---well...I have one...but I can't reasonably collecting more than one. I am obsessed with vintage Airstream campers because of the appeal of the shape of these earlier ones as compared to the more squarish shape of the ones today. So I bought a 1961 Airstream in the summer of 2004. I have had it for 5 years now. I have had carpeting put in, and the upholstery redone on the couch. How many nights have I stayed in it so far? 0. That's right, I have never stayed the night in this camper. The purpose of me acquiring it was for different reasons---not the bigger picture as NTs do---to use it for what it is.
Cameras---I am fascinated by them, but not for the photography. I am fascinated by the mechanics and shapes of them. I finally acquired my prize camera earlier this year---a Rolleiflex twin lens reflex. The guy I bought if from explained how to operate it. Did I care? Only somewhat. How many pictures have I taken with it? 0. That's right, I will probably never use it.
Tents---I amassed a large collection of these as a child. I still buy one on occasion today. As a child I would set them up in the yard in straight lines---from one end of the yard to the other. Whereas the NT child would set up one tent and spend a night or so in one, I would have several set up in a straight line, and not necessarily spend a night in them. I would usually take them down before dark. I always had a particular fascination with the green (it had to be green) Eureka (or other brand) A-frame two-person tent with aluminum frame. As a child, I used to look at this particular A-frame tent in the J.C Penny's catalog for hours on end while swinging in my grandparents' front porch swing on Sunday afternoons. That was a ritual of mine---every Sunday afternoon after dinner.
Well, I have others, but this gives you an idea of the way the AS mind can work. We often collect categories of information in an unusual way. And this unusual way is often without using the collections as others would. And these collections aren't always ones that NTs get into. One of my sons got extremely interested in vacuum cleaners as a child, and at the age of 2 or 3, had his professional portraits done with a vacuum cleaner. Today, does my son help us vacuum the house? 
. Nope, are you kidding.
I am anxious to hear what some of the rest of my fellow AS people collected and didn't necessarily put to use.
Now, for the next part of this:
The AS criteria talks about collecting categories of information that would be abnormal in intensity. Let's go on with this here and see what you did.
As a child I would take out my huge collection of house plan books and begin categorizing the houses according to different things. I would use notebooks and write down the house plan numbers in them in specific orders---and write out dimensions of rooms, or foundation sizes. Today, there are lots of notebooks in my parents' basement with these categorizing rituals I did. I also did this with motels, boats, model rockets, roller coasters, etc. It was always the same thing---categorizing under headings I would make---notebook after notebook.
21 Aug 2009, 9:19 am
23 Aug 2009, 11:09 pm
Sorry I didn't reply for the past few days. I had to move in to my college dorm for the first time and go to a camp full of college people. Being in camp was fun, but oh the socializing. When a group of people talked I wanted to join in but didin't know how. When someone did small talk to me I had said a reply but didn't continue the conversation. And when I did continue the conversation it mstly had to do with college or academics. In other words, an intellectual conversation.
Well all's not bad at least. I made some new friends, especially this one guy. He's smart (well, he likes to read a lot), and when we talk it's usually intellectual conversations. He wants to write novels too, but he's majoring in biology; to him, writing is a hobby. When he told me the stories he wanted to write they had much depth and meaning to them. Actually, he gave me quotes too and recommendations on which books to read for research for my saga when I told him my idea. He's a really inspirational guy. In fact, it's because of him I had to change my theme for my saga.
Speaking of themes for my saga, besides changing it, I now want to put it in a political manner. I mean, it's still fantasy, but I want more of a theme of political corruptness, or at least something political if I think about it. Maybe for each book a different theme will be presented, like freedom, genocide, etc. An each book I can put a different type of government like communism, democracy, totalitarian, etc. I think it'll make the book more powerful; however, I want to show how it applies to today.
Well, back to research. I got The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli and The Communist Manifesto and Other Revolutionary Writings as research into politics. Even though some works of the latter isn't complete, it can still be useful as what people thought of the time and the conditions of people. I think I'm going to get The Republic by Plato and some writings by Henry David Thoreau (sorry if I spelled his name incorrectly. Even if he's not writing about politics, I could use his writings for the idea of a utopia.)
As for fiction, I'm thinking of buying, or checking out at least, A Game of Thrones by R. R. Martin. This is one of those books my friend recommended me. He says it has lots of politics in their, so I can use that saga to see how the author weaved politics into the novels.
As for now I'm in College, though classes don't sart until August 31. Well, the faculty and other upperclassmen are helping us freshmen get used to college life and classes. One of the tips they give out all the time is to be involved. I think it's easy for an NT, but it might be hard for an autistic because of our special interests. Then again, we can join clubs in our special interests.
Today was the first day I came into the Autism Kelly Program, here in the south. They'll help me and the other autistics with the assignments and social life and coping with our symptoms. They don't force you to do things normal people do like ABA therapy. All week we're supposed to do activities. I didn't talk to the other autistics, but I did observe them since I never met other autistic people except one (that was only for a brief time.)
I hope great things happen in college.
If you can think of any other writings on politics or society that would help me in my saga feel free to recommend some to me.
Until next time! 
24 Aug 2009, 9:45 am
25 Aug 2009, 7:55 pm
Here's something I've wrote to someone to a fellow member about her writing problem:
I have spent much, much time and heavy thought developing this novel, trying to create an "original" story, based on the experience of personal, local, international and historical events. What makes me really crazy is that, often, a large part part of (or whole of) the themes, plots, settings and characters that I've created independantly have already been done by another person or production, and is part of a well known, popular or cult book, comic , movie or TV serial, without my prior knowledge. That is, until I stumble upon it unwittingly upon the internet.
I curse myself for wasting time on this "thought process", knowing that I would have been better off jerking off. I then put aside the drawing or manuscript that I had been working on (in some box never to be seen again), and start afresh.
I make more "new" ideas on a story, and they're amazing. Good, great, woo hoo! And then I find out that these ideas have already been used by another popular sci-fi story. Again. And the cycle repeats itself.
Some of you must be thinking why I am worrying about independently making plots, characters and themes that are vaguely similar, more or less, to what is already out there in literature, comics and the small and big screen. There are three (3).
1) Ego.
I spend up to many months creating what seems to be amazing an new ideas to write. It totally screws me to find that someone else has already made up that idea, and has distributed it in commercial quantities. For me, this is the purpose of writing a story - to create original ideas, based on current, and possible future, dilemas that are to be placed upon human society, from science, technology and nature - for myself and others to think and poder upon.
2) Reader reaction.
If I create something that I find is "interesting", "original" and "new", and the readers are already aware of something that uses very similar - or the same - ideas, they probably won't appreciate the story, cover it with labels ( ie. "ehhww, this character's a John Crichton clone", "this setting's from such-and-such a Planetes episode"; "that plot's an Asimov rip-off!", etc), and in general will find it boring or a stink to read.
3) Copyright.
Nothing's new anymore, is it? So why not copy it as "inspiration"?
Not when big business and big money is involved! I have done some research on plagiarism in non-fiction. If you take a plot, character (or a near-exact profile of a character) or setting from another peice of work to add it to your own, you may find yourself being scheduled to an appointment with the big-wigs, to be sued for royalties and loss of income from jealous writers and money-hungry media corporations.
This is something with which I would never want to do. However I am paranoid of the following situation: it is extremely rare, but still possible, for a writer or producer to be charged with plagiarism from another writer or producer, for a work to which they are not aware of, if the two works are close enough to each other. The writer or producer may be accused of something known as "unintentional plagiarism", or plagiarism due to ignorance and sloppiness, and it can be very hard for the accused writer or producer to disprove it.
One of two things may have occured for this situation to occur, if the accused party is innocent: The writer/producer may have read or seen the other work in question a long while ago, and has forgotten it, but at the same time has unconsciously recalled much of the story and has subsequently 'imprinted' it into his/her own story. Scary stuff. I think there is even a medical term for this phenomonon - but it makes you wonder whether your thoughts are really your own!
The alternative is, that both writers/producers, in a twist of fate, have had a similar streams of thought or experience, in order to create plots, themes and characters thatt are nearly the same, at similar points in time, independently. This is similar to the phenomenom encountered in science or medicine where two scientists (ie Newton/Leibniz) or doctors (ie Kanner/Asperger) discover the same thing at similar points in time, independently.
Yeah, things can get REAL complicated when money and ownership of ideas are involved.
My answer:
Here's a tip that helps me when someone already wrote something before me: Take a theme, concept, or story and use a variation of it.
Let's take Eragon for instance (even though I despise it for ripping off Star Wars and many other great works.) Maybe instead of having the Varden and Empire fight for Eragon, have a group of females and a group of males battle each other by doing a scavenger hunt in a city, equip them with water guns (or wooden swords if you like) and have them shoot each other or duel when one player meets another player. Make up the game rules (i.e. how many points the players gain if they find the each item, what item and how many points do they lose if the other player wins their item during a duel, what power-up does each item grant the user, etc.) Tell it in either one of the males or females perspective. Then let a ruby be Eragon. The player who obtains Eragon get's a huge number of points. In the end let the team who has the most points win. You don't use the same plot as Eragon or Star Wars. Don't use the same character's either, though you can use stock characters if you want too.
I can give you others:
The Great Gatsby: instead of having one guy trying to woo a woman, have it set in biblical times where a man tries to search for a treasure, finds it, but ultimately gets robbed by another man then later gets smote by God because his wife having an affair with another guy.
A Tale of Two Cities: instead of having the story taking place of the French Revolution and Sydney Carton sacrificing his life to save Lucy, have a woman from the future go to the the 22nd century during World War III and sacrifice her life to save her ancestor killed in the war to expand her family tree.
Macbeth: instead of having a Thane killing the Duncan and become king and later die because of his corruption, have a peasant girl steal the company from the CEO and scandalize people until finally one of the people blows the whistle (tell on the company) and gets her removed.
As you can see, all we did was took a story, twisted it into a variation of it, and there we go--an original story. Note we just used the theme or concept behind Eragon and the other stories. Noticing on the variation was the easy part, using your imagination to create a variation takes some more work, but it's worth it.
One thing to make sure of: although this method seems to be derivative and lack originality, it doesn't. Sometimes I use this method when I'm having trouble figuring out what story to write. Make the characters your own.
I guess the best place to make a variation of a concept or theme is to use Grimm's Fairy Tales or Hans Christian Andersen's Complete Fairy Tales and Stories. Since there's a lot of stories, concepts, and themes in both books, I think it can suit you. Or course, you can do a parody of theses stories, but it takes a lot of wit to do that. Or you can do what ifs. Like What if Little Red Riding hood, instead of bringing goodies, was bringing a pack of chemicals to her grandma's house to destroy the forest for the woodcutter to use for fire and the wolf was the only one who can stop her? Or what if the witch was a good witch after all and fattened Hansel just opened the oven just to cook her chicken when she actually wanted to take him to a magical place where aging stopped and fun lasted an eternity. Something like taht can work for your stories. No one would think of doing that.
So you see, taking a theme actually creates a highly original story. You just took the story's concept or theme and made it your own. TO me, it's easier to make stories by this method than making it form scratch because making it from scratch you have to create a concept, and how many concepts can you think at one time? Also when you read a story with a different concept you have a concept added to your inventory.
pakled wrote:
I think that makes a lot of sense, pakled. There's one more thin that can make your work your own--your voice. Only by being yourself will you have the courage to write a story like no one else.
Hope this helps!
Of course, this is just a tip.
25 Aug 2009, 8:04 pm
25 Aug 2009, 8:24 pm
25 Aug 2009, 8:34 pm
25 Aug 2009, 10:05 pm
26 Aug 2009, 9:04 pm
27 Aug 2009, 10:34 am
27 Aug 2009, 10:39 am
That sounds great Batz, you don't have to worry about me stealing your ideas 
---oh sorry 
.
Honestly, for me right now if I were in your position in college, I would do the anthology of poetry. That sounds like fun. I can share a poem with you if you like.
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