Every so often, I go on a binge of trying out new and different writing tools (usually when I am feeling stuck, out of a totally unreasonable conviction that somewhere out there is a gadget or a program that will make some aspect of writing easier, more fun, or more appealing). I define “tool” very broadly – everything from blank books and pencils to high-end software demos.
Having just gone through the latest such spree, I thought I’d share some of my tests. Let’s start with the simple stuff: pens.
There are a humungous number of pens out there: stick pens, ball point, gel pens, razor-tip, felt-tip, roller-balls, cartridge pens, fountain pens, calligraphy pens, dipping pens (which covers metal, glass, and super-old-fashioned quills) … and that doesn’t even get into different tip sizes and ink colors. Each type has a slightly different feel in the hand, and a slightly different feel when writing, and a slightly different look to the writing.
Most of the time, I’m fine with a cheap gel pen; I like how it feels to write with them and they’re easy to replace when I need a new one to write grocery lists. Every now and then, though, I want to indulge in something fancier for a page or two – usually a fountain pen or cool looking roller-ball, or even one of the glass dipping pens someone gave me (more for decorative value than usefulness). The fountain pen and dipping pens are fun for a bit, and certainly get me in the mood to write something historical, but dipping and refilling take long enough that I usually put them down fairly quickly, and by the time I pick them up again, I have to buy more ink because the jar I was using has completely dried up in the interim. Mileage, of course, varies.
Paper comes next. Here, too, there’s a vast number of choices, from line or unlined loose-leaf paper you can file or put in a ring binder, to spiral-bound notebooks in all sorts of sizes, shapes, colors, and quality, right on up to hardbound blank books (or, if you’re feeling really luxurious, leather bound ones) intended for journaling. I like to have a small spiral-bound notebook in my purse to use on the fly, ring binders litter my office in an attempt to keep my notes and scribbled-up printouts in order, and I have several sizes of yellow pads and steno notebooks for writing errand lists and catching ideas.
And then there are the blank books. I have several, including one that’s so nice I’m afraid to write in it. People keep giving them to me, I suppose on the theory that all writers journal. I don’t journal regularly. The only times I’ve kept a journal have been short periods (one week to three months) when a) I was traveling and wanted to record EVERYTHING, or b) when there was some really major change happening in my life (the last time was during a protracted move). I like the act of writing in a nice blank book; I just usually don’t have much to say. I use them for notes, ideas, experiments, and a huge mish-mash of stuff that I want to keep in more permanent form than a scribble on a Post-It Note, but don’t need in a computer-accessible form.
The nice thing about a good pen and paper is that a it takes a lot longer to run out of ink than to run out of battery charge when you’re out and about. Also, you won’t suddenly lose or corrupt your entire writing file if there is a sudden current fluctuation. And there’s something about the kinesthetics of writing with a pen on paper that typing just can’t match, even if it is faster. In theory, a pen and some paper is all one really needs in order to write, but I confess I’d be rather cross if I were limited to only those tools.
There are other things that are not-exactly-for-writing, but that I find exceedingly useful as a writer. At the top of the list is my voice recorder (my cell phone is ancient, stupid rather than smart, and does not make voice recordings), which I keep in the car on long driving trips. I get a lot of ideas while driving; the recorder allows me to catch them without pulling over. And no, they’re not all writing ideas – things like “check out the megabus route,” “backup the computer,” and “get sewing machine fixed” are mixed in along with “X and D had serious childhood rivalry – motivation for D’s plot!” and “R hiding vampires in attic; discover old journals with critical info.” The trick is to type up the list as soon as I get where I’m going (or the next day, at the latest) and sort everything according to whether it’s a writing idea or a to-do.
Possibly the oddest and most useful software I’ve run across is the coffeetivity web site, which reproduces the faint ambient noise of different coffee shops at different times of the day (as long as you’re connected to the Internet), so I can pretend I’m sitting in one writing without actually having to drive somewhere and buy $3.50 worth of drinks every hour for the privilege.
There’s also an interesting site called IDoneThis. You sign up, and every day at six in the evening (or whenever you tell it), it sends you an email that says “Hi! What did you do today?” (You can change the wording to whatever you want, including “Yo! Done any WRITING today?”) You reply to the email with whatever you did, and it saves it somewhere. After a few days, it starts telling you what you did yesterday, then a week ago and a month ago. It is somehow much more motivating for me to get an email that says “What did you do today? Get any writing in?” than to have a calendar reminder pop up a “time to write” message, even though I know the email is just more software. I have it set for 6 p.m. so that if I haven’t done anything, I can still squeeze in some writing and send it back with “I wrote 200 words” at least. The site is meant for teams working on a project, so everyone can see where everyone else on the team is with their part of the job, but there’s a free “personal” one if you look closely.
This brings me to more writing-specific software, which I arbitrarily divide into two categories: planning/development and actual writing (even though most software intended for creative writers has elements of both, these days). I’m going to deal with these in reverse order, starting next post.
I’m am repeatedly surprised (though you think I would have learnt by now) by the number of authors I follow who write using pens. My writing process is antithetical to longhand, seeing as, likely as not, I will begin a sentence and halfway through decide a better way to word it, finish it in the new version, then go back and rewrite the beginning so it melds nicely. On a computer screen, the evidence is neatly eradicated; on a piece of paper, it would look like a particularly snotty ink sneeze. (I frankly cannot comprehend how I wrote using a typewriter. My mind must have worked very differently then.)
I write longhand when I’m traveling — I do own a laptop, but its keyboard sucks sharp flinty rocks, and I spend as much time correcting typos afterwards as I do composing sentences.
So I write on binder paper, and at the bottom of the first page I get an idea for something that should have gone in before, so I put it in somewhere else (margin, back of page, totally different page) and link to it by letters of the Greek alphabet, sometimes embellished with arrows pointing in different directions.
By the time I get home, the whole thing looks like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. The trick is to get it transcribed while I still have a clear idea of what goes where AND can still read my own handwriting, which also sucks sharp flinty rocks.
Ooo…. you MAY have just fixed my current writing issue! I have a (healing) shoulder injury that is making typing for long periods impossible. Can’t use one hand to type. And having pain shut down your writing session JUST when you got the idea pump primed is very discouraging.
But long hand is a one-handed affair! And pen means I will be forced to continue and not stop to cross stuff out constantly.
I never go anywhere without a small notebook and pen in my back pocket. It was the first sign of anyone but me ever taking my writing seriously when my housemate, sick of me borrowing paper and pen from her purse, stopped at a 7-11 and bought me a notepad and a cheap Bic. 😉
There’s usually a spare mp3 player set to voice-record in the car, especially on long trips. I should get something better, because the indicator for whether it’s started recording is very hard to see (not good while driving). But you use what you’ve got, and the microphone is good enough to pick up my voice and not much car noise.
I also keep a regular-size notepad by the bed, for those middle-of-the-night inspirations. I keep a NASA “space pen” with it, so I don’t have to worry about what angle I’m holding the pen at during a long scribble.
I look at those beautiful blank books in the stores and always want to get one and write a novel in it, set in an exotic location suitable to the cover. But given the proliferation of notes, snippets, and so on that accumulates around any such project (and how much slower I write than type), I suspect it would not be a net benefit to my productivity.