Showing posts with label software. Show all posts
Showing posts with label software. Show all posts

Thursday, 16 November 2017

Collecting Inspiration

pencil and blue notebook on red background
I've started carrying around a little notebook in which to gather thoughts, ideas and little snippets of overheard conversation. I'd like to say this is inspiring me and, in a way, it is. I have already filled three pages, plus an extra half-page of misquotes and mispronunciations I'm collecting for a character in the novel I'm currently working on.
The advantage of using a little book like this is that I feel (and I know this is idealistic) more connected to the ideas if I'm writing them down with a pen. I recall these ideas more easily than ones I stick into OneNote.
Now, I'm not saying OneNote (and Evernote, although I personally feel more at home in the Microsoft offering) isn't a useful tool: If I feel inspired while I have my phone in my hand I can start a new note with the idea as the title; later I can come back and stack additions and related inspiration to that note. With a physical notebook, I have to flip pages to connect inspirations and am finding myself transferring those to OneNote anyway.
flashing low battery icon
NOOOOOOOOooooo......
But the notebook also gives me a little reassurance. The notebook's batteries won't run out. It's memory won't get corrupted. The physical act of writing an idea out ensures that I actually do it, rather than having the nebulous idea of "I must put that in OneNote", and then not doing it.
This gives me a moment to reflect on whether writing long hand would connect me to what I'm writing also. If I were to write out my work longhand, would a connection to that work make it easier or harder to build the story? Would I be less inclined to change a story I had invested so much in? Would I be more inclined to think about what I'm writing and write a better story to begin with?
I think, for my next competition entry, I may write a long hand short story and see how it works out in the first draft.