Rambling Writing Thread

[TiggyD]

A thread to talk about things to do with writing that you don't think merit a whole thread on their own.

Written a plan for my latest children's book. It ends with "Alice takes the donkey through the nursery back to the field via ingenious method.".

Hmm

Wonder what the ingenious method is? Feel I've kind of painted myself into a corner. I'll pop it on a back burner and maybe something will occur to me over Santamas.

Sledge down the stairs?

I was thinking of the hero covering it with a table cloth and a tea set and pretending it's a table.

That would work.
When you say nursery do you mean something Victorian or a contemporary childcare setting?
Or you could put a hi vis jacket on the donkey and disguise it as a meter reader.

I have bought myself a new toy from EBay - it's an ancient Alphasmart word processor and I don't want to give it its own thread in case I never use it.
The idea is to use it for the kind of first drafts I normally do in notebooks, only faster, because I can type 100 wpm but can't write that fast.

My granddad tried one of those and decided he preferred his very old typewriter. The person in the shop couldn't believe it when he took it back and said he preferred it. They were almost speechless and then said:
"But...but...but... you can correct mistakes on here."
My granddad twinkled at him and leant forward in his wheelchair.
"Young man," he said, "have you never come across an eraser?"

We loved playing on his typewriter though. It had a very satisfying clunk when you pressed the keys.

It's a modern nursery Countess.

Why is a word processor better than a computer?

It's not, it's worse, that is the point...

Light, portable, cost me £25 including postage, not connected to Internet, no games not even Minesweeper, but a proper comfortable keyboard. Also astonishing battery life because it uses so little power.

They stopped making these a few years ago for obvious reasons, and hilariously, a hipster company has recently crowd-funded something that does the same job except that it saves to the Cloud. Priced $500.

It won't be any use for anything beyond the first draft because it's no good for editing, but for curling up in an armchair and telling myself stories without the temptation to just check Facebook one more time, it's a beauty.

(Probably not worth having for picture books, more for novel-length stuff where the extra speed from typing rather than writing can come in handy.)

Get a load of that stylish in 1999 translucent green plastic.

I've got an alphasmart I take camping. Brill for first drafts

Solved my ingenious solution problem. The staff are all looking for a donkey in the nursery, so the clever girl paints it like a zebra. The staff see it but it isn't what they're looking for so they let it pass... Until they realise that a zebra in nursery is just as bad.

I can see dd2 trying that sort of thing.

I can see the point of that typewriter. Am at my parents so have printed my story out to edit while am here. Think that would work better.

I like the zebra solution very much. And in a nursery there would be plenty of painting stuff lying around, so you could.

Oh fabulous, reminds me of the one I had at uni and typed all my very last minute essays on.

Dh has brought me Scrivener for Christmas, will this be rather wonderful or very time wasting with all its thousands of capabilities? I'm looking forward to trying something different to the very annoying Ms Word.

I like the zebra solution!

First draft done. Turned out very good I think.

Another one to be started. Very few words. Need to think of names for a mouse, snake, and tortoise. I'm thinking of Erik for the snake.

Delta for the tortoise? We had one when we were children by that name until it ran away.

At the moment it's Jenny, Erik, and Doug. That might change though.

Doug is a mole's name surely?

What about George in honour of the Blue Peter tortoise? Or Speedy, Flash, Lightening, etc...

Settled with Doug. I was going to call him Lazy so the characters were Jen, Erik and Lazy. No idea on the title of the story. I suppose "Feelings" or something would make more sense.

A Jen, Erik, And Doug book.

That's the sort of book the children loved... and asked to be read over and over again until I hated.

One comment on the names: Would it be better to have a name that is easy phonics rather than Doug? Jan and Erik are quite easy phonetically, I'm not sure Doug is. I can see it as a book children who are reading a little might enjoy going through.