Day Nine: Igniting Passion

An exciting day of writing today, as my main character had her first kiss.  Of course, she then singed the object of her affections, but, well, that’s why it’s called the heat of passion, right?  It’s also been exciting this week because I’ve reached the point, as I do every year, when I become surprised at how much I’ve written.  Sure, the number goes up, but it takes a little while before I start scrolling back and realizing, I wrote all that?  It’s always a welcome feeling.

After reading some fellow NaNo bloggers last night, I thought that instead of continuing to drone on about my fairly arbitrary word count, I might instead take some time to share some insight into my writing process.

Tonight, I’ll begin with my method of entering the words.

I grew up on computers – yes, even back before they were cool – so I’ve been typing for a long time.  Considering I also don’t like my handwriting, writing stories on a computer has only been quite natural.

During NaNoWriMo 2007, however, I ended up hand writing probably at least half of my word count into a spiral notebook.  At the time, I had a job that started at 9:00 but to which I arrived at 8:00, so it didn’t take me long to take full advantage of the extra time at a nearby coffee shop.

I have to admit that in a way, it was fun.  I enjoy typing and didn’t mind having to write the words twice to transcribe it at the end of the day.  Although there were a number of scratched-out words and lines/phrases scribbled in the margins, it came out fairly smoothly, and perhaps the permanence of such a method of writing, or the longer delay between thought and word, allowed it to flow better the first time around.  I was also able to do things such as brainstorm on page, jotting down notes and drawing lines to make connections to things, which turned out to be just what I needed late in the month.

The year after that, I had since bought a 2 GB flash drive, which I have been using for writing ever since.  It allowed me to work on my story during my lunch break at what was then my new job.  Last year, I gave myself an early birthday present of a netbook.  I don’t travel much, and I don’t take it with me much, either, but it’s nice to be able to sit elsewhere in our condo to write, as the computer room where my desktop resides has some bad feng shui or something.  For some reason, it’s easier not to get distracted writing on the netbook, and I certainly enjoy the open space of the living room and the ability to change positions when I have to, so it has been almost exclusively my place for writing this year.

I did try to use another spiral-bound notebook one year, due to the success I had with my first NaNoWriMo, but it just didn’t happen.  Although, considering the success of that story, perhaps I was on to something back then.  Still, there’s something therapeutic about the sound of the keys tapping, and it’s certainly hard to go back now.