Showing posts with label Writers' Tools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writers' Tools. Show all posts

Writers' Tools: The Beverage

Useful if you're Splurging. Useful if you're not Splurging. A good beverage is an all-round good egg.

Maybe you like tea. Go with that.

Maybe you like coffee. Why not?

Me, I like iced coffee. That one's great for summer.

I go through what I call drink fads. At one point in time I'll have a tendency towards iced coffees. At the same time the next year I'll be drinking chai tea all the time. Well, that's me now.

Whenever I'm writing, I have a chai tea. What I like to do is fire up the computer, open up my manuscript, read over the last few lines and skim the last page or two to get my grounding, and then go off to make my chai. While the kettle's boiling and as I make up the drink, I'm free to think about how I'm going to approach the next page. I love this because then, when I sit down, my mind's already "warmed up", so to speak. I've got an idea of where I'm going and how to start off.

Maybe I don't know how to start, and that's fine as well. I've got a drink to occupy myself with while I think.

One more perk of this little "tool" is the subconscious association I've undoubtedly developed between having a chai tea and actually writing.

Try it out if you want. It might work for you. It might not. We all know how subjective writers are.

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Writers' Tools: The Notepad



When you've been using a computer to type up your manuscript for weeks, months or years, you can get desensitised to the power. You can make it look all pretty and professional, double spacing, page number, novel name and surname at the top right, 1-inch margins. Or maybe you feel like you can write better if what you have in front of you looks like a book. You change the page size and narrow the line-spacing to back to one. You add an italicised title to the top of the page and page numbers to the bottom, change the centring to "justified", format the chapter headings and add acknowledgements, a map, a quote, a copyright page, a title page and a contents page to the front, and an author bio at the back.

I've done most of these things.

But generally I stick to the manuscript style, which I'm sure will come in handy when it comes time for me to enter revisions.

However, all this computerness can become a bit much. There's a little too much power in the works, and you don't get slapped for going back and changing something – and you should get slapped, especially if it means you're working on a single sentence for more than two minutes.

I strongly feel that writing and editing should be kept separate. When you're writing, you should get into a flow and let the scene unfold at your fingertips. Stopping to edit each sentence will stop this flow. Now, this probably isn't a problem for everyone, but if you're a pedant like me, and want to get the sentence just right before moving on – then you need help. I'm going to refer you to Dr. Wicked. For more on his program, see my post here.

Enter the notepad.





















The point of this nifty little thing is to get you away from all that unnecessary power. With great power comes great responsibility. I know I'm not responsible enough to stop myself from going back to edit sentences and paragraphs when I should be getting into the flow. That's not so easy when you can't just backspace and write it again. It actually takes physical effort to cross something out, and that means when you do go back and edit something on your notepad, you probably actually need to. And of course, the point here isn't to be neat and prettyful. You want to get into a flow, and you can help yourself to do that by taking out a notepad and getting rid of those obstacles and the resposibility that comes with power. Save the colours for when you type out what you wrote.

Also, notepads make you feel all writerly!

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Welcome to The Dark Corner of the Mind. My name is Ryan Sullivan and my aim with this blog is to help others with their own writing, as well as to make note of some of my own writing endeavours.

Here at The Dark Corner, Real Life is both our best friend and our worst enemy. Look to him for inspiration, but don't let him get in the way too much.

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