I have a confession to make. I know computers are meant to make life easier, and sometimes they do, but I love to write my very rough first draft longhand, with a pen and an exercise book.
Many of you will now be cringing and wondering what on Earth would drive a writer to such a hellish place. Surely the days of ink stained fingers and pages and pages of scrawling handwriting are long gone, replaced by the crispness of 12 point Times New Roman with one inch margins.
And that’s the point. Something about writing, and by this I mean the creative part when I first meet the characters and explore their world, on the computer sucks the fun out of it and makes it serious. The creative part of my brain shuts down and goes oh its work time. On paper it’s fun. I jot notes, do random world building, and build scenes that I then squish together into a story.
However when I have my first draft done, typing it into the computer is fun. I’m not worried about character goals, motivations or even how they speak. That’s all there, all I have to do it make the words sparkle.
And yes, I wrote this blog on paper first.
Shona
