Blogflog - Do I write my books Long Hand?

[blogfloggery.livejournal.com]

Link: Do I write my books Long Hand?
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.

I wrote 6 pages on Affliction today. Got up to get fresh tea & had a brand new idea. Made note of it in my iPhone, because I had close at hand, if you don’t write ideas you forget them. No, really, you do. You forget them faster & more completely if you think, “This is such a great idea, I’ll never forget it.” You are now doomed to forget this idea instantly, unless you write it down.

So, I made a note & went about my day. Then later on couch resting since I’m still fighting a cold, I decided to buy my holiday ring tone from iTunes. (For those who will ask, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch) I also remembered the note I’d made earlier. I read it over liked it & brought it up on my iPad which was handy.

I now have a page of a brand new short story. All because I wrote down the idea as it came, so I wouldn’t forget & because I admit that modern technology makes it amazingly easy to share ideas over different devices. I’m actually doing most of my notes & ideas on my iPhone, or sticky notes, & starting a lot of stories & even books on the iPad. Main computer is a PC & is for main books, or once it gets over a certain page count & I know this book is actually taking off.

I’ll finish Affliction first, but I have this short story & a novelette started on my iPad. So for those who ask, if I wrote long hand, um, no, technology rocks my muse & me.

Comments

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

I'm sure her publishers are soooo very happy to hear that she isn't dilligently working on Affliction. :P

Solid advice about writing down ideas as you have them, but I carry small notebooks around for just that purpose. I'm less likely to lose them than sticky notes, which end up in a pocket in the washing machine without fail. This may explain what happened to many of LKH's plot threads. Like all of them.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

But she wrote SIX PAGES! What more do you WANT from her? She is fighting a COLD! Her MUSE is SPEAKING a DIFFERENT TONGUE! on various Apple (TM) products, get them at your local Apple (TM) store!:D:D:D

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

*rubs thumb and forefinger together* I will show my sympathy for her by playing the world's smallest violin. XD

I think what's actually been happening is that her muse has been tortured so much and so often that the muse has started spewing gibberish in a last ditch effort to make it stop and let LKH find some other idea to run into the ground.

[othellia.livejournal.com]

She is fighting a COLD!

As someone who's also currently fighting a cold, I do have a bit of sympathy for her on that.

But only a bit, since I then realized I work part-time and still get my four hours of work in before I go home, collapse, and sleep the rest of the day. And I expect it's exponentially harder for writers who have unrelated full-time jobs.

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

One whole page of one short story?! Why, her output is nothing short of miraculous.

[hellfire82.livejournal.com]

well, she did say it was short....

[plastraa.livejournal.com]

^ Both of you up there just made me lol!

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Eh, not much to say on this except I feel like she could have said the same thing in a lot less words. And the use of the '&' symbol in place of the actual word is bugging me.

Glad to see she's nicely over her ~technophobia~ though I guess.

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

You know, I actually have a pretty good memory for story ideas. Unless it's pretty elaborate, I don't need to write it down. I've realized over time that I'm the minority in this. XD

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Haha, yeah, I'm like LKH (oh god never though It'd type that) in that if I don't write it down, I am DEFINITELY going to forget it. Unlike LKH seems to,though, I never assumed everyone else was ( I notice she says "you will forget it" and not "I will forget it" in this entry) and that it was probably different for everyone. Lucky you! ;D

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

You lucky person you! :)

[zombiegoat.livejournal.com]

If an idea is good enough, it will keep over time. If not, it self-destructs like one of the cassettes in Mission Impossible, and thankfully so. Having a record of bad ideas lying around your writing area is a guaranteed buzzkill.

[the-mome-wrath.livejournal.com]

Isn't this the second time she's talked about a brand new story idea? I think on some level she realizes that she's written the series into the ground and needs to work on something new.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

Around about April or May when she was supposed to be writing the Merry book she was talking about starting on a new character idea. I'm thinking that's what the novelette she has on her iPad is.

[othellia.livejournal.com]

What I don't understand is that she often goes on about how her worlds are so rich and detailed. So why not create a new character in the same world? New people, new stories, same now-expanded universe.

I do it all the time, which is probably how I've managed to keep almost all my stories structured into two overarching main canons... plus their alternate universes whenever a "what if" pops into my head.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Oh man, that's a great idea! Especially since there's so much unexplored in the Anitaverse!

[plastraa.livejournal.com]

If there were other series in the verse, it would make ret-conning a bit harder. Less easy to hand wave away stuff if it's in multiple places in canon. Not that I think that would bother LKH or anything.

I would love to see other authors playing in her universe.