Woow that is surely a lot! It must look so cool! Hmm I think i want to try different coloured ink... do they sell it for every brand of fountain pen? I only ever had blue
Ah - watch out for that colored ink! it can fade - or maybe they make better ink nowadays. My mother had this wonderful colored pen set which she let me use when I was in fifth grade. A long, long time ago. I had a tempermental teacher at the time so I punished him by writing all my homework in banana yellow which made it next to invisible. It was quite funny watching him hold my notebook up the light trying to angle it just so... - I was mean. lol. As for my writers equiptment - I use any scrap of paper that's handy. Often when I'm on the go, I get a great line and have to scribble it down. But for the most part I rattle away on my computer.
I have my hand dandy notebook that I mark words I have never heard of before in. I use Microsoft Word 2013. I use all white paper and doodle ideas down either in words or as a drawing. And now that I use word so much, I usually only write on my computer. So yeah, computers FTW
I use a laptop or a notebook. Depends on my mood I guess. Honestly it doesn't make a difference, I get the same amount of work accomplished.
it pretty much does cover the lot, and if you get a converter cartridge for a fountain pen, you can get any ink in any colour (within reason as to whats available)
Do you have a set time of day or an amount of time or pages per day? How do you schedule yourself so you aren't sitting there thinking you need to be doing something else? I really try to set myself a daily goal of time so that even if I only get one page done, I have two hours work done. I find as I get into the routine it gets easier to handle.
Thanks to my job, I have long periods of time off. It is during these times that I generally write. When I don't have time off, I wait for my wife to pass out, and then write. When she's awake I'm too tempted to bounce ideas off of her. Once i get barreling into a story, I find myself wanting to devote longer hours to it. I don't set a limit though, because sometimes you'll find yourself more productive than at other times.
I write when everybody's in bed, usually from about 11 and finish when I can't see the screen anymore. The last 500 words is usually crap but I'll fix it tomorrow night.
Easy for me, I'm self employed and I'd rather write than work. My problem is forcing myself to work (she said staring at the stack of unsent invoices on the desk). But when I can't get any words on the page I shift into research mode. I also go on and off the forum for brief interruptions. It's strange but writing is brain tiring, while posting here is like working a jigsaw puzzle, sort of not brain stressing.
I can never seem to stick to a schedule of writing, especially when mine is always so busy and unpredictable. So I try to write for at least an hour a day whenever I get the chance, sometimes, if I have the time, that hour turns into two or three (or more). I'm starting to get where I'm carrying paper with me all the time and a pencil so that anytime I get an idea or the urge to write, I just write. It seems to work out a bit better, though the writing may not be the best.
It depends if I have any time and I'm in the mood. Some days I am more in the mood to write than other days.
I don't have a set amount of pages or words to write per day, but I do get on with it. Just realise that if you really want to write and want to do it as a career or a serious hobby, you've got to realise that there is nothing more important than your writing, to a point.
I shoot for 1K words a day, but I'm not disappointed if I don't make it. As long as I like what I've written and have a substantial amount
nope... never have... i just start writing whenever i have something to write and keep writing till i finish it, or need to eat/sleep... i don't... never see that as a problem, since i live alone and have no other demands on my time...
I do my writing in the bathroom during a health treatment that I do every night and I do my editing in the weekends because none of the t.v. shows I like to watch are Not on during the weekends.
The answer to this question - and it's one that gets posted from time to time - really depends on three things: 1) the level of commitment of the writer; 2) the degree of distractibility of the writer and 3) outside influences. It is quite possible (I speak from experience) to have high levels of both #1 and #2, and a high amount of #2 can often combine with a largely negative #3 to snuff anything that remains of #1, but not always. When I first started writing seriously (that is, pursuing my goal of writing a publishable novel), my two children were not yet in their teens, our issues regarding them were numerous, and I was trying to balance addressing their needs while both pursuing a fairly demanding corporate career while at the same time supporting my wife as she returned to the workforce as a teacher of children with special needs. Now, if you take the above as a kind of algorithm, you would assume that my commitment would have been snuffed. But it wasn't. Writing for me was therapy, and like erebh above, I would wait until everyone was in bed, sacrificing sleep for the chance to write. At the same time, there were many occasions where I just couldn't make the time to write. In those cases, I never pushed myself. I've never been convinced that the word budget method was particularly worthwhile (I first read it posited by Joseph Wambaugh of The Onion Field fame, who said he forced himself to write 1,500 words per day no matter what). But, again, it comes down to what works for you.
I try, I really do. I set time aside sometimes but I never seem to get any writing done in that time. I usually work best when I'm free from the constraints of work or school and have a good half day to sit down and try and punch some stuff out. Right now, I'm in my self-allocated writing time and I'm on here. I tend to write more productively at night or when I'm alone at home during the day.
Every weekend, I look forward to writing. I enjoy it so much, I crave it when I have to take a break to edit. No writing or reading of the book, for one month. Then back to edit. I am a writing junky. There is no need to schedule But I'm also single which makes "finding time" to do it a breeze!
When I wrote my first piece, it was a novel and I was so into it that I was basically obsessed until it was done. It just so happened that part of that time was over the Christmas holidays, and our plans were thrown out the window because of an injury my Dad experienced. It was very cold and we had some snow. My husband was off of work for the holiday and our whole family basically had a extraordinarily lazy week. I got a lot of writing done then. Since then, I've written more stories with those characters, but now I am in editing mode and that is harder than the initial writing. I have two kids, one of whom is in pre-school. He goes to school 3 days a week, and the daily varying schedules make it very difficult to get a lot of writing done. I really need a big chunk of time to get serious writing work done, and when I don't have that, I can't really write. I see the benefit of saying one needs to write X number of words every day or spend some period of time on writing, but for me, it just doesn't work. Right now I'm focusing on short stories, but I need to write those in one sitting -- I don't usually do a lot of editing. Once I start a story, I have to finish it. I can't take a break -- I tend to write in roughly 3,000 word chunks, whether that's a SS or a scene in a novel. So, I need at least a couple hours of uninterrupted time. Now that it's summer and the schedule has so much variation, I'm not counting on being able to write much other than a couple short stories this summer. I plan to start seriously revising my m/s in September when my older son goes back to school and my preschooler starts school 5 days a week. I don't know whether I'll try to spend a couple hours each day or devote one or two days entirely to the m/s. I'll have to see how it plays out. In the meantime, I at least do something related to writing every day -- critique other stories, go back through my old stories for bringing to a critique night at a live writers group I found, read through a writer's magazine or a book about writing, etc.
I usually write very early in the morning. I'm retired now, so it's easier, but I did the same before I retired. I go to bed early at night, usually no later than 9pm unless it's a special occasion. I'm up very early (4.30am), a coffee, then a long walk outdoors, then back in and start writing. All this happens before I need to speak to anybody or anybody speaks to me. I can usually order this time well, because people don't tend to ring my doorbell or phone me at 6am! My biggest problem (I'm writing another novel) is getting the time to visualise. I need to visualise a scene before I write it. I mean REALLY see it, hear the voices as they speak the dialogue, etc, see where the characters are standing, how they move, what's going on around them, etc. I get good flashes while I'm walking, but I get quite snarky during the day when I'm in the middle of what probably looks like a dwam to other people, but is actually creative daydreaming ...and my poor husband or somebody else starts yakking at me about potatoes or something else ...and phut, the scene is GONE! Ach well, all part of the process, I suppose. And ...what GingerCoffee said, too. Fill in gaps with research and then visit you good people here on the forum!
I fit it in when I can. If I don't make it a priority, the writing and associated tasks won't get accomplished.
In the good old days I used to go to bed and read for an hour or so before going to sleep. Then I bought a laptop. Now I go to bed and write for an hour or so before going to sleep. It does make a massive difference, believe you me! Plus, an hour a day or so doesn't result in a mental overload, either.
I only write when deadlines are approaching. So I have no need to discipline myself. I HAVE to write or die.
I don't have to force myself. It's just something I have to do. I tend to be up about 5am most mornings to write. I keep a notebook by my bed and frequently wake in the night to write ideas down. I carry the notebook with me everywhere. I am constantly writing in my head. I wrote my forthcoming novella Spiral Out (22,000 words) in 4 weeks -- that was writing 10 hours a day, most days. With writing, I wish I could switch off. But I can't. There is no respite. There are no holidays. It's a terminal disease.
i seem to be at a stage where work is draining all feasible writing creativity out of me, and im continually knackered too, which doesnt help, im hoping to take my laptop round my nans to at least do some form of writing of an evening there. i think the change in scene will help
