Writing

I think it is high time I try to focus and get some serious writing done.

I love the feel of a pen on paper

I have folders full of handwritten text that I need to sort through to decide what to work on, or if any of it is worth dragging back to life. I have notes on stories from a number of genres so I might need to start by narrowing down to a theme I want to develop. Do I want to do modern day or fantasy? Prosaic or epic? A novel or short story? I think I may have had too many ideas for my own good!

But I think step one needs to be to get a bit organised.

I have read about all sorts of methods for making progress on a story. I have generally stuck to just writing it out almost as a stream of consciousness..... although as yet none of my projects have reached completion so clearly I need a new approach.

I think this idea from Emma Darwin is a great way to track characters and events against a timeline and even allows for non-chronological plotting. To save paper or if you prefer working digitally you could create a simple spreadsheet to do the same job. I remember a girl on a Creative Writing course I once took had a spreadsheet with different fonts and colours to represent different people or places.

I love looking at MindMaps and think the theory is inspiring but I just can't get them right myself. I find they all end up the same shape, perhaps my thinking is too rigid.

When writing/re-writing on the computer I stick with good old word. I like to start by altering the page margins to be as narrow as I can make them, except for the left one which needs to be wide enough to punch holes in a printed sheet.
Then I add page numbers (in new versions of Word that's in the Insert tab) and line numbers. (See below - you can see that an edit is required on line 4)

Line numbers  in Word 2010 on NetBook

(If you can't read it try zooming your browser window)

So, with a plan and a document set up ready to write I'm going to try to get some of my writing sorted out.

Are you a writer? Do you have a tried and tested set of tools to help you get from idea to oeuvre?