Another baby is born [#writing]

Remington
Remington (Photo credit: Tim Roper)

Last night, I happily finished the first draft of the short story I’ve been working on. Writing this story was really liberating, in no small part because it felt like the first “original” story I’ve written in a long time. For the last year or so I’ve really been trapped in trying to reinvent and rewrite what I’ve written before, fine tuning and finessing stories that I actually wrote the core of years ago. Sure, I wrote a novel – but the bulk of this year’s work on it was in filling in the gaps from the core I had already written. Even the story that’s currently under consideration was originally written over a year ago. It will definitely need a second or even third draft, but this new story feels amazing because its a fresh story, set in a preconceived universe [of mine] but totally independent of any other story, novel, or daydream I’ve had.

Which is why on this week of being thankful, I’m thankful for my wife. Always supportive regardless, Kim’s help in getting me setup in my own workspace (mostly – the kids are frequent residents, what with their computer and a comfy chair in the room also) really made the difference. Set up in front of a large window, without the distraction of the TV (when I don’t import it on my iPad and kill the mood), I was able to write an additional 3k in less than a day. Wow.

This was also the first time I wrote a complete short story in Apple’s Pages product. When I bought it, the idea was that I’d be able to write on both the iPad and the desktop interchangeably – the files are synched with the cloud, and because its a full “feature” editor, you have the subtle niceties like italics and bold (you wouldn’t think that could be a selling point, but it can be, trust me). Reality was actually a little disappointing. I did make a few updates via the iPad, but largely (all but a few hundred words, est.) were written while sitting directly on my laptop. And on that end, I really missed some of the features and tools I’ve grown accustomed to in Scrivener. I don’t regret the investment in the software, because I still see it serving a purpose, but I am disappointed that my first attempted project was less than successful. The situation just never came up this last week where writing on the iPad was more feasible than sitting down at a desk. Lessons learned, I guess.

Now to spend a relaxing afternoon playing some Risk with the girls, maybe watching something or doing some random chores before calling it an early day so I can be well rested for the hell that is Cybermonday.

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