Where Do I Write?

This week for our How I Write series, my accountability group is talking about where we write. And I’m sure that the others are going to talk more about physical spaces and where they take their laptops and notebooks for field trips.

I’m going to tackle this topic from a slightly different angle. I haven’t found that going out in the world to a coffee shop, bookstore, library or other place really helps to shake things loose in my head, they provide distracting people to watch which are often much more interesting than what I’m writing! Yes, even with headphones. And I didn’t really want to show off messy pictures of my desk or some of the other spots around the house that I’ll settle into to write. Because for me, it’s not so much about the location, as if I have the right tools with me.

For brainstorming and very early exploration work on a project, I take pen and paper and usually end up spread out on the bed, scribbling madly. Once that’s done, I used to take it and try to make sense of it by organizing it into a spreadsheet in Excel or an outline in Word.

After that, I used to use Dropbox to keep the files on my desktop and my laptop synched up. But my process has changed slightly since I inherited my iPad 1 from DH who got the newest one this spring. It’s much lighter and more compact even than my Macbook Air and with Dropbox available on it, that took care of the synching issue.

Screenshot of Scrivener and my desktop writing space.
Scrivener allows me to SEE the structure and rearrange easily if needed. Love the Project target window as well.

That left me with the question of what app I was going to use to do the actual writing. I’d played a bit with Notes on my phone. Ick. But, I’d recently converted to using Scrivener on my desktop and LOVE IT! The only problem is that there isn’t a version for iOS, yet.

Screenshot of IndexCard app for iPad.
Virtual Index Cards: Don’t Leave Home Without Them!
In the meantime, I found a workaround using IndexCard which is an iPad app mostly used for screenwriting and has some of the same fundamental features. It’s holding me until Scrivener completes their app.

But what this really means is that I’m no longer tied to my desktop or laptop. I am much less reluctant to drag my iPad along with me where ever we go — out to eat (IHOP, Red Robin, Applebees, TGIFriday’s), on appointments (various doctor’s offices, the eye doctor’s), etc have all become my writing spaces as well as many more locations around the house. Somehow, the iPad isn’t as isolating to use as my laptop when we sit around the TV in the evenings and I’m not captured by the show. I can also quickly drop in and out of the current “card” and not have to worry about screwing up the pristine copy.

I just have to make sure the synching is correct. You do have to do a bit more manual synching with IndexCard, but the freedom is worth it right now.

So… for me it’s not just WHERE DO I WRITE, but more HOW I WRITE when I’m there that’s important to keeping the words flowing and the creativity bubbling.


YOUR TURN: Does a change of scenery help your creative pursuits? Where are your favorite places to work? What helps you focus and keeps you motivated to finish a project?

And if you’d like to read what the rest of my accountability group thinks about mixing up their writing venues, you can find their blogs here:

* Alexia Reed * Kimberly Farris * Danie Ford * Emma G. Delaney

TiddlyWiki!

No, it’s not that old-timey game a game in which players try to flip plastic disks into a cup by pressing them on the side sharply with a larger disk. That’s tiddlywinks!

I talked a little about this yesterday, but I’ve had such fun with it, I thought it needed shared again and I should give y’all some more information.

I found this little gem last summer or fall sometime on the forums at Romance Divas. I copied the file and messed with it a little, but didn’t truly grok it’s Flantastic uses at the time. It’s sat on my hard drive, waiting for me to rediscover it when I went searching for a way to build an easily searchable database of my characters for my little Regency world.

So, what IS it already?

TiddlyWiki is a reusable non-linear personal web notebook. That is to say, it is a self-contained webpage that you can add information and track tangled spaghetti-like piles of interrelated information easily. If you add in names like MarciaDrummond it’ll automatically link any references in any of the other entries to the one with that title. You can also specially designate names using [[Marcia Drummond]] instead if you want it to read more plainly (It automagically bolds and connects the links once there’s an entry for that keyword in existence. It probably does a whole heckuvalot more, but I’m happy with what I’ve discovered so far.

Between yesterday and today, I added around 50 entries. Many of them don’t have much information (yet!), but in skimming through the 67k words in my two WIP files, I found some relationships and other tidbits I’d forgotten because I’d entrusted them to my brain or lost the original sticky note. Now, I often compare my mind to a sieve or a colander. DH frequently gives me a hard time because I completely forget scenes in movies or books — Poof! Gone. — unlike him. Ask him about that book he read back when he was 12, I doubledog dare ya! Many a night we’ve stayed up way past our bedtimes while he’s given me the whole plot and possibly one or two others that were somehow related, but maybe just tangentially. =)

I, however, need something to act as my surrogate brain that’s easy to reference and I can quickly follow links when I can only think of part of the incident/person/whatever. I need to be careful, I think I have at least 3 or 4 surrogate brains floating around out there now.

Rediscovering that LB (Lord Barrington, our hero, for those of you tuning in late) has an old dragon of a grandmother makes him MUCH more interesting again.

I promise, Jodi, I won’t lose myself in this (well, not for too long)! I’ve got lots of weaving to do this month.