Very well, thank you!
As those of you who’ve been following my Facebook pages know, I’ve been wrestling with the start of a new magnum opus, yet another of those “other world” novels. Not the same world as Kaybrel and Tavio’s — quite a different one, indeed — but still, another time, another place, another culture.
“Wrestling” could be translated as “spinning my wheels.” The first few scenes will require some significant rewriting. However… 🙂 About eight scenes in, a new character entered, and she has taken over the whole enterprise.
Where the other figures have been tripping along like marionettes, Siji is dancing across the stage. And what a dancer she is! Athletic, we might say.
And I’ve come to really enjoy writing with a fountain pen and ink. You know those reminders of ideas that spring to mind as you’re writing? Since (thanks to a sampler set from Iroshizuku) I have several colors at hand, I’ve started scribbling those with a different color from the draft narrative. So in the middle of a passage of dialogue, we have this:
What’s a construction manager called? Supervisor? Captain, chief, head? Look it up!
Just now the draft is in blue and the Notes to Self are in brown. All of this has reminded me of something I knew as a matter of course when I was a young thing and Steve Jobs was a twinkle in his dad’s eye:
About half the fun of writing is writing. The physical act of writing.
Now that my fingers have remembered how to write in longhand (it took awhile), I’m finding it really is fun to write this stuff in pen and ink. Since computers have been my work tool for more years than I can count, drafting on a keyboard is a great deal more like work than like fun.
Along the way, I discovered that the paper marketed for sketching is wonderful for writing with a fountain pen. You want to get a sketch book, not a drawing book or pad. Drawing paper, designed for use with pencils or charcoal, is too absorbent. With sketch paper, the pen fairly flies along, and the paper doesn’t soak up ink like some sort of flat white sponge. One load of ink in the pen seems to last, comparatively, forever when you use sketch paper. And the pen’s nib glides more smoothly and easily across the surface.
The brand called “Artist’s Loft” comes bound in a cool canvas cover that you can decorate with your own drawing (if you use colored pencils, as I do, you’ll want to spray with fixatif to keep it from wearing off during use). At Michael’s, a book of 110 sheets is relatively inexpensive; at Amazon, the same item’s price is exorbitant, so don’t buy it there. Look in artist supply stores for it.
So. If you’re writing your bookoids for fun and you would like not to feel like you’re slogging through a task or back on the job, try drafting them with a pen.