How I Write 2

Continuing the business of the concrete side of writing, I'm a word processor writer. In my early days, I did write some short stories by hand, with a ball point, but I soon realised that I can type faster than I can write, and I have a constant need to try to keep up with my ideas as they're coming. With handwriting, I feel as if I'm lagging.

Stephen King wrote the first draft of Dreamcatcher with a Waterman fountain pen, which he called 'the world's finest word processor'. Peter Straub wrote Lost Boy, Lost Girl via 'Visconti pens (Van Gogh and Kaleido), Boorum & Pease journals (900-3 R), and Kathy Kinser (eighty words a minute)'. To each their own.

My first word processor was Word Perfect 5.0, with its lovely blue screen. I progressed to Word Perfect 5.1 and was perfectly happy with that. Eventually, though, I saw the writing on the wall (proportional font, Times New Roman) and switched to Word, which was Word 2.0 at that time, in the days of Windows 3.0 (I remember!).

I've worked my way through Word 6, Word 97, Word 2000, Word XP, Word 2003, and I'm now on Word 2007, which is much like the others, but different. I use it reasonably effectively, I think. I use Search and Replace constantly, but I also use Bookmarks so I can jump to key scenes quickly, I use autotext for much repeated names, I use Comments to jot down reminders to be fixed in revisions, natty stuff like that. When I start a new writing session I hit 'Shift + F5' and it zips me to where I left off.

Like everything about writing, every writer does it a bit differently. This is what works for me, but I'm always willing to experiment.

Ah! Word Perfect 5.0. I can still remember some of the shortcut function keys. I have to admit I do like Word better although for longer fiction I have been trying out yWriter a free novel writing organiser designed by WA writer Simon Haynes. It has a lot of helpful functions that Word doesn't.

It is interesting to see how other people do their writing. At the moment, I am concentration in picture book texts so I do a lot of scribbling on note books before hitting the computer. Writing for younger readers teaches you to write tight.