A new age

I've recently discovered technology. Sort of. You see, I'm used to writing story plans by hand, using my favourite type of pen (blue papermate, if you must know). This includes character profiles, settings, chapter summaries, history... The sort of thing that takes up a lot of time and ink and leaves an indentation of the pen on your hand. You know what I mean. I excused it all though, because that was what writers did. They suffered for their art. Right?

Wrong! At least, in terms of handwriting a plan. I was complaining internally about having to write out the same character profiles for the fifth time because my ideas had changed (as ideas do) when a sort of revelation hit me: surely not everyone goes through this torture?

I asked around. Turns out, I'm one of the last few dinosaurs who actually bother with such an extensive waste of time.

Apparently most people do it all on a computer these days. It's more convenient, easier to search through and - most importantly (to me, anyway) - you don't have to glue pages together to hide your old crappy ideas. You can simply delete them into non-existence! It all sounds too good to be true.

After hearing this, I tried it out. Not for character profiles (I already had way too much of those), but for the plot, chapter summaries and a colour chart (sort of specific to my story). It was like discovering a shiny new toy. Everything looked so bright and wonderful that I couldn't help but smile to myself as I typed up the last couple of words. Things had never seemed so positively splendid when it came to a story plan.

The next morning, my good mood was shattered when I realised I had saved it all on my USB and then promptly lost it. I spent an hour frantically searching my room for the tiny device, turning things upside down in my hunt. All the while I was cursing technology and all it stood for. You wouldn't catch me losing a bright yellow A4 book, that was for sure!

I did eventually find my USB under my bed - of course - and came to my senses long enough to realise that putting things on a computer is still a good thing. As long as it is all backed up with multiple copies and you're not an idiot who doesn't look after her things properly.