Like many an author, my brain is never far from my story. Yes, real life intrudes and I have other things that I must do. There’s the evil day job, and family obligations, and yarn. But even when I’m doing all the things that are other, there’s a part of my brain that is ready to jump into thinking about my story at a moments notice. And that part engages at the oddest times, with little provocation, and then there’s something that I just have to think about story-wise.
So I make notes. I jot stuff down. When I’m at work, there’s a little pad on the side of my desk that I sometimes have to grab and write on. I keep the empty envelopes from my paychecks in my purse for the express purpose of having a blank space to write on should the need arise. I have a yellow legal pad sitting by the laptop, ready and waiting, just in case.
Sometimes, I very much like to write long hand notes. Like a lot a lot. See the thing is, my hand writing is atrocious. So very bad. And, predictably, it gets worse the faster I write. Most of the time, I still know what I wrote but not always. And yet, I still do it. I still like to write things out long hand. Of course, when it comes time to read those notes and put them on the page in story form, I have a problem that transcends not just being unable to read my own writing. They sit there beside my computer, and I have to constantly stop typing, to pick them up and read them, then put them back down and put my fingers back on the keys. This interrupts the flow and is irritating.
The pattern keeper is my solution.
See, I bought this thing for my patterns when I yarn. It’s kind of fabulous with the way it folds to stand upright and magnets to keep the pattern in place and track where you are in the pattern. I thought it would be a fun present to myself. And then I realized that I could use it for more than just patterns! I can prop those hand written notes up beside me, and there they’d stay, and it is awesome!
I had no idea when I was tooling around, shopping for notions that went with my yarning obsession, I’d be helping the writing too. But I have, and it’s fantastic, and I’m in favor of anything that makes my time spent at the computer easier.
Kris T. Bethke--Author of M/M Romance 