I've always said I can't write by hand anymore.  I need to sit in front of a computer to have the ideas flow.  Unfortunately its also way too easy to get distracted when sitting in front of the computer - ooh look, an email, while I'm at it I'll check Facebook etc etc ;)

On Tuesday I took my little netbook with me to write with while I sat in the car and waited for B's drama class to finish.  Its been so long since I've used it though that the battery was flat.  So I was forced to *gasp* write by hand in my 'handy dandy notebook'.  I got about 300 words written in 30 minutes - a bit slower than on the computer but with the added advantage of silencing my inner editor.  Its hard to make too many changes while you're writing by hand, so I was just writing.  I typed it up last night and made some changes as I was typing - first polish.

So I tried it again last night - put the computer aside and pulled out the pen and paper, then typed it up.  Again, it worked pretty well.  I think I might be on to something here...  It also has the added advantage that you can whip out a notebook & pen pretty much anywhere and not get a second look, but pulling out a computer just looks pretentious :)

Loving this short story course I'm doing!  Its been really valuable and we've only up to lecture 4!

Another course

Since I seem to gravitate more to writing short stories / flash fiction than anything full-length, I've signed up to do a short story course through the RWA (Romance Writers of America).  I'm looking forward to it!

Speaking of short stories, I submitted another one to a writing.com competition last night.  It had to showcase emotion, so you needed to get inside the protagonist's head and see what they were feeling.  It had to start with the line "Her laughter broke the silence".  I'm not very good at writing emotion, so I wanted to enter the contest to get some feedback and help improve.

So, here it is.  http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1711954-A-date-shell-never-forget 

Warning - this one is not subtle, and is rated 18+ for violence..  I guess I've been watching Midsomer Murders too much lately :)  Actually I've been finding myself analysing the way they put the story together in that show, and how they sprinkle the clues etc.  Most of the time its extremely well done.  It's a great example of that old saying "if you show a gun in scene 1, you need to fire it by scene 3" (or whatever the actual quote is!)

There's some interesting writing advice on this blog post here - http://jobourne.blogspot.com/2010/09/anne-gracie-on-dorothea-brande-and-her.html

I might try it out and see how I go..