Glinda

For most of the time I have been writing fanfiction, I have been doing it by hand. I have a set of pens (ones that I really like), and a set of notebooks, and I write the story out, chapter by chapter, with crossings out and so forth, until it's done.

Then I typed it up, and posted it wherever I was posting it. The typing up would also act as beta-reading for the story - I would correct spelling mistakes, fix sentences that made no sense whatsoever, and sometimes rewrite parts of the story if they are utter bollocks (which - by the way - happens more often than you would think).

The only exceptions to this were "quickie" stories - Lost In Middle Earth, Deathly Silence and Peace Of Mind (for example). Ones that I just started writing for no apparent reason, and decided to continue cause they were fun.

The main reason I did this - the writing by hand thing - was because I liked writing in front of the TV, and in bed, and on the train (I do a lot of train travel for work). It was relaxing, and - especially on the train - it passed the time quickly.

But last August, I acquired Glinda, a shiny new laptop. Which changed the way I write stories quite a lot, since I can now write them directly in to the computer in front of the tv, in bed and on the train. The last chapter I hand wrote was "Shades Of Gray" from "The Curse of Exum"

So the first change is that stories are now coming out faster than they used to, since I no longer have to write them then type them up. And I am now re-reading the same chapter three or four times - as I type it, before I post it, once I have posted it and after I post it - as a substitute for beta-reading.

But the largest change is that I am now posting incomplete stories, or rather I am posting stories a chapter at a time (generally - sometimes I write the first two chapters of a story at once, and more often than not, the last two at once), rather than posting a complete story after it is finished.

This has brought its own problems to my story writing. Before, I could write chapters 1 to 5, then, if I wanted to modify something in C1 to fix with chapter 6, I could.

But now, of course, I can't. Once I post a chapter, it is "canon", and I have to stick to it. Which makes it harder to improvise, but easier to stick to the plot I worked out previously. So - swings and other swings.

On the whole, I would say Glinda has made writing stories easier, and more fun. Because while handwriting them is very entertaining, typing them up directly means I don't have to set aside time to do it later.

So - that's Glinda. My writing partner in crime :)