Disjointed thoughts on process

Oh dear. I made the mistake of counting the number of unused or partly-used-and-available notebooks in my notebook drawer, and, um. Thirty-nine, apparently. Is that a lot? I mean, for a non-writer it would be a lot, but I'm not sure what it is by writer standards. In my defense, most of them are really pretty.

(Actually, the notebook I'm working on New Project in isn't pretty; it's subscriber swag from The Economist, which my dad gets, and which occasionally mails him things he has no use for. But I did cover it with shiny stickers.)

I do most of my writing longhand, because I like being able to take it places. Particularly for this project, which I'm reading each chapter of to my favourite eight-year-old as I finish them. It's much easier (and more cozy) to pull out a notebook to read from than to drag my laptop around. I suppose I could email things to myself and read them off my phone, but I can't do any writing on my phone. I mean, in an emergency I could, but it's really awkward and I'm an awfully slow thumb-typer.

(I'm pretty good at touch-typing, though. Mostly from having to learn it in school. I guess they don't have to teach texting in school because kids just pick it up, but I wonder if eventually they will.)

Anyway, the main downside of notebooks is the lack of a backup in the event of fire or loss or being attacked by gulls. (As you may know, I'm basically a flock of corvids in a trenchcoat, so these are the things that worry me.) Which is why I spent the weekend typing up everything I've handwritten on New Project so far. It didn't actually take that long, because, again, pretty good at touch-typing, but it's kind of tedious. Sadly, my handwriting is too scrawly to be picked up properly by OCR, at least the ones I've tried. Though admittedly it seems like all that sort of thing is improving by leaps and bounds these days, so perhaps I ought to look into it again.

I do kind of like the typing process, though. It makes me go through my writing slowly and I often pick up little word changes I ought to make at that point. I don't do major edits while typing up my work, but it's nice to do those little bits of polishing. Even if they might then get eliminated by any major edits I do afterward. Though so far there have been no major changes to New Project from the first draft. I think that's partly because the eight-year-old has so far enjoyed everything I've read to him, and I don't want to change what's evidently working. Reading to a child audience is great, because you know that if they get bored, they'll just say so. I do have adult beta readers who I trust to say if they don't like things, but there's always that sneaking suspicion that people are being nice to spare my feelings. Kids don't really do that. And yes, the eight-year-old has absolutely interrupted me telling him stories (not New Project so far, but other stuff) to say he's done. So if he wants to keep listening, I know I'm doing a good job.