Over the summer I decided that I was going to write my current WIP by hand. It was an idea I loved and was excited for because I was having problems getting into some of the characters and into the action in Scrivener. 35,000 words in and I was frustrated and ready to give up on the story.
But I couldn’t give up. The story had consumed my mind–I dreamed about scenes, thought about the characters while I spent time with my husband and daughter, plotted out scenes when I was supposed to working. I couldn’t let the story go, but I was struggling writing. In desperation, I decided to change how I wrote. I hadn’t written a full story by hand since middle school because computers were convenient and I had more access to one in high school.
The actual process of writing became more exciting to me as I dug around in my bin of old used and unused notebooks, selecting the perfect on. It was a cheap knock off of a five-star notebook I bought at college, unused and clean pages. I had found a solution to my writing problem, a problem I had never really experienced before. Writing was always easy, even though the content was sometimes crappy; at least I was writing something. For once the ideas were great, and I just couldn’t put them on the computer, but I could put them on paper.
Today I internally cried as I watched my 15 month old tear pages from the notebook. She was standing next to me, bent over my lap and notebook with capped pens spread around her. It was my writing time, and she usually just played with the capped pens, sometimes banging them on the paper as I wrote. But now her face was contorted in toddler determination as her cute, pudgy fingers pulled at the perforated pages. She only tore three pages, but the tears still reflected in my heart. The story was finally writing for me, the characters obeying the pen, opening themselves up to an inky future.
As I write this, I’m laughing inside. It isn’t so significant now that she’s asleep and I have a few spare minutes to myself. I can fix the pages, either rewriting them or taping them together (tape never hurt a story). At least my toddler wants to help me write, and I hope it’s a spark of interest that grows as she does. But for now, I’ll fix the pages and remember another reason why computers are much more convenient for writing stories. Pen and paper have a spiritual effect when writing, but the convenience of a computer makes writing so much faster, more durable, and more safe (as long as you save and back up often, which I’m slave to doing in fear of my computer ever crashing).
Watching the pages tear has solidified my goals as a writer: the pages were reflecting my heart and work. I can keep writing, repairing the pages of my heart with each scene and struggling word. I can do this and will do this, for my story must be written. And for now, the tears are gone, and I’m smiling with eagerness to keep on writing.
Besides, pen and paper did the trick. I’m back in my writing game.
Mommies Write Too 