Writr

Disclaimer: This post was written in a drunken haze on an Alphasmart 2000 at approximately 0:30 on Easter Sunday morning. Read at your own Peril. The author makes no apologies for the turgid, ill-expressed philosophies contained herein.

On my slow bimble home from the pub tonight, I came to a little realization: the kind of day I have is dependent not upon the actual events of the day, but upon my perception of them and my attitude towards them. I have had pretty boring days of univeristy followed by enormous workloads at work and felt happy by the end of them for no immediately apparent reason, and vice versa - days which, on reflection, were absolutely wonderful, but which at the time I was too wrappeed up in some problem or another to appreciate them.
I suppose this brings home just how much of existence is in the mind’s control: a very good friend once told me that thoughts control behaviour, and I would go further than that, though maybe not as far as the more metaphysical suggestion that thoughts control reality - thoughts certainly control ones perception of reality. 
Maybe I’m just rambling, but this certainly makes me consider just how much control over my situation that I have, and how much I - or anyone - could have if I set my mind to it.

Scientific study on the effectiveness of aluminum foil helmets Quoth: “we find that … certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government’s invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.”

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Novel Progresseth, although for some reason I have had a non-writery day. Thursdays are apparently bad for the muse. This would perhaps be acceptable if I was deeply involved in the creative process, but at the moment I’m just transcribing/editing out of a notebook. I didn’t think copying two thousand words needed inspiration, but there you go. There is editing involved as I type, I suppose.

I like the system, incidentally. It’s something I read about on Neil Gaiman’s blog, hand-writing then typing. It sounds labour intensive, and… well, it is. But writing is, it’s not supposed to be a walk in the park. I’m probably going to do multiple drafts on a piece of work in any case - my first draft writing is often irrational, wandering, and devoid of any obvious merit. The second draft is normally Where The Magic Happens (although any magic that is contained in the first draft is absolutely golden), so the retype-and-edit-in-the-process thing actually works pretty well.

There’s also the whole pen-interacting-with-paper thing, which I used to be less than enthusiastic about - my penmanship has been compared to cuneiform in the past, more than once in fact - but now I like the interface and I can at least read most of my own handwriting. And it’s portable, as well as being fairly lightweight.

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Incidentally, the transcribing is being done on an Alphasmart 2000, a wonderful little device that is a keyboard that stores text. I can transcribe and do nothing else. Not even solitaire. Unless I have a pack of cards to hand. Which I try to avoid.