Tempus Fugit, Time Flies, was the motto of my Primary School back in the 1960s. Indeed the time has flown. It was my birthday on Thursday, and this year I was 61. How did that happen?
I was thinking about what to write this week and got to thinking about these balloons floating around North America and Canada. Really what we should all be thinking about is the terrible situation Turkey and Syria found themselves in after the two massive earthquakes last week. Nearly 200 hours after the events, they are still managing to pull people alive out of flattened apartment buildings.
Thankfully, the balloon story is all bluff and bluster; however, the earthquake area problems will continue for much longer.
I shouldn't look at news sites as it makes me anxious about world affairs. For instance, February 24th will mark the anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainians have fought with fierce dignity in defence of their country. Ukraine expects that the Russians will launch a spring offensive to save face.
After all that, sadly, I had to miss this month's Ottery Writers meeting as I was working, but there are to be many exciting things happening at our meeting over the next few months. I'm sure I have bored you with this news before, but I am excited about might 'Novel in a Year' workshops starting next month. I've tasked myself with some work on the premise of my book and some on the characters. Even though I have written nearly 20,000 words so far, it is about now that I should be looking at the premise, plot and characterisations. It is about finding the time and a quiet place to work, but that is probably prevarication.
As you know, I have a MacBook M1 Air, which I use to write. The great thing about MacBooks is the number of useful apps for writers. I have several in everyday use. Scrivener is a writing app for all writing styles, from Novels to Screenplays. It can do it all. I find it to be much more versatile than Microsoft Office, i.e. Word, and it is also a fraction of the price. It is excellent for organising your novel and keeping all your research and characterisations in one place.
The other app that I have recently started to use is Day One. Day one is a journalling app. I immensely enjoy writing a journal. Indeed, during the pandemic, I wrote four or five notebooks of daily ramblings over a year or so. Day One has made it easy to write a daily journal, even though I have only been using it for a short while. As always with journalling, it is writing for yourself and will only become available to read once I'm a famous writer and have been dead for several years. With these journals, reflecting on what you have written is excellent—exciting reading and a mine of ideas for stories and articles.
Drafts is another app that I use. I have it on my MacBook and iPhone. It syncs between the two. It is like a notebook, and I often make notes for stories and articles there. You can also save links to sites of interest.
I have a few planning apps I have skirted using and should use a lot more. I will use them more during the 'Novel in a Year' workshops. The app that I currently use is MindNode. You can create a mind map and task list, which has helped me when writing short stories and for several chapters of my novel.
The most important app I use, apart from the app that I am using to write this piece, Pages, is Grammarly. This app, embedded in my browser's bar, will check my writing for grammar, punctuation, spelling and syntax. I will be putting this piece through it once I've finished.
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