Sunday, October 18, 2020

A Kingdom of Children

 "When are you going to send new novels in to agents and publishers?" asks a friend of mine.  I'm afraid I've used up all my viable pieces on Amazon.com Kindle.  Such efforts, though more-or-less self-published, count as published to the book industry (as does uploading stories onto your own blog or web-site).  Therefore the world must wait until I churn out more novel-length works.

A Kingdom of Children, a fantasy tale that starts with the Children's Crusade of the Thirteenth Century then flies off the map into my own world of "Aanuu", is the nearest to completion.  Just yesterday I found the last notebook containing my notes and scribbles for the last section of the book.  This also means, however, that I must bridge a few chapter-length gaps with brand new material before I can safely type "The End."  Then comes the reviewing and rewriting.

The last of my written works were hidden in a small (7" x 5") spiral notebook.  I'm a bit surprised, because I don't like writing in notebooks that small or smaller.  Just as I get up a head of steam, I have to stop and flip the page.  Also, the smaller the book, the easier it is to lose, or just become one of a pile of near-identical booklets.

On the other hand, I don't like college/school sized notebooks either.  It seemingly takes forever to write across a single line, and it feels like longer than forever to finish a page and turn to a fresh new sheet.  Ever since I started writing seriously, I've used mostly Mead 9-1/2" x 6" Spiral Notebooks (or the nearest equivalent), the more pages the better.  Originally they had 200 sheets, but I haven't seen more than 180 per notebook in quite some time, and many are a paltry 150 or even 100 sheets.

Some of you might ask, "Why not compose straight onto the computer?"  Well, I've tried doing that for over twenty years; it ain't happening.  I'll always be faster with pen and paper.  Also, I can pull out a notebook and pen almost anywhere, and I'm limited to my tower PC computer-wise.

This device they call a Tablet certainly looks interesting, however . . .

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