And So She Begins A New Adventure

It's amazing how friends just know what you need even when you don't tell them. A good friend of mine gave me two perfect new writing tools yesterday:

I'm beginning a new project and I have the idea of writing the entire first draft ON PAPER. I don't usually do this, what with the convenience of my handy netbook, but for this project I feel that writing the first draft by hand is very appropriate. And necessary. For a few reasons:

1. The mood and tone of the story is quite fairy tale-ish, not unlike the German fairy tales my mother used to read to me when I was a child that scared the bejeebies out of me. Ink and paper will give me that "long ago" feel in keeping with the mood. (You know, kind of like the feeling you get when you write snail mail instead of email :))
2. The practice of writing an entire first draft with pen and paper will (hopefully) propel me forward thus thwarting my incessant need to go back and edit every single line as I go. The computer feeds my editing addiction and I generally have a really hard time moving forward as I write.
3. I want to try writing a story that has been somewhat planned out. I'm a "write by the seat of your pants" writer and want to experiment with the concept of planning out a story before diving into it. This writing excercise won't be a flow chart of events or anything like that, but it will be the bare skeleton of a complete story from beginning to end. Emphasis on "bare" skeleton. Thus the THIN notebook.
4. I need to step out of my comfort zone and try something new.

So there you have it. And it seems as though I'm not the only one interested in this new-for-me concept:


So, armed with a pen, hourglass, and beautiful new notebook I begin my new personal fantasy adventure.

Oh, and here's what my new notebook says on the back:


Appropriate, yes?