The Review Club Forum writing tools

The bathroom may be a quiet place if you don't have young children - in which case nowehere is safe at any time of the day or night - oh no, here they come now!

My problem with the bathroom is great lines come to me but I can't get back to the pc in time. In fact it just happened. Man I need to get a laptop. I'm probably the only guy in the world that works in IT and doesn't have a laptop. Well I know another guy.

Personally, I'd suggest the old paper and pen in the john -- all that water, not conducive to laptop health.

-cc

I have black and white composition books for when I can't get to my computer, or it's on the fritz. I do a lot of thinking, and listening to characters talk to each other, in my car, when I'm doing the half hour commute to work. I also go into the bedroom frequently to "think." When one of the children comes in accusing me of being asleep I shake my head and say, "I'm thinking." If I'm lucky I don't snore again until the door is closed.
My greatest single inspiration is a quote from Keats that I memorized when I was an undergrad English major. It's from one of his letters, and y'all may know it.
It's about what he called negative capability, which he credited with the greatest achievements in poetry (like Shakespeare's) -- "the ability to be in uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." When I finally learned how to do that, pretty much at will, I knew I would be able to write. I think it's a little Zen-ish.

When I need to remember something and can't write it down right away, I repeat it to myself until I know I'll remember it -- at least roughly.
I used to be able to memorize huge chunks of stuff from all kinds of sources-- my abilities have declined with age, but I can still at least memorize things I think of myself.