ituals, habits, good luck charms - my first thoughts on the letter R. BUT I've already written something similar in WQ-06. Writing Habits and also here: My Writing Journey and here: Meet A Journal KeeperNo retakes, remember? So, I've landed on R for Resources!
RESOURCE: EQUIPMENT
I dare to say, that the equipment we chose influence our writing! It's hard to imagine myself writing my novel by hand ... I would freak out, because of the lack of speed or possibilities of spell verification or easy editing. On the other hand there's journaling in my dream diary. There I need the contact of true paper and it feels right to hold a heavy pen in my hand. I like to lay comfortable on my couch, maybe some soft music in the background, having all the time in the world to concentrate on my nightly pictures and penning them down, maybe even illustrating them. In this case, pen and paper is the only right resource, anything else wouldn't work!RESOURCE: INSPIRATION
I always try to pay attention to my senses. Everything I can see, hear, smell, taste or feel could be a sparkle of inspiration. Then I let these sparkles swirl around my head, transform and hopefully develop into some creative art. Another source of mine are my dreams. Sometimes I'm quite surprised what pictures my head produces during the night!Besides those, I'm a very visual person. Pictures do very often inspire me or put my inspiration in the right way. That's what I use then:
RESOURCE: RESEARCH & HELP
Of course, one of my first targets for research is Wikipedia. I've also made very good experiences with forums, you get very quick good answers to basic and detailed questions! My favorite German speaking forum is wer-weiss-was.de. And, not to forget, my blog is written in English, so the German-English dictionary of my choice is dict.cc!RESOURCE: WRITING & WRITING BLOGS
Quite an interesting page I've lately discovered is CreativeJuicesbooks.com. And to make a long story short, I ask you to have a look on my blog list!What other resources do you use?
Found it very hard to write directly onto the computer years ago when writing longhand. Used to copy handwritten into Word. Then the problem of making myself do corrections directly onto the screen - at first it was disastrous, especially with poetry, but I learned. :0)
It must be a Carol thing. :-) I found it hard to compose on the computer as well. It took me a long time before I was comfortable writing on the computer. Now of course I couldn't live without my laptop!
A U.S. road atlas is indispensable to me. Sense of place is so important to me. Sometimes I like to just study the atlas along with Mapquest for detail and Wikipedia for other info and links. If I'm writing about place I want to know exactly where I am and what it's like.
Hope you join us in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge Reflections Mega Post on Monday May 2nd.
Lee
It really seems that each of us writers has his/her unique way of writing, in the content of environment and equipment! That's quite interesting, isn't it?!?
And Lee, of course: I'm in! :-)