I create stories on my aged laptop, having a couple of separate documents containing plot ideas and words to seek out while editing. I also write down such repeated words, phrases and questions of punctuation on scraps of card that I shove beneath the cooling cradle—where they look at me reproachfully reminding me that editing is never far away.
While writing, I research online to get things like police interview techniques and sentencing guidelines correct, making a note of the webpage address at the bottom of the WIP.
After writing Christmas cards with a Biro, and noticing the declining standard of my penmanship (which used to be quite good) I invested in a fountain pen with ink cartridges. I found this for a princely £1.29 in a petrol station shop, and the nib is of reasonable enough quality to improve my handwriting. It certainly makes whatever I write look more important than anything scribbled down in ballpoint or rollerball ink.
The thought occurred to me that future archivists of literature are going to have a much harder job of collecting the preparatory work of novelists, their letters expressing doubts to editors, publisher and friends and different versions of their stories. Modern technology has made much of what we write transient, instantly changed with a keystroke and consigned to some cyber wastepaper basket. There will be no discoveries made of tattered forms of our novels, short stories and poems, complete with crossing-outs, ink blots, notes to self in the margin, sketches of our cat sleeping in the sun as we paused for a moment of reflection.
