My new writing gadget

I totally forgot to mention that I bought a new writing gadget which my father-in-law brought over for me when he visited us around a month ago. It's an Alphasmart Neo 2, and I love it. I saw an ad for it a little while back, and immediately I was impressed with the possibility of owning a device that did nothing but write. I was able to snag one off eBay for a fraction of its already low price, and I have to say after using it for a while, I'm pretty impressed. It has one of the best keyboards I've ever typed on, has incredible battery life (about 700 hours on 3 AAs), and is quick and easy to start up. I can also easily transfer files to my laptop via its USB cable and store eight different text files in its huge memory (huge for text files, that is).

The best thing about it is, though: no distractions. I can write and write and I literally can't check my email or see what's going on in the world via Google News or play any kind of game, etc, etc. I'm forced to simply be creative with a simple machine in front of me, and it's just amazing how my writing output has just shot through the ceiling. And before you ask, it's much faster than a pen and paper, plus it saves me the step of typing in what I write.

I'm completely hooked on this little machine, as retro as it is, and I seriously doubt I'll be using any other text composing device for a long time to come.

Bird by Bird

Once more, I've got a large project in front of me, and I'm pulling out the wonderful advice of one of my mentors and doing it "bird by bird." In Anne Lamott's book "Bird by Bird," (one of my all-time favorite writing books, by the way), she mentions her brother having to do a large science report which involved him writing paragraphs on dozens of bird species. He procrastinated on the report and ended up at a table a day or two before it was due, all of the information spread out around him, in panic and tears. And then his father came up to him, patted his shoulder, and said, "Just take it bird by bird, buddy. Bird by bird."

And that's the way I'm doing this. I've got reams of information, and thousands of words ahead of me to write. But I can't think about that, or I'll hyperventilate. I've just got to take the single paragraph in front of me, the single sentence.

And do it all bird by bird.