NEW GADGET IN MY WRITER’S TOOLBOX

    
By Shara Moon

It’s Friday. Three days before the Samhain anthology submission. I have roughly 14,000 words written but the minimum word count required: 20,000! And I have only three days to write at least 6,000 more words. Yikes!

For some, that may seem like nothing – maybe a walk in the park even. But for me, where it took six months just to get to those 14,213 words, it was daunting.

But not impossible.

In those 72 hours, I managed to complete my 20,000 word novella, Because You Love Me, with the help of my trusty new writing gadget: my BlackBerry.

How did I do it? Well certainly not without determination! But when I couldn’t sit a minute longer in front of that glaring computer screen or got too comfy with the web browser or for whatever reason found myself on the train en route someplace I knew I had no business – or time! – going, I loaded the Word application on my BlackBerry and wrote away.

There was no internet to distract me, no squiggling lines for me to obsess over grammar, spelling, etc. It was just me, my hero and heroine, and my mission to get them through their harrowing position in the middle of a hailstorm!

Though each “page” was riddled with spelling and grammatical errors (since I have yet to upgrade to the premium package), I managed to type more than 3,500 words on this tiny instrument – and all with my thumbs!

In those 72 hours I was surprised at the lengths I went to finish my story for submission. It’s a testament to what we’re willing to do to follow a dream. And I’m happy I could rely on my BlackBerry to get me to completion.

Speaking of which, I can now add blog post as another writing accomplishment on my new favorite writing tool.♥





Shara Moon is currently an unpublished member of RWANYC. She recently submitted her short story, Because You Love Me, for submission in an anthology and is steadily at work between two projects, tentatively titled A Beautiful Lie and Bewitched. When Shara is not writing, she is reading, researching, and conferring with her wayward muse.