Sometimes You Eat the Carrot First

As you all may remember, my last book came out in 2013 (An Honest Heart) and I haven’t really been able or motivated to write since then. Every year, I say I’m going to get my writing “mojo” back. And each year, I jotted down a few ideas for stories or characters. But everything just fizzled away.

This year, I dangled a carrot in front of myself: If I could get back into a habit of writing regularly and actually write a story, I would reward myself with a reMarkable e-ink writing tablet, which I’ve been obsessed with since I first saw it advertised on Instagram a couple of years ago. But even that wasn’t enough to get me motivated.

In a late-night (or, really, early morning) whim a couple of weeks ago, I made a very financially unwise impulse purchase (because I hadn’t budgeted for it, not because it broke the bank or anything like that). I ordered the first-generation ReMarkable tablet. Why the first-generation? Because it was on sale since they’re currently rolling out the second-generation device for a couple hundred dollars more.

(Please note, this is not a sponsored post, there are no affiliate links, and I’m not making any money off of this! It’s just me gushing about something I purchased for myself and absolutely love.)

On September 2, a remarkable box was delivered to my house.

Even the packaging is wonderful!

What had I done to “deserve” this little treasure? Nothing. I hadn’t been writing. Sure, I’d done a little creative work on a new fictional setting over the past couple of years, but I had no real story ideas.

But then I had this thing, this new toy, that I wanted to play with.

Actually, back up a couple of days… Three days before I ordered, I woke up dreaming/thinking about a specific character and her story that would fit perfectly into my new fictional town. As I was lying in bed, I grabbed my phone and dictated the idea off the top of my head into the notes app.

The Android InkPad app is great because it emails the notes to me automatically.

So, I guess this was actually the catalyst for my impulse purchase. But other than saving the text of this note into my OneNote notebook for Gossettville (my new setting) on the computer, I didn’t do anything with it.

Then the tablet arrived.

Y’all.

I have been using this thing every day since I pulled it out of the box! And because I needed an “excuse” to use it, I transferred my story idea notes to it to play around with.

Ten days later, I have SIXTY handwritten pages of background work for this story idea, including seven pages of a potential opening scene!

I love that the file structure works a lot like a OneNote notebook!

With my handwriting, each page holds about 150–180 words. And some of those pages are diagrams, charts, or messy notes. But my longest file is 44 pages of almost solid line-by-line writing, which works out to over 7,000 words of character development and backstory!

Unlike the other ideas I’ve jotted down over the past several years that fizzled, every day I’ve been eager to pick up the tablet and keep working on this one. Every day for almost two weeks! I’ve even been thinking about it and having ideas for the story or characters randomly throughout my days, and staying up way past my bedtime writing those ideas down—something that hasn’t happened to me in close to a decade!

This coming week, one of my RWA chapters is holding a week-long writing marathon. Tomorrow, I’ll be spending the day prepping for it, and you’d better believe that I’ll be doing that prep work on this little beauty. My goal for the week is to write at least as many pages of story as I currently have of ideas/background (so, at least 7,000 words of story). I’ll try to remember to post updates either here or on my author Facebook page.

So, sometimes eating the “carrot” first can be the greatest motivator of all!

First day with the reMarkable—it’s about the size of an iPad, but much thinner and lighter.

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You can learn more about the reMarkable tablet here: https://remarkable.com/store/remarkable

Do you have an e-ink writing tablet? Have you or would you consider getting one?

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