J. J. Brown, Wordslinger

……for writing, some of which are easy to throw into my backpack and some that require a little more planning before leaving the house.

What will you find in my back pack? Typically, a couple of notebooks or blank composition books, loose leaf, college-lined paper in a folder and a couple of paperbacks (fiction or non-fiction or both) to escape into when the words fail to materialize. Open up the smaller pocket of my pack and there are pens of various colors – I use black or dark blue for writing the story. The other colors I use to insert notes or questions in the margins about what I’d written, which makes it easy to see. When I travel, I take my laptop or netbook to transcribe what I’d written in longhand to the manuscript I’m currently working on.

Because I have a budget, I tend to find my pens, notebooks and composition books at any local dollar store. They work the same and are easy on the wallet. Occasionally, however, I will indulge and buy some really nice blank books at places like Barnes & Noble. Those usually end up as gifts to fellow writers or to those who had expressed a desire to write.

I prefer writing in longhand, as I find that I tend to sink into the world of my story and characters a little faster. The downside is that I can’t keep up with my thoughts and my hand pays the price in stiffness and cramping. Unlike Bobbi Anderson in Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers, I haven’t found a way to write via telepathy to my typewriter (or computer, for that matter).

What are your favorite writing tools?