1) When I was younger, starting a new story often meant buying a new pen. We’ve always been big on office supplies in my family, particularly pens. And different pens sometimes seem to have different stories in them.
These days, a new writing program or app can be the same. I was reading an article online about top apps for writers, and most of them were things that don’t interest me (an app to keep your characters organized doesn’t really appeal to me — my characters are much happier when they’re disorganized), but there was a paragraph about an app called iA Writer. It sounded interesting, since I’ve always been drawn to writing software that presents a completely clean screen to write on.
iA Writer doesn’t even have settings or options. The message being: “Don’t waste time fiddling with the settings — start writing!”
As soon as I started using the app, I got an idea for a new story. I’ve been wondering for a while if I’d ever write a story that drew on my small obsession with…
Oh, but that would be a spoiler… 🙂
2) I was interested in this article: “Mo’ne Davis asks Bloomsburg to reinstate baseball player behind offensive tweet“
In brief, a college athlete was kicked off his team for tweeting something offensive about Little League phenom Mo’ne Davis, and she is expressing forgiveness and asking that he be reinstated. Being an athlete herself, she knows how hard he’s worked to get where he is.
It made me think of a recent blog post over at Maggie Madly Writing, called “Frat Houses and Free Speech.” Maggie brought up some good points about responsibility. I particularly appreciated her point that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
And I’m not advocating for Casselberry being allowed back on the team, but I do like the fact that not only is he exposed as a sexist jerk but he also just got schooled in maturity by a 13-year-old girl.
It also made me think about what I wrote recently about Ronda Rousey. People do get weird about men in sports having to play against, and possibly lose to, women. Casselberry, the player who was kicked off the team, was a top hitter. Davis is a dominant pitcher, achieving her Little League victories against boys. Not that Casselberry has to worry about batting against her (she’s only 13), but, as I say, the whole idea does get some people upset. And he’s obviously familiar with the games she’s played so far in her career.
And, of course, Casselberry is white and Davis is Black. Which could also be a factor.
That reminds me of when I was younger, before I had my own computer. I used to use pens all the time, and they were never pens that I bought. They were always pens I happened to find somewhere, and I grew oddly attached to them (because of the stories that came out of them) and a little sad when they ran out of ink.
Pens do have personality, or at least they seem more personal than computers. I think this is one thing that attracts people to tablets and smart phones. They’re computers, but less impersonal.