Over the last couple of months, the group has gotten some great amusement at giving me a hard time when I manage to kill my word count almost every day. The truth is, my word count smashing isn't quite as miraculous as it may appear. In fact, I typically only write during my lunch breaks anymore, because my evenings have become devoted to revisions, writing theatre articles, and doing whatever work I need to do for Harry Potter Alliance.
Actually, I fully devote my ability to get large amounts of words down during lunch to my fellow Fiction Flurriers. I wouldn't have even known this magical device existed if it hadn't come up in conversation during one of our meetings a while ago.
This shiny bit of plastic has been almost literally attached to my side ever since I bought one off of Ebay back toward the beginning of the year. It's called an Alphasmart 3000, and I love it dearly.
Essentially, it's a word processor. It can hold up to eight saved files at a time and it's small enough to fit in a small bag. The screen space is limited, so I feel less temptation to edit myself as I type, because I can only see about five lines of prose at a time. I usually get terrible writer's cramp when I write freehand, so this means I get a lot more written during my 45-minute lunch breaks than I used to.
And the best part is, when I get home in the evenings, I just hook my Alphasmart up to my computer and it transfers what I wrote directly into my manuscript's file. It actually "simulates the keyboard," so it's fun to watch the words zoom across the document as they're transferred!
I would highly recommend an Alphasmart 3000 to any writer who may find themselves away from their computer for hours at a time, but still wants to get a decent amount written. Mine wasn't expensive--you can find Alphasmarts on Ebay for twenty or thirty bucks. They run on AA batteries, which can be even cheaper if you use rechargables like I do, plus they're ridiculously user friendly, proven by the fact I completely took mine apart and put it back together when I first got it.
But that's a different story for a different day.
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