Let's Ramble About Writing

 I'm not going to lie, I am having a hard time getting things down on Herd.

 Using a word processor wasn't helping at all, so I resorted to writing it by hand. I've actually got five hundred words done so far this way, which is better than nothing.

 I guess it's partially my pretentious streak (which I try to kill, but always seem to fail to) that's caused me to take up this method, and partially just because I really like foutain pens and have a bunch of really nice ink.

 I don't think liking fountain pens is pretentious, they're a nice way to write, and are generally more environmentally friendly than biros. While disposable fountain pens do exist, they're far rarer than disposable ball points or gel pens and most fountain pen owners don't seem to use them. The kind of people who use ball points tend to use diposable pens, which makes perfect sense because they're convenient and it doesn't matter if you lose them or they get stolen. It's just not super great for the environment.

 The pretentiousness comes in because I started doing it because Neil Gaiman uses fountain pens.

 I'm pretty sure this is how he does his first drafts.

 (Which means he must have better handwriting than me, I have to type it up straight away because my handwriting is so bad that I wouldn't be able to read it if I didn't.)

 It was kind of a 'well, if it works for him, it'll work for me' decision.

 Not to mention that I have a lot of ink and I need to use some of it up before I can really justify buying more.

 (I'm already eying up some as we speak, but let's ignore that, shall we?)

 Previously I was just writing in my diary every night, so this two pronged approach should help work through my ink stocks.

 So, enough of the mechanics, what's going on in the story?

 I'm still in the early stages, so I'm working in more Vaultite characters.

 So far I've introduced Calanthia (Wilson's guardian) and Raoul (another teen Vaultite).

 I'm kind of regretting Raoul. Not because of anything to do with the character, btu entirely because the main character refers to Raoul in a really odd way.

 Basically, Raoul is genderfluid, because of this, the other teen Vaultites always use Raoul's name when referring to Raoul.

 You read that right, no pronouns.

 It's been two hundred words and I'm already regretting this.

 I'll keep going with it, I can always take it out later and resort to a traditional pronoun. Probably 'they', or it'll vary between Raoul's appearences. Possibly based on what they're wearing.

 Haven't decided.

 I haven't written a genderfluid character before, so this is going to be a learning experience. I... can't imagine it'll be that hard, if I'm honest. It's really the pronoun configuration that's giving me cause for concern.

 Well, you live and learn, right?

 I've also finished introducing Katherine Ennis, a character who was initially conceived as a terrible joke, but is fitting in pretty well.

 She doesn't like Jane, which is great. Conflict is a writer's bread and butter.

 I'm hoping to introduce another genderqueer character soon. I'm not sure that's the right term really; he's a bloke after all, it's just that nature didn't seem to agree with him on that point. Science, on the other hand, did, so now everything is going pretty well for him.

 He doesn't have a name yet, but he's a character I very much like.

 That's all I've got so far, so I'll see you guys tomorrow for the FF8 post!