I think one of the benefits of doing this project and making myself write on the computer is that I don't have as much anxiety about writing on a computer. The thoughts and words are appearing to me as fast as they would when I write on paper. In addition, thanks to applications like Byword that allow me to ignore all the spelling mistakes until I'm ready to correct them (if I choose to). My current work flow is to open up a new document and then just start writing until I meet the word requirements and finish my last thought. From there, I give the document a title, created date and tags then save it in a folder structure called "Chronicles" which then separates the entries by year and month. I'll probably set up some kind of folder action to just sort the files after saving, but -for now- I'm focused on the actual writing versus the tools and tech surrounding it.

Today, I spent some one on one time with my oldest daughter to just play around and have fun. I had asked her if she'd rather make cookies with me which is something that we've been doing more and more of but she seemed to really like the idea of just the two of us using our imagination1. I did my best to keep up with all the ideas that she made up but I think my favorite one was the following.

Sarah Milkins She's a Princess Scientist horse who succeed when everyone said it was impossible2.
She's 4-5 years old.
Goes to school a lot, even when she gets fussy...
Doesn't get fat when she gets older3.
There are only a few of them... But there is a lot of others and tons of information about them.

It was just so exciting to see her talk about this idea and we both went to the rest of the family to share. It was one of those great moments when a parent can just sit back and enjoy the their little one's creation.

After that, we sat in front of the computer and giggled making little movies in PhotoBooth... This was a wonderful evening.

  1. I got to be Cinderella and she got to be a talking horse. I hope it doesn't mean much, but the horse was looking for her family because they were too busy taking care of a new baby. If anything, it could be a sub-conscience idea bubbling to the surface because her sister has been sick for the last couple of days causing my wife and I to miss work and tend to the growing piles of vomit. ↩

  2. She said that you couldn't be a princess and a scientist. I told her no and I'll put more effort into making sure she has enough exposure to science. ↩

  3. I don't know where she gets this exactly, but I have my suspicions ↩

Category: personal
writing kids ideas