Have you watched any of the police procedurals/crime dramas on television? Law & Order, Chicago PD, or, if you want to go way back, Hill Street Blues? Remember the large bulletin boards or dry erase boards in the detectives’ office area? The ones that take up a whole wall? Well, real law enforcement investigators do actually use those. On them they attach photos of victims and suspects, crime scene photos, as well as notes about what has already happened and what they think could potentially happen in the near future. I want one of those for my writing. I have a modest-sized bulletin board my wife gave me for Christmas a handful of years ago, but it is a bit smallish for what I would like to use it for. Mind you, I am grateful to have it, but bigger is better as they say.
I used to utilize one of the bedrooms as an office/study, but my older son has claimed it as his own. Since I now do the lion’s share of my writing on my laptop computer while sitting in the rocking chair in the living room, I hope to soon relocate the aforementioned board from my son’s room to the living room, with my wife’s permission or course. Ideally, I would like to have an office in an outbuilding equipped with a doggie door so the pooches can come and go when I am out there working. To wish in one hand and spit onto the other, we all know which one fills up faster.
I know I can attach photos, type down notes, as well as pin maps and location illustrations onto various features on my phone and laptop as well as on sites such as Pinterest, and I do utilize those things for that. The fact of the matter is I’m old school. I would like to have a bulletin board to place photos of my characters and whatnot onto so I can look up and take it all in at a glance instead of closing this app on my phone to open a different app for another feature. I guess the truth of it is I am just being a crotchety old man by yearning for something I think would be better for me. I know I need to appreciate what I already have and make do with what I have at hand.
Part-Time Warlord 