Got to thinking about this after having that right of passage where my keyboard started coming apart from high wordcount - I broke the W key which still works only now it doesn't have a bit of plastic over it. I wondered, has anyone ever deliberately done this with the 'I' key so that they become more conscious of every time they use it in a first person narrative?
Personally, I'm not going to do this as I tend to be conscious of the 'I's' and take them out where I find alternative ways, but as an idea it's not a bad one. (Besides, breaking the W key is annoying enough when one of my main characters is called Walter.)
Anyone else destroy their computer in the name of changing how they write?
For me, that's what re-re-re-reading is for. Besides, you could substitute "I" for "she" and "he" and any number of other things, so you won't have much of a keyboard left.
I broke the 2/@ key, the E key and the W recently. So I got a new keybord and immediately spilled satay sauce on it.
I shouldn't be let near electronics. :/
Hmmm I was not conscious of it, but maybe I should be. Thanks
Nah, but did swap the keys around for a guy I didn't like the office. Swapped the T and the R around. Ahh those were the days :)
I play golf, don't know if you know the movie Tin Cup. A guy plays the rest of the round with just his 7 iron after his caddy gets mad and breaks all of his other clubs. Tried it last year, played 18 holes with just a 7 iron, skipped the breaking the rest of set part... It probably wouldn't work out trying to write a story with just the 'e' key. Eee ee eeee, e! It might be fairly easy to eliminate say the bottom row off the keyboard, 'zxcvbnm,.' and no shift key. Leaving out the top row would be much more difficult, lots of useful keys up there. How about a pick your best 20???
As far as writting a story, I almost always find myself speaking from my perspective as 'I'. I try to write from a you perspective or third party observer sometimes but it's more of a challenge. It's something I want to work on.
I used to switch the N and the M because people usually won't notice.
Ayn Rand wrote a novella in the first person that doesn't use the word I until the last chapter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella)
I used to switch the N and the M because people usually won't notice.
I hate you now.
^ Pulling that off is impressive. I think.
It's not impressive when you realize that all Rand did was simply replace singular personal pronouns (Like "I" and "me") with plural personal pronouns ("we" and "us"). It does, however, create an interesting language that is absent from the rest of her work, even if the ideas are just as ham-fisted.
I like Oulipo's lipograms better: Perec's La disparition is a 300-page novel that doesn't use the letter 'e'.
If you broke the "i" off, you could just use lower-case ells (depending on the font).
That way you could spell still.
Like "stlll".
Perhaps a good idea with a cheap keyboard that you can plug into an USB slot. Would be pretty crazy to do it on the built-in keyboard.
@XyZy - I thought he was talking about the hate.
