An Rud A Lionas An Tsuil Lionann Se An Croi

Whilst scrolling mindlessly through my Instagram feed yesterday I came across an advertisement for a neat gadget: the Astrohaus Freewrite . It reminded me, at first glance, of those little toy "computers" that were all the rage when I was growing up. Laptops for kids, with a teeny-tiny screen, a keyboard, & access to so-called educational games. In one promo video for the Freewrite a couple of the creators are featured, talking about their invention. It doesn't seem coincidental to me that these men, who looked to be in their 30s, probably grew up with those same Vtech laptops. Though the design is pretty sleek & basic and boasts a keyboard that is far more familiar to those of us that grew up learning how to type on desktops instead of laptops, what caught my eye was the advertised purpose of the device: to provide writers with a "distraction free" writing tool. It can connect to WiFi so that projects are uploaded to the cloud, but aside from that the...

I am anything but brief. And I need to work on that. Lately I've been wanting to delve into the world of short stories, but I'm too monogamous - I can't create characters for a one story fling, I feel dirty and like a bad person. Stupid, I know, but sometimes us writer types are weird like that.  It seems like the only time I'm good at being brief is when I am (or, at least, think I am) being witty. You know, like in facebook statuses. I'm not the kind of person to write, "Ohh nooo all this snowww! It snowed like 2 feet OMG!" More like, "Today is the first day of April. It's been spring for about 2 weeks. It's fucking snowing." Or some random observation. Just spice things up a bit. Ok, I realize I'm tooting my own horn. I'll stop. The whole being brief thing has been bugging me (partly because I realize I don't know when to shut up and be concise when explaining things to people) as I've been editing and writing m...