Friday, April 2, 2021 Scrivener and the Wild Bicycles

(Don’t be discouraged about all the boring stuff about Scivener. An actual story lurks below! This marks the first time I’ve started a blog post with a parenthetical statement. I’m so proud.)

I’ve finally gotten sufficiently interested in my fiction writing endeavors that I purchased the Scrivener app for my iPad. (Inwardly, I pronounce this as “Scriv-nuh,” kind of like one might say “Guv’nuh” instead of “governor” if one had a cockney accent. Which I don’t.) Scrivener is a program founded by writers for writers to supply all the tools needed for fiction writing.

I went through the Scrivener tutorial and also watched a couple YouTube video tutorials and decided I was as ready as I was ever going to be, so I started importing stories from my blog onto Scrivener and will plan to do most of my writing from there from now on.

But after spending hours trying to learn how to use Scrivener, I don’t have a single new story to share with you. I’ve gotten to the point with The Martin Chronicles that I need to spend some time thinking and planning about where it’s going next. It started out rather off-the-cuff and I hadn’t intended to keep going with it, but the story kept going in spite of me. That kind of momentum can’t be ignored, right?

My Scrivener app now has four projects in the works:

• The Martin Chronicles
• Freddy Stories
• Tales of Fig Newton
• Stand-Alone Stories

Well, I can’t just leave you without a story, so how about this one:

A Story of Two People and Their Long-Neglected Bicycles
Once upon a time, a very recent time – in fact, today time – an older couple decided to see if riding a bike after a long hiatus is really like riding a bike. When I say “older,” you should not be imagining an ancient couple, all hunched over with white hair and a million age spots. Nor should you be imagining a medium-ish older couple with bad hips and querulous digestion problems. No, this is an old couple just on the young spectrum of old – still sound in mind and body, but with some aches and infirmities looming on the horizon and well into the golden colonoscopy years. Got it?

Now, where was I? The bikes, having been recently tuned up were raring to go. The husband and wife could hear the kickstands pawing at the cement floor in the garage. It was a nice day, albeit rather windy, so off they went, heeding the call of the wild bicycles. In a very gracious providence, the first leg of the journey was downhill. If they hadn’t been on the old-ish side, the couple (at least the wife) might have let out a hearty “Wheeee!” As it was, only a few minutes went by after hitting the flatlands when the not-quite-elderly woman noticed that her legs were complaining. Yes, in the universal language of the body, those legs were murmuring and moaning something like, “Hey, we’re not used to this! You’re trying to use muscles that have been on stand-by for some time now. Ease up!”

They kept up a steady patter of this sort until the circuit was complete and the bikes were back in the garage. And how did the husband fare, you might ask? You’ll have to ask him, but suffice it to say that he reached the garage first and didn’t seem to be at all diminished by the experience. Let the storyteller hasten to add, however, that this fellow is a full two years younger than his bride. This probably explains everything.

This has been Not-Quite-Fiction Friday with the Not-Quite-Elderly Lynniebee.

Blessings on your Easter weekend. It has to be said:
He is risen.
He is risen, indeed!

I’ll probably be limping around tomorrow with sore legs – why should I bother deleting this?