Writing Fiction Longhand

[Ghost Plane]

Longhand facilitates fiction. Keyboard facilitates technical/legal writing. Deferent cues to different parts of my brain. One is creative. The other is analytical.

 

Best combo so far seems to be Exaclair/Clairfontaine/Quo Vadis products using B/stub nibs with whatever ink inspires me/the character. Add to that an iPod loaded with my "soundtrack" for the book and I'm in business.

[dcwaites]

I haven't finished reading the Chandler article yet. I've printed it out and will read it on the train home.

 

However, I use both modes.

 

If it is a formal instructional document, or a report or some-such, then I will plan it out properly before beginning to write.

 

If it is an informal letter, or fiction, then I will write in discovery mode.

Stephen King, in his book "On Writing", says he is a discovery mode writer, and has comments on planned vs discovered stories.

 

Sadly, my favourite outliner/planner, Think, later Symantec, More 3.1, no longer works under Mac OS 10.5. And there is nothing else equivalent.

 

Consequently, if I am seriously planning a document, it means pulling out some A3 and doing Warnier-Orr diagrams...

 

I suppose the mode I use depends on whether I want to craft the organisation of the information, when I will use planning mode, or if I want to craft the telling if the story, when I will use discovery mode.

 

 

[JFT]

Longhand facilitates fiction. Keyboard facilitates technical/legal writing. Deferent cues to different parts of my brain. One is creative. The other is analytical.

 

Like you fiction(poetry in my case) longhand while technical documentation with a computer. Your "brain cue" theory is interesting and I guess I am subject to the same cue

 

Sadly, my favourite outliner/planner, Think, later Symantec, More 3.1, no longer works under Mac OS 10.5. And there is nothing else equivalent.

 

Consequently, if I am seriously planning a document, it means pulling out some A3 and doing Warnier-Orr diagrams...

 

Have you tried Scrivener? I have been quite impressed with it. A few of my writing friends adopted it as well.

[dogpoet]

Just ask Neal Stephenson or Neil Gaiman whether that whole "longhand with a fountain pen" thing is holding them back. (Stephenson wrote the entire Baroque Cycle in longhand. I've seen the picture of the stack of sheet paper making up the first draft manuscript...it's like the Empire State Building.)

 

Stephenson wrote his newest novel Anathem "longhand with a fountain pen" as well. It's about 900 pages.

 

BTW, if you haven't read Anathem and you like Neal Stephenson read it ASAP. I personally think it's his best book.

Stephenson (and Gaiman and King, come to that) can afford to have somebody else type it up for him after he's done, though.

[Ghost Plane]

Then they're missing a chance at their next revision. I do my first rewrite when transcribing onto the computer.

[Marko Kloos]

That's one of the biggest advantages of the longhand-then-transcribe method...it forces a complete revision cycle as you're typing it up. I'd be highly surprised if Gaiman, Stephenson, et. al. skipped that step.

[Tricia]

Longhand facilitates fiction. Keyboard facilitates technical/legal writing. Deferent cues to different parts of my brain. One is creative. The other is analytical.

 

...

 

 

Interesting. For me, it's the other way 'round - I can type so automatically that I don't have to think at all about the physical act of typing and sometimes, looking back after the heat of writing, I have no recollection of anything but the scene itself. There's so complete a connection between the muscle memory in my fingers over the keyboard that my conscious brain is bypassed and I can reside in that creative place, trusting that my 'translations' of the images I see and emotions I feel make their way into words. I also rearrange my sentences so the melody is right, but that, too, is done with the barest whisper of conscious thought.

 

With handwriting, though, I stay much more conscious of the physical act of it, always aware of the texture and tactileness of it. I love that part - I've been known to just write swirls and curlicues when the match of pen and ink and paper is so perfect that I want only to enjoy it. I return to forming words and thoughts, still enjoying the feeling of writing, but that feeling is a part of handwriting that, for me, anyway, doesn't leave. I don't want it to. That's why I enjoy handwriting for notes and ideas and ramblings, but not fiction since when I write fiction I'm 'elsewhere' and don't feel the page at all.

 

It's all a very personal choice, and I'm happy we have the choices we do.

[dogpoet]

That's one of the biggest advantages of the longhand-then-transcribe method...it forces a complete revision cycle as you're typing it up. I'd be highly surprised if Gaiman, Stephenson, et. al. skipped that step.

I'd need to double check, but in the introduction to Neverwhere Gaiman mentions having his PA type it up for him.

[Writer44]

I wouldn't want someone else to type my draft from longhand form into the computer. I wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to improve the prose. Furthermore, I doubt anyone could read my writing well enough to do the job. Then there are those margin notes, directional arrows, odd self-invented shorthand symbols, and such that would make it more like spelunking without a flashlight than typing a manuscript.

 

Anyway...

 

44

[Phototoxin]

When I use a word processing program, I can't suppress the urge to constantly revise. When I write initial drafts in longhand, I rarely even cross out a word because that would break the rhythm. Maybe that's why I have about 300 handwritten pages of the novel I wrote for fun, and never got past the first chapter revisions on the computer.

 

Thats what I found while doing NaNoWriMo last year... I like writing with a pen... I'm writing a story after all... not typing one...

 

but the irritating part is having to RE-type everything though at least you will have the 'original' and so can trace back between revisions.

[ZeissIkon]

Something interesting I can add to this thread -- since reading this, I grabbed a steno book off the pile in my lady's computer room and put it near my journal and my game notebooks. It sat there a couple days, and then I found myself grabbing it, opening, and starting to write. So far, I've got almost a dozen pages at what I guess to be a couple hundred words per page, no getting stuck, no revising (both problems I have when writing at the computer keyboard). Maybe I was just "ripe" -- but I like to think it was writing longhand with a fountain pen (the only way I can write longhand for any length of time, due to arthritis in my hands) that has "opened the tap." The question still remains, of course, whether I'll finish the story, and whether it'll be any good once I do -- but it's got to be better than all the ones I never even started to write down...

[dogpoet]

I wouldn't want someone else to type my draft from longhand form into the computer. I wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to improve the prose. Furthermore, I doubt anyone could read my writing well enough to do the job. Then there are those margin notes, directional arrows, odd self-invented shorthand symbols, and such that would make it more like spelunking without a flashlight than typing a manuscript.

 

Anyway...

 

44

I think he had quite a workload on after he'd finished the first draft, so he was happy enough to have somebody else type it up and then could come back to it later (probably with a fresher perspective, which I wouldn't knock) to start revising it once everything else was out of the way. He mentions that he was explaining to his pa what this or that word was while on the set where they were filming the telly version, so he would have been pretty busy at that point. (Apart from anything else, he was still writing Sandman then, and I think had another couple of comics, including that Michael Zulli Alice Cooper thing, in the air as well. Having somebody else type up your first draft for you would be quite welcome under those circumstances, I'd imagine.