The Wood Beyond The World Forum Free hand or typed?

One thing I'd been wondering about. Do you prefer to write free hand with pen and paper or to type it up from the start?

Personaly I find it much easier to become focused and drawn into what I'm writing by finding a quiet place with a pen and notebook but I was curious what the rest of you usually did.

In my early years, pen and paper and then transposed to a type writer. But I hated that and think thats why it took me so long to even get through a single chapter. But once I got my first computer with a word processing program, I was hooked. Now I strickly write on my computer, I have a quiet room and a very large monitor.

Still have sticky notes all over the monitor and desk as well as index cards for references.

Nick.

I saved all the hand writen stuff in a trunk and I am still in the process of going through the stuff and transcribing to files on my computer.

Interesting. And just to be clear the sole realistic purpose of this topic is that I'd like to get to know you guys a bit better and how someone prefers to write seemed like a good means.

My handwriting was destroyed by years of taking notes in college and grad school. After our household had a computer for a couple of years, and I got involved in posting to discussion groups and emailing, it was a natural extension for me to begin writing again. I'd used composition books for journals for years, and I still use 'em for notemaking and for sketching out individual scenes that come to me when I'm out of the house.

When I have to transcribe whole scenes from a notebook to the word processor it drives me crazy. My eyes are 49 years old, and it's hard to focus back and forth from the manuscript to the monitor. But I need both notebooks and computer.

My biggest advance has been getting my own laptop. I completed my last book on it -- when we've moved and set up a reliable home-network I'll be able to post the darned thing here -- there are a few chapters, from the very beginning and the end, up here already.

Generally I type my work in the first instance, but if I have trouble starting a chapter I find that actually writing it out my ideas helps me express myself more clearly, because I can cross things out but still see what i've crossed out. Or I can write something vague and circle it, knowing that I will clarify it later on the PC.

Lately I've been feeling a lack of inspiration, and while it may be to do with the fact that I can get quite busy, so my creative energy could be drained, I think its got to do with sitting in front of the computer screen. I think a laptop may be more helpful with regards to allowing me to get comfortable in other spaces to write in. Also I can sometimes get distracted by checking mail, surfing the web etc. So I'm looking into that at the moment.

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I'll jot down ideas and basic outlines and sometimes dialogue in a notebook, but when it comes to the actual writing of the thing I almost always type it. I do this for several reasons. 1- readability. I don't have great penmanship, and when I am excited I write really fast and sometimes i can't even decipher my own writing. 2- I'm a very unorganized person; sometimes I might accidentally throw away handwritten things, or misplace them. When it's saved on a computer, nothing save a fatal crash will make me lose it. It's just convenient.

First, I must admit that Andy's points, both one and two, I am guilty of as well, thus I do not write by hand. Of course, I started many of years ago by hand and like Nick moved to the Typewriter, but I hate that too. It wasn't fast enough I guess. Then I got an Amiga and I was in heaven. All I needed was a room to my own, coffee or Mountian Dew at the time, Rock & Roll (80's hair bands primarily), and a 3 1/4" not so floppy floppy disk and I was set.

Not much has changed with today, other than the computer, (Still listen to those hair bands and classic rockers). Though I must admit that with laptop, my writing has gotten easier in remote places. My job takes me all around the room, and a laptop comes in handy in those lonely hotel rooms. Also, I take it camping, something we do alot, and there's nothing like writing in the quiet darkess of the wilderness along side a comforting fire.

The only drawback to using this wonderful machine is that I as a programmer sit at one of these things every day, and I simply get tired of staring at the screen.

Looks like i'm the only one who still types lol. I did figure a lot of us listen to music (the band dragonforce is my personal favorite for writing). I suppose my issues with computers are the fore mentioned distractions and how impossible it is to get comfortable infront of my computer lol. Thanks the replys everyone.

As in another thread, I have exposed myself as a Luddite. I write everything, I mean everything, long hand. I understand Andy speaking of getting excited and the writing gets a little messed up. Yet I find typing on a screen worse.

I type fast, usually about 60-70 words a minute. When I am writing, my brain is awhirl. When I start typing, the ideas come fast and furious and tangential thoughts come into play. All too quickly, I find myself with ideas suddenly splattering on the screen. And the result is a complete mess

Long hand is tedious. For me, I find it makes me focus. I want to get the idea out and finished, so tangential thoughts don't come into play. At the same time, there is the aspect of convenience.

I have my notebook, my paper and my pencil. I can work anywhere. I can pull out my stuff on the bus or subway and write, if an idea comes to mind. A lot of my writing is done at my brewpub. I can spend a few hours there, with my stuff and my pints of IPA and write 10-20 pages. And I don't have to worry about my batteries dying on me. If my pencil runs of out lead, I have pens. If I don't have a pen, I can easily find one.

Also, for me, it provides the first level of edit. Like Andy pointed out, things can come out in a flurry. But when you sit down, scrawled paper beside your screen, you can focus and tighten the stuff you wrote much easier than if you typed it on the computer and printed it out. The tedious re-entering of the pages, once again, allows you to focus on what you are trying to say.

It works for me, not for everyone. Let me give you an example. I look at my short story, Drawn. Draft one was written in a frenzy after a concert I went to. When I typed it in, immediately I found some issues and was able to address it on the spot. Because of that first level of edit, I felt confident to submitted it on urbis as Morbid Angel. It got really good reviews. All I had to focus on was details, in the end. And all I put into it was four hours of scribbling and an hour of typing it in.

Caveat, once again. This works for me, not everyone. Penmanship is not the issue here because my writing looks like a headless chicken frenetically dancing about a page. Yet if you can read it, you can type it.

I'll go back now to my horse and buggy, making sure the hay is dry. And reset my sliderule before going to bed. ::biggrin::

I have red and black pens and 3 X 5 blank index cards in every room in the house, and in the backpack I carry everywhere. These cannot help being superior to a notebook for writing down reminders for all sorts of ideas, and snatches of dialogue. This way every note is seperate and can be dropped into a pile for a particular scene or as an idea pertaining to a single character or theme. Write only on one side of the card, so that you never have to flip them over to see if anything is there. When I am through with a card I cross it out, then leave it in a pile near the computer. Now I can use the blank side.

I would not write anything else but notes in longhand. Typing can stay up with my every thought. I can switch sentences around several times on the spot to get the best rendering. I can search for synonyms and look up words on the spot. And I can save side issues that come up in brackets and then later move these to files where the information will be available later, if it does not make the present scene under construction. I can also color code notes made along the way, or points that will need revisiting, by changing the font color or highlighting. In files of notes only, Yellow highlight means I need to add this information somewhere in the book. When it has been added I will use green, signaling I will not again have to read these areas. Red or Blue font indicates major classes of information, or something I need pay especial attention to. I can make lists of choices characters might make; once I reject a choice on the list I font it light green. Seeing this later, I'll know I've considered and rejected the choice. More likely choices on the same list will have colors that will lead me to them when their time on stage comes.

All this fits the lesson of the 5 Ps I learned from David Gergen's father: Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance.

No, the days of writing longhand are long gone. ::biggrin::

Lots of variety in method and temperment here, I see.

I could never color-code, anymore than I can do a proper outline, or plan chapters ahead of time. I think on my feet much better now than I did when I started out on my first novel -- there is a kind of outline in my head, at least. But too much of what happens in my stories is really up to the characters themselves -- they're not entirely in my control. I don't think I've ever really known where a passage of dialogue was going at the outset -- what the characters would be doing while they were speaking as much as what they would say. Scenes unfold and I record them. The most dramatic elements of the stories arise out of these somewhat out of control character interactions.

I've had to scrap a lot of stuff because of this method, or at least rewrite it -- but not as much as you might think.

Being at ease with this kind of uncertainty is really the only reason I'm able to write at all. If I had to figure everything out ahead of time, all on my own, without my imaginary friends, I wouldn't be able to do it.

My composition books take the place of notecards or post-its. I've got three or four filled with the current projects -- there's some mingling of storylines, but I can keep them straight pretty readily.

I think my large family has something to do with my ready dependence on the computer. There just isn't space or security for lots of hardcopy. As it is I have one good sized box full of file folders, in addition to my composition books. All that stuff, and more, takes up so much less space when it's stored electronically.

i began writing longhand. I used spiral notebooks, then on to binded books. The more i got used to writing the larger the book i would get. I ended with a binded book of blank white pages of standard size and i'd fill the pages with my very small hand writing (almost like HP Lovecraft's). I rarely drew pictures seeing as it distracted from the telling of a tale. Besides, writing is drawing. ;-)

But my writing quality didn't improve until i began using the computer to document my dreams. I began doing this on myspace but now I have taken down all the dream blogs.

They were closely related to Cosmos. Still are. Now i have a laptop, and i feel my writing is getting better.

i dont work a desk job anymore so the stacks of post-its are gone.

Leah,

In a way, I do much the same as you. My skimply outlines consist primarily of knowing where I want to end (but I do not usually know how the scene will end, just what end I want to leave the reader with); whose POV; what the attitudes driving the characters appearing in the scene; what the conflict driving the scene and the goals of the characters. By having these, along with small snatches of dialogue, certain settings, and information I need to present, I keep myself from straying off course, so that I have hardly ever had to entirely scrap a scene or change its order within the novel.

All the rest comes on the fly, and as you say, most of the meatiest stuff comes right out of the characters. But this happens for me because I know going in what they want, and I also know how I want to affect the reader. I do not find out how they will fight for what they want, the exact words, actions, what emotions they might have in the process of the scene, until the scene is pouring onto the page. And only a line or two of dialogue might be in notes prior to the writing. Dialogue almost all originates in the heat of the writing.

Also, I am never sure what scenes will be long and which short. Ending a scene is very intuitive. Somehow I just know when I've come to a wonderful place to stop. Anything planned for the scene that I have not put in by the end will either fit somewhere within, or I will carry it over to future scenes, or even carrry it to the final stages of foreshadowing. And I have no regrets if some embellishment fails to make the book.

When I started True Minds the only thing I knew about the story was the central conflict, that there would be at least one romance, and that the baddest bad guy had to be defeated, leaving troubles still looming on the horizon, however. I didn't really know anything about the characters except their cultural backgrounds and their basic abilities -- I didn't know their psychology until I began writing them. I didn't know what my themes would turn out to be, even. All of that came out of character interaction. My first attempt at outlining the last two thirds of the book was completely turned around by the time I actually got around to writing it. Those headstrong characters. . . . That's when I gave up on outlining.

Of course the prequel was easier to frame, because I knew the end point would overlap the beginning of TM. That's probably one reason it turned out to be half the length. I also knew what aspects of psychology and theme I needed to address to set up TM.

My ideas in general are clearer now, however. I know these people very well indeed -- even stuff I haven't actually written yet. I'm looking forward to the day when I can spend all the time I really want to with them. Then they can start surprising me again, I suppose.

The joys of writing a saga!

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I cannot agree with this more. This is how I wrote my essays and dissertation when I was at Uni. And you still get further inspiration when typing it all in.

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