First drafts: How do you write them?

I'm used a IBM Selectra II model to write some of my first short stories in college. I also have several binders filled with complete/uncompleted stories I wrote by hand. Not to mention a couple of hard disks in storage and what I have stashed on the internet repository.

For me, I began writing by hand and still do that with a few short stories. I will take some notes on paper and then use the computer to type them up.

I like paper for sketching stuff out while I'm in a safe place like the park or a cafe. It's cool to write a new idea for a story in a cafe and people have no idea what you're doing. I still have several stories from my life in Europe that I haven't even begun to transcribe to the computer yet.

Someday...

I always type in the first instance, I find hand-writing way too slow for my thought processes (plus my poor hand aches quickly!). I've given myself permission not to have to do it well - I'll even leave out complex punctuation such as inverted commas/quotes if the words are coming quickly enough and I'm in the flow (I'll go back and fix the punctuation later).

Thank God on bended knee for laptops! Now I can write anywhere!

I write on the computer (Open Office, manuscript format).

When I do try write on paper, I end up getting terrible wrist cramp in my right hand. I've never held my pen properly so that's probably to blame. I also find I have a problem reading what I've written, because when I try to write fast (yay! Inspiration!) I tend to scrawl.

I write my first drafts in Word. Double-spaced Times Roman 12. I do have a bi-weekly on-the-spot writing group where we sit around the table writing 10-minute prompt inspired on-the-spot pieces. Quite often I will have my WIP in mind when participating. Obviously I do these in a notebook. So, there are times when I write freefall in a notebook and add it to my Word file later. But the lion's share is done in front of the computer with good ole Word.

It depends. I tend to outline by hand and write down random notes by hand but then actually start writing on the computer. As I write faster and am more comfortable with a computer.

I hate writing by hand, and much prefer bashing words onto a keyboard.

However, I find that if I handwrite a draft of a chapter first, the writing is massively better than the bits that have been typed straight in. I think it's because essentially, it's a second draft. It’ll generally be the next day I’m typing it up too, so it’s had some time to settle.

I’ve noticed that sections written that way need very little work on the re-writes, whereas bits that were typed straight in were often sections that needed substantial re-writing.

Some of you may take issue with this, but I tend to write my first draft in my head. I'm blessed with a great memory.

By the time I'm ready to write, I've mulled the project/scene/chapter for so long that when I hit the keyboard, what I'm typing is really a second draft.

The majority of my drafts are written on the computer (Microsoft Works, double-spaced, 12pt-Times). I type almost twice as fast as I can scribble down words with a pen, and my handwriting is amost illegible to anyone but myself. Sometimes even I have difficulty deciphering a word.

In college, I used to sit and write during boring lectures, so I'd have handwritten pages to transcribe in the evening. I will also write scenes on half sheets of paper, in little notebooks, on the backs of receipts or fliers, anything I can get my hands on when I have a few minutes and inspiration strikes. I wrote several chapters of one novel in this fashion, and have all the half sheets of paper tucked away in a file folder somewhere.

I used to do the first draft longhand, but eventually decided it was inefficient. Now I do the first draft on the computer and it goes much faster. My fingers can finally keep up with my(demented) brain.

I type mine, just can't keep up with my thoughts on paper. The only time I've ever handwritten anything substantial is when I got ideas in the middle of classes. I did bring a regular notebook to Florida on my vacation but I barely got anything done. I'm seriously considering just buying a laptop to make it easier.

~DragonHeart~

I'm somewhat similar to wordmonkey in this area. I mull until I have my opening sentence and a general sense of where I want the piece to go. This can take 10 minutes or three days. Once I have it in my head I sit and write it in Wordperfect with the proper formatting. The next day I'll revisit it and tweak it here and there. The next day, I give it another once-over and if it passes muster, off it goes.

This applies to shorter, essay-type pieces of 800-1200 words.

Usually pen and paper. I get distracted on the computer, so I try to minimize that by not being at my desk. I turn on music (alternative rock, usually,) lay back on the couch, and rest my writing table on my lap and just start writing. I transfer to the computer whenever I have a pile of pages. I tend to get into the zone easier when I'm writing that way, and the music distracts my inner editor enough that I can just get the words down.

Computer exclusively for me. Back in the day (before PCs) I wrote longhand and it took forever ! Now I can't hold a pen longer than it takes to fill out a check, so it's all computer, all the time for me.

I'm firmly in the camp of both. I write on my computer, but carry around my notebook and I'll scribble whole chapters or just bits wherever I am: soccer fields, doctor's office, waiting at the school to pick up my kids, in the choir loft at church during a boring sermon. Somehow, with my desktop, laptop, and trusty cheap notebooks, it all gets written.

What Soccer Mom said. I've been experimenting with writing complete first drafts longhand and it's just not working (too darn slow, especially for my hamster-wheel brain!).

I hate being chained to my desktop computer, which is why I'm shopping for a laptop right now (I plan to sell the desktop). So, do I get permission to buy the laptop this weekend (just in time for NaNo)?

I type on the laptop, simply because I can't write as fast as I think. And I type 60+ wpm!

If I'm going out and want to write while on the bus, in a waiting room, whatever, I make notes and sketch ideas for future projects, as a folder carrying my hard copy of what I've written so far would be too bulky, and I wouldn't want to risk making a continuity error while temporarily separated from my ickle wordbaby.

Usually on a portable typewriter lately, but sometimes with pen and paper, and sometimes on the PC.

I do a combination. If I get stuck on the computer, I grab my notebook, when the words dry up, I type them up and then continue on. My writing speed is about the same although the typing is far more readable on than longhand especially when the ideas are cooking but I have never lost anything due to my inability to read what I just wrote. Also my writing comes out neater on the computer than in longhand for some reason, but really, I use both, whatever keeps the words flowing. And longhand is much less distracting than computers because pen and paper do not have internet.

My problem with longhand is I have three small kids who think they can color on anything and my youngest likes to shred things, so I have to be really careful about that, then after that finding a pen that has not been snatched is the second hardest task, because they are always taking mine to draw with because mine are the best and the cheap crappy ones just don't cut it. And my mechanical pencils always either get broken or the kids click break click break the lead.

I wrote my first novel in longhand. For my second, I graduated to a manual typewriter (a major conceptual switch--writing with a pen is quite different from typing, and it took me a while to get used to it). About halfway through that novel, I bought an IBM Selectric clone--with a correcting ribbon! High tech! Yippee!

By my fourth novel, I'd acquired a computer. It was one of the most liberating experiences of my writing life. At last I could write as fast as I thought (I was fast on the typewriter, but much faster on the keyboard). Also, I'm a compulsive reviser, and my handwritten and typewritten drafts were nightmares of white-out, overwriting, additions scotch-taped on bits of paper or scribbled on the back--I'd often have to re-type whole sections just to get them reasonably legible again. And then there was having to type the whole thing over AGAIN for a clean copy to submit...With the computer, you always have a clean copy, and you can move, add, and delete without limit. For me, the computer opened up a whole new world of speed, flexibility, and order. I've never looked back. I never print anything out any more (with the exception of what I give to beta readers) until it's finished.

- Victoria

That depends on what Jenna means by a "first draft"
I usually use a notebook (hard cover) for parts of the idea ... snippets here and there..and a quick move to the really rough first draft. Either Bic Pen or Pencil. no fancy writing utensils..nothing over the top.
Then I let it sit...(and sometimes totally forget about it)
When I feel the whole story in my head, I will start writing. Then again it depends if I want to sit and write longhand or go straight to the puter.
Once I move it to puter...there is no way I can go back to even writing a snippet in longhand for that story. Some kind of mental block I guess.

Editing...I must must must must (said that enough???) Print it out and read the pages and edit with a pen. I just dont see all the stuff on screen that I catch with hand editing.

When I am composing a poem of great beauty, I prepare by swallowing a dictionary, getting drunk, becoming depressed which always helps, wait an hour or two, and then I proceed to vomit up the detritus of my tortured soul, all over my notebook. The sonnet emerges fully formed, though often burned by my stomach acid.

I thank you.

@ scarlett

Way back when I wrote my very first story, I did it with a #2 pencil. This was the mid 1960s and I was about seven or eight, and it was about four or five sentences long, if memory serves.

Then I graduated to a portable manual typewriter which I carried around with me on the road when I was in a band in my twenties. Never wrote a lot, but did manage a few ideas and one short story.

I got into computers before I decided to get serious about writing, so when I got my job as a movie reviewer for the local paper, I just naturally started writing on the computer. Filing the column by email every week reinforced that. When I started writing fiction seriously, shortly after getting the newspaper gig, it too was done on the computer.

So to answer the initial question, I write all my first drafts (and subsequent ones, naturally) on the computer using OpenOffice in full manuscript format with headers, etc., and I plug in bookmarks to chapters and so on as I go so that when it comes to editing, I can easily jump from spot to spot within the manuscript (all my stories, including novels, are single files)

I do carry a small notebook for jotting down ideas, and a handheld tape recorder for when I'm driving and get an idea. I just grab it and yak away. I also keep notepads and pencils on my bedside table and in the bathroom in case I get an idea while asleep or on the throne.

Anything on paper or tape goes into the computer at the first opportunity.

What's a typewriter?