Ever done a manuscript by hand? (Pen & paper?)

Plot Device · Apr 21, 2007

I did as a kid. I was 12. It was about 30 pages in one of those children's school tablets with the black and white speckles on the cover.

Took me three days straight starting on a Friday afternoon when I got home from school . I stayed up until about 10 o'clock on Friday night and went to bed feverishly thinking about the story. Then got up Saturday morning and resumed writing all day. The drive to write was more powerful than the need to sleep so I stayed up past midnight on Saturday night and kept writing until about 3 in the morning Sunday. Woke up Sunday at about 7 AM with the tablet next to my bed and didn't even go to the bathroom, just started writing again until I had to pee so bad I couldn't stand it. Didn't shower, barely ate. Just kept writing.

I finished the story by about 6 o'clock Sunday night. Then I finally took a shower.

That was my first all-nighter ever.

A few years later I graduated to a typewriter and then eventually a computer. But I started off writing all my stories in tablets by hand.

During my tablet-writing years I became quite a connoisseur of fine-point pens (they glide faster than medium-point and usually produce less blotches) and favored college-ruled to school-ruled (more lines per page). I also discovered spiral notebooks allowed you to tear out pages more easilly than tablets. And then eventually discovered loose-leaf notebooks allow you to edit more easilly (the pages are replaceable and moveable-aroundable).

Stacks and stacks of tablets and spiral notebooks and three-ring binders lined my bedroom. Boxes of fine-point pens (blue or black, it didn't matter at the time).

When I started using a typewriter, I had stacks and stacks of typing paper everywhere. Ribbons and (later on) cartidges and/or daisy wheels were an evil necessity. And when the computer came, boxes of disks loomed on my desk. Now adays I have a pretty compact operation with my laptop.

I kinda feel bad for grapic artists who use actual paints, inks, canvases, and poster boards. They not only need a massive work space in the form of a studio for any current project, they also need copious storage space often encompassing many rooms in the house (atic, basement, garage, etc.) for all their past canvases and portfolios. But a writer needs nothing but a laptop, some disks, and a pack of paper.

I don't think I could ever go back to using pen and paper. It's not fast enough nor is it malleable enough. If I really had to I could. But I'm spoiled by the computer.

Jamesaritchie · Apr 21, 2007

Paper

I use paper for almost all my first drafts. Quite a number of pro writers do. Stephen King even wrote the massive novel Dreamcatcher with a fountain pen. Even Neil Gaiman writes his first drafts in longhand.

I'd argue two things. 1. Pen and paper is a thousand times as malleable as any computer. 2. The speed of a word processor is its worst sin, and the very thing most writers like about word processors are the very things that make them write poorly.

I could also argue that the scientific evidence for longhand being a much better form of writing is irrefutable.

Shady Lane · Apr 21, 2007

First draft is longhand, everytime.

Azure Skye · Apr 21, 2007

I've done scenes and chapters in longhand but never a whole book. The only reason I don't do it now is because I absolutely despise typing copy.

Chumplet · Apr 21, 2007

I can't even read my own notes. Fuggetaboudit. If I wrote a whole novel, or even a short story in longhand, I'd go insane trying to remember what the hell I wrote. Fortunately, I only started writing seriously two years ago when my husband gave me a refurbished laptop. I email my backups to work.

Dave.C.Robinson · Apr 21, 2007

I write all my drafts on the computer. I'll do scenes and notes in longhand on occasion but that's it. I do real writing at a keyboard. I understand why people would prefer to write the first draft longhand, and I do find it works better for some of the notes. Still I'm not going to ever do it that way. My hand wouldn't let me. I don't hold the pen the same way most do (the result of an accident while I was learning to write) and so writing longhand for any great period of time is not an option for me.

DeadlyAccurate · Apr 21, 2007

Same as JAR. First drafts in pen & paper for everything but articles and very short stories. My mind has an easier time concentrating when I write away from the computer.

blacbird · Apr 21, 2007

Yes. I do a fair amount of writing by hand on yellow legal pads.

But my all-time favorite writing experience happened several years ago while I was camping out, a beautiful early summer day at a place called Portage, Alaska. I had an idea for a story, and decided to sit down at a picnic table in the campground, in the sun, and sketch some of them out. Five or six hours later I had the entire rough draft of a 5000-word story. It's been refined a little since, but not much.

Alas, nobody wants to publish it. Which puts it mainstream along with all my other stuff. But it was an enjoyable few hours.

caw

kristie911 · Apr 21, 2007

I write 90% of my stuff longhand first. The only exception is short stories. I find when I write a first draft of a novel on my computer, I want to skip too much...don't know why, it just doesn't work very well for me.

That and I can have a notebook and pen anywhere...not true of my laptop.

maestrowork · Apr 21, 2007

In high school and college, I wrote mostly by longhand. But I really don't like that and I also think much faster than I write. I can type so much faster and especially when I am in a writing "zone" it's very important that I can capture my thoughts quickly. So I type most of the time. I do scribble and draw and diagram when I'm making notes about my stories. I hate making notes with typing. Weird, I know. But different things for different tasks. When I write, it's all about the words (the images are in my head) so I have to get that down fast. When I make notes, it has to be very visual. I use mind-mapping when I make notes.

Sean D. Schaffer · Apr 21, 2007

I did a short short once longhand. It was difficult for me, but the story turned out pretty good ... for having taken a total of about 90 minutes. I would love to write a short short again longhand, just for the sake of being personal with the writing. I have had no closer relationship with my writing than when I write it out longhand.

The only reasons I use a keyboard, are 1) for the sake of speed, and 2) my hands cramp up badly when I write because I hold the pen way too tightly (I have a problem with shaking that I can only keep under control by holding the pen tightly and pressing hard on the tip).

If I didn't have these problems, I would be very, very willing to write longhand more often. Longhand has so many benefits that I wish I could do it more than I do.

Evaine · Apr 22, 2007

I start in longhand, and write notes and scenes in longhand - but once there's something on the computer, I have to continue on the computer. I can't write the same story in two different places - I need to check back to what I wrote before.

scarletpeaches · Apr 22, 2007

I once wrote over 150k words in longhand...biro too, so you can imagine the pressure on my wrist. It took 6 months.

Now, I type the first draft, write the second in longhand and re-type it all back onto the PC in manuscript format.

misslissy · Apr 22, 2007

For me it depends on where I am when the inspiration hits - sometimes I'll put things on the computer, sometimes I'll write them longhand - though this longhand is usually shorter things as I have adopted carrying around a notebook everywhere for whenever I get ideas and carrying around more than two confuses me and they never stay in one notebook.

The longest I've ever written longhand was a fanfiction (my first delve into writing - don't beat me because I know it's crappy) that was about 110 pages on lined spiral notebook paper

seun · Apr 22, 2007

I haven't written anything but poetry with pen and paper in the last few years. Every now and again, I think about doing so in a get back to basics sort of way but I'm so used to writing on a computer that I'm a little afraid doing it any other way would cause me to focus on how I was writing, rather than what I was writing.

Kentuk · Apr 22, 2007

I often write first draft in a notebook, second draft is usually a fresh rewrite rather then a transcription.

Jamesaritchie · Apr 22, 2007

maestrowork said:
In high school and college, I wrote mostly by longhand. But I really don't like that and I also think much faster than I write. I can type so much faster and especially when I am in a writing "zone" it's very important that I can capture my thoughts quickly. .

I think this is the biggest problem with word processors. The last thing on earth I want to do is write as fast as I think, or to get my thoughts down quickly. I'm convinced this is one of the reasons so many have trouble writing professional level fiction. They allow their thoughts and the word processor to dictate the speed of the writing.

My first thought is almost never my best thought, and if I write as quickly as I think, it's going to take five drafts and a ton of rewriting to straighten everything out.

skelly · Apr 22, 2007

I write everything on a 1950 Remington manual, and rewrite from that copy onto a computer. I would like to be able to write longhand, but my penmanship is pretty dismal. Ultimately, though, it is the crisp tap-tap-tap of the Remington that I look forward to when I write. I can write rough draft on the computer if I have to, but it's not very inspiring.

BardSkye · Apr 22, 2007

First draft is longhand because I type too fast. If I use longhand instead, the sentences get changed and edited as I'm going along, then they're often changed and tightened again when I type it into the computer.

As well, much of my stuff is done while waiting for or traveling on buses to and from work, or I might jot down something that occurs to me while at work. I don't dare use the computer for writing at work; I'm alone, with nobody looking over my shoulder and it would be far too tempting to spend the time writing instead of what I'm being paid to do.

Claudia Gray · Apr 22, 2007

I work on computer -- always have. I sometimes brainstorm on paper, but generally I work on computer the whole way through. I've never written any other way.

rubarbb · Apr 22, 2007

only notes 'cause the puter makes it too easy.

blacbird · Apr 22, 2007

Jamesaritchie said:
I think this is the biggest problem with word processors. The last thing on earth I want to do is write as fast as I think, or to get my thoughts down quickly. I'm convinced this is one of the reasons so many have trouble writing professional level fiction. They allow their thoughts and the word processor to dictate the speed of the writing.

My first thought is almost never my best thought, and if I write as quickly as I think, it's going to take five drafts and a ton of rewriting to straighten everything out.

JAR is onto something related here. Which is, does your rough draft writing differ in some quality or aspect depending on whether or not you do it longhand, or via word-processor.

Mine does, and it relates to what JAR just said. The word-processor stuff tends to come out rougher and with more fluff than the longhand stuff. Now, I recognized this rather early on, and I'm a brutal editor of my own stuff, so that, in the end, I think it evens out. But not everyone does that (far too many people seem to feel that spell-checked rough drafts are finished products).

caw

NEGO · Apr 22, 2007

Never. I'd never be able to do it even if I wanted to--my hand starts to ache after ten minutes of taking notes in a class. The keyboard is the best tool I can use for writing. I disagree with the notion that the speed of using a computer is a detriment. I do most of my writing in my head, before typing it, so a word processor offers me a way to quickly put down completed thoughts while I'm working the next sentence/sequence in my head. The proof of that in my work are the minimal changes between my drafts and the final product.

janetbellinger · Apr 22, 2007

Not a whole manuscript but I wrote my first novel mostly by hand, in my journal.

huggy4ever · Apr 22, 2007

Hi Plot Device,
I have written articles by hand before. It took a long time. I usually always write with my computer now. I think the computer makes me lazy since my writing by hand has gotten worse.

I feel though that writing by hand makes one select words more carefully and more in tune.

Ever done a manuscript by hand? (Pen & paper?)

Plot Device

A woman said to write like a man.

Jamesaritchie

Shady Lane

my name is hannah

Azure Skye

Huh?

Chumplet

This hat is getting too hot

Dave.C.Robinson

... with the High Command

DeadlyAccurate

Absolutely Fazed

blacbird

kristie911

Happy to be here

maestrowork

Fear the Death Ray

Sean D. Schaffer

Evaine

scarletpeaches

misslissy

Only a sassbucket sometimes.

seun

Horror Man

Kentuk

I want to write what I want to write

Jamesaritchie

skelly

Kickin it old school, posers beware

BardSkye

Barbershoppin' Harmony Whore

Claudia Gray

rubarbb

Serenity

blacbird

NEGO

janetbellinger

huggy4ever