#drafting in longhand

[petermorwood]

Hi, Peter! I am tossing this question at you, but I hope Diane and some other writers will toss it around, too. Do you still draft your work in longhand? What is it like? I'm asking this as someone who has written by keyboard only for almost 20 years, but started keeping a longhand journal again about four years ago. I'm feeling so blocked that I wonder if I could take up longhand creative writing again.

This got well buried, but better late than never!

I certainly do, much more than @dduane. (She makes a lot of notes in LH, but not much in the way of drafts.)

I've heard / read complaints about longhand (and typewriter) drafting that "you can't correct mistakes". Usually what this means is "you can't delete and over-write".

You can. Use one of these.

The first lays white masking fluid over the error, the other two do it with a strip of white tape, and after a few seconds to let the fluid dry, or immediately with the tape, you can re-write over the top.

I'm sure some people also remember the Tipp-Ex / Liquid Paper paint-pots with brushes, and the little sheets of white-backed correction paper used with typewriters. (Some, like my cartridge-ribbon Smith-Corona, even had a correction cartridge.)

*****

A more usual method with pen or typewriter drafting is strikethrough.

The mistake is still there, of course, and IMO that's not a bug, it's a feature and - so I've found, anyway - makes me think a bit more about what I'm going to write down before pen to paper or finger to key.

Besides, the "wrong" (often first) choice of word may well turn out to be the "right" choice of word after all, once the rest of the paragraph has developed. YMMV, but it happens often enough.

It's also why proper MS format is double-spaced.

In working drafts, this leaves room to add a correction, often using different colours of ink, which can even be done with a typewriter if it has a black-red ribbon.

In a final draft, double-space (and a clear, non-fussy font like Courier or Times Roman) is easier on an editor or test-reader's eyes.

All the business of fancy fonts, typesetting, end of chapter and between-paragraph glyphs * etc. happens afterwards.

*****

* The section-break symbol or "dinkus", can be as simple as one or several asterisks, but may be a fancy little curlicue called a "fleuron" or - if a book has a high enough profile - a appropriate custom design.

[doom-dreaming]

i've finally finished compiling all my scraps of writing for beach house and between the two documents that aren't my outline, i have a little over 10k words. they're not polished, they're barely in order, and there are gaps the size of the grand canyon but the words are THERE

[longroadstonowhere]

i keep noticing the time, determining i feel fairly tired, take my glasses off and try going to sleep, but utterly fail because as soon as i'm not actively engaged in watching/reading something i just start thinking about the fic i wanna write

[misa-chan13]

Apparently in my wuthering heights era cause of a story

[ethanmaldridge]

Here are the draft notebooks for most of my novels. I write out the first draft by hand, and if it's a graphic novel, I do layout sketches in the same notebook. These stay on my desk and are referenced throughout the book-making process.

I make notes to myself along the lefthand page (a technique I borrowed from Garth Nix), which I regularly read through for ideas I had in the moment but may have forgotten in the day to day work or writing.

I like drafting longhand because once I type the story up, I tend to make subsequent revisions in the same document. This preserves a record of how the story started. Plus, a notebook is easier to carry around than a laptop, and no worries about charging!

[thefandomlesbian]

Oops, I did it again

I'm a simple fanfic writer. I finish a fic longhand in my notebook, I go to type it up, I get distracted and start a new fic in my notebook, leading to a cycle of unfinished works that I swear to god I finished them you guys gotta believe me—

[avisminutia]

“Don’t get old,” my grandpa tells me when I visit him. He is six feet tall, though he used to be six foot two. He has two knee replacements. Getting into the car is a struggle, painful, and physically exhausting. I feel for him.

And yet.

“What’s the alternative?” I ask him once he is settled into the car, rubbing his knees. “Should I die young?” 

It’s not what I want to say. It’s closer to what my mother would say if she spoke her mind on the matter. It upsets my mother when he says that, “don’t get old.” Because what is the alternative? And it is hard being old. Many of his friends are gone. Things change. There is loss. But that is not what he means.

He says it when he has to lie down after a short walk when he used to be able to walk miles. My grandpa is a traveler. First around the world, Alaska in February, Japan, Australia, and then, when his knees became too bad for airplane seats, around the states, lugging his overly large camera bag with him while my grandma shopped. He spends most of his time in the basement yelling at his computer, editing photos of places he knows he will never go again. And my mother thinks that he is sad that he will never go to those places again, but I know that’s not quite right.

I lay down after the walk as well. I need to rest if I want to have the energy to carry a conversation at dinner. My grandma sits at the kitchen table, playing on her iPad. I am tired. 

I used to enjoy commuting on the train. I would write longhand in a notebook, prose, poetry, journals. I’d sketch. I wrote an entire first draft of a book like that, commuting back and forth to college, an hour and a half each day, twice a week. Now, traveling is a hurdle, a drain. Exhausting.

“Don’t get old,” he says, when he stands up, groaning, and reaches for his cane. I left mine in my apartment. It is almost as difficult to travel with it and a suitcase as it is to travel without, and the anticipated explanation it would require tipped the decision one way. I am tired. We go to the nearby park to take photos of the same building he took photos of last week, and he tells me stories about climbing, about hiking, about woodworking, carrying camera lenses to far off places to take photos of new buildings, different buildings, buildings that are not this one. “Don’t get old.” My sketchbook has five drawings of the building across the street from the park one block from my apartment. I sit on the same bench every time. I am too tired to go much further without the cane most days, and I can’t draw when I am holding it. 

“Don’t get old,” he tells me after getting back from physical therapy. I ask him what exercises he is doing. They are the same one my physical therapist assigned me after telling me I was too young for the type of back pain that I was experiencing. The type that keeps me from going to museums, from volunteering at the bird rehab, from sitting through class. 

“Don’t get old,” he says. He has always been willful. He prides himself on his strength of mind, his stubbornness, his ability to power through. He will exercise but refuses to ice. He won’t take his painkillers. When I last visited, he fell between two desks and nearly hit his head. The way the office is arranged is cramped and difficult to maneuver, at the bottom of a steep staircase I was afraid to go down as a child. I helped him up. It took ten minutes, mostly because the fit was so tight. There was no panic in me, no adrenaline, though he shouted the entire time. We both lay down after, exhausted. When I visit next, the desks will not be rearranged. The computer will still be in the basement. 

“Just don’t get old,” he says, and what I really want to say is, “I already am.”

[featheredstudies]

2023.02.21 // 16:35  hazelnut cappuccino and longhand drafting at the italian caffè by campus

pic: union square park, manhattan, n.y.

[astorythatwritesitself]

Notebook November (Notevember) 📓

Looking for a new challenge, in light of the dumpster fire that was once the NaNo organization? Not a huge fan of the 50k goal because of time, motivation, lack of a solid enough concept, or generally don't vibe with it? Do you desire or hoard new stationery the way a dragon desires and hoards sparkly rocks? Notevember just might be up your alley!

What is Notevember?

Some bullshit I made up like a month ago & I absolutely doubt I'm the only one with such a concept, either 😂 A variant of the NaNoWriMo challenge; for those who find specific word goals daunting, who prefer to work longhand, and/or who get more satisfaction seeing... tangible results, as it were? Like, you can absolutely do this digitally if you really want, but this is very much aimed towards folks who find writing longhand just hits a little differently.

Rather than aim for a given number of words, you're aiming to fill up a notebook!

Supplies?

You will need:

- An empty notebook. My personal preference is a 70-100 page spiral or classic composition notebook, but use one that's however large or small you want! This is also an excuse to finally crack open any empty notebooks you might have lying around, yeah?

- Writing implements of choice

And... that's it! Throw in stickers or whatever else you might want, but all you'll really need is a bundle of paper & something to mark it up with.

How to play?

Start filling the pages.

It can be a single story! It could be character or general writing exercises. It could be research notes, timelines, observations of people around you, overheard conversations, a collection of passages, quotes, poetry, or lyrics that speak to you. It could be a little of everything!

The only goal is that, by the end of November, you've filled up each page - and it's your call, if that only means the front of a page, or front and back.

Notevember is meant to be flexible & relatively forgiving, especially if you tend to have a lot going on. The notebook could be one small enough to keep with you throughout the day so you can jot down lines on a lunch break, in a waiting room, on the bus - or it could be something you do at home, after waking up or just before bed or whenever you've got the time.

Other Thoughts?

I have found that I get more satisfaction and more motivation to continue when I can like... see a result. Number Going Up just doesn't quite work for me like it does for other folks, but seeing empty pages fill up, seeing the distortion and wear of the notebook as it gets used? That gets me to feel, 'Ah! Something Is Happening!' There's also (a little) less tendency to try and edit as I go; working longhand with a pen does better for me to get that zero draft/concept on the page, rather than agonizing over creating a polished product from the start.

I've also found I get more into that... 'no one will ever have to see this, it can be as messy & misspelled & senseless as it needs to be' mindset easier, than writing on a tablet or laptop? -shrug- idk It Just Hits Different and that's all there is to it.

Share snippets, characters, whatever you're doing, if you want! But this is a little more aimed at those who just need to get things down, who want to have An End Product, but maybe don't have fully coherent plots or polished pieces, and don't usually have much to share - it's just between you and your notebook. You don't have to share or invite anyone else in, if you don't want to.

So! That's about the long and short of it. If you think you like this idea, feel free to join in; and whatever you are or aren't doing for November Writing Time - good luck, and take care!

[stobinesque]

#eddie is winning and i'm impatient so i've already drafted the thing. #if steve manages to pull ahead in the next 4ish hours i'll just write a second one using the same premise but swapped. (tags mine)

well you all did it! free use/come-caked steve incoming tonight or tomorrow

eddie version here.

ETA: the Steve version now exists!

I can't choose, so help me out!

no you don't get any more context than that

[decepti-thots]

today i bought my fountain pen and inks and such i was discussing looking into, for delivery next week. one big reason i wanted a nice pen was that i think going back to writing by doing my 'zero draft' longhand and then doing the first round of edits by typing it up is a good idea, and i'm not gonna lie i'm dangerously close to being like 'should i buy a Diamine ink colour for like... specific characters... i write fic about..........'

[devilscreekballad]

Do you have any tips for writing I am new to it and barely know what I am doing and you are one of the authors that inspired me to pick up the pen

<3

Definitive advice I'd give:

Find your own pace, style and comfort zone. If you run into a wall trying to do the 'write X words every day', that approach is not for you. If you find you write better longhand first and then type it up, go for that. If you find you are better if you edit and alter while writing compared to finishing a chapter/draft first, go for that.

And so on.

I'm the type of writer who has a vague idea for the story, but the bulk comes while writing, so trying to do outlines outside of 'okay, I do want these and these definite plotpoints in there somehow' is a bit of a lost cause for me.

An ability I'd advice to practice is learning how to look at a scenes from above and around, like being able to pull back, see where the characters are standing, what they're looking at etc. Be able to get things logistically sounds. It won't do to have a scene that looks impressive at first, but then you realize the way the characters are positioned makes no sense.

Third thing to keep in mind, IMHO, is remembering who knows what. what do characters know, what does the audience know, what does the author know. This means that, e.g. when writing First Person Present Tense (the 'live blog narrative' if you want), you shouldn't have the PoV character do foreshadowing or withhold information, because they wouldn't know to do that at that point. usually.

That's all from the top of my head, godspeed :3

Also: Read.

[tenderlady]

thank you to the lovely @eveepe for tagging me to drop the titles of my wips! here are the rules:

rules: make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

so something about me is that i don't typically have more than one wip on the stove at any given time. but i'm in kind of an odd place right now because the rough draft of my biggest wip is being held in cold storage until i can be Normal about it and start transcribing it to a word doc.

another thing about me is that i pretty much exclusively write longhand, so most things don't have titles until i start typing them up.

anyway!

maniacs (original fiction; rpf if you squint)

something i've been referring to exclusively as the "mclennon necromancy thing"

vaguely kicking around the idea of a donpeggy thing loosely inspired by in the mood for love, but i need to finish the series and figure out how much i need to break canon in order for that to work lmao

thanks, love! no idea who's already been tagged in this, so i'm gonna be selfish and just tag people who i hope are writing stuff rn: @crepesuzette2023 @planetaire @raylangivins <3

[azspot]

Writers also obsess over the tools that might make their craft more tolerable. Quentin Tarantino writes the first drafts of his screenplays longhand; Neal Stephenson wrote The Baroque Cycle, a series of eight books set in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a fountain pen. (For a while, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in Seattle exhibited his handwritten manuscript, empty ink bottles, and discarded blotting paper.) Many writers, myself included, swear by specialized writing programs such as Scrivener, which will organize research materials and partition projects into numerous pieces. Others remain loyal to whatever software they first mastered. George R. R. Martin still uses WordStar 4.0, which was originally released in 1987. He runs it on Microsoft DOS and saves his manuscripts to floppy disks. When a person is struggling to write, all of these details matter. If using a fountain pen or retreating to a mountain house can make the cognitive load of producing text even somewhat more bearable, writers will consider it.

What Kind of Writer Is ChatGPT?

[merinsedai]

Y’know, old notebooks are a goldmine of random rants and stream of consciousness nonsense.

Eg: evidence of what a very grumpy student I made. 😂. Probably written at 2am in the library the night before the deadline.

Spoiler: I wrote the essay. I even got a 2.1 for it 🤷‍♀️

The next page, so after I’d calmed down (probably just need a cathartic rant and obvs one can’t shout in the library...) And yes, I wrote everything out in longhand before typing it up. My half arsed version of a draft.

Reasons I miss being a student- hanging with friends; monthly theatre trips; so much free time and basically no responsibilities. Oh, and being young, I guess.

Reasons I don’t miss being a student- writing essays.

[wubadubwrites]

a small doodle of my code names spyguys from my notebook (i spent too much time on this)

writing my rough drafts longhand in my nice notebook i never used before has been great for beating the writers’ block. 10/10 would recommend