I notice many people talking about typing their stories, or comments like "keep your fingers on the keyboard..." but I'm more comfortable writing by hand. I have no problem typing (Heck, I'm majoring in Computer Science & Engineering), yet I don't think the story really flows well unless I'm handwriting it.
Am I alone? Any thoughts on this?
Posted by ethersong (Member # 3216) on :
This is another one of those things that is completely up to you and how you work best. I like to type because I've always done my writing on a computer but I know lots of others who feel their creativity impeded by the keyboard.
Posted by Crotalus@work (Member # 2959) on :
I use a keyboard cause I'm much faster that way. But when I first started writing it was longhand, since I didn't have a typewriter and computers weren't proliferate when I was in Middle School.
I still keep a notebook handy for ideas, snatches of dialogue, or some other fragment that might come to me when I'm out and about(No palm pilot or anysuch yet).
Just use whatever works for you.
Posted by pantros (Member # 3237) on :
I use a keyboard now. I used to use pen and paper.
I have severe tendonitis and both writing and typing can be painful after a few sustained minutes. However, I can type much faster than I can write by hand. So I go for the less painful method.
Well I can write pretty darned fast by hand, but when I write that fast, I can't read it.
Eventually, it all gets typed in anyway...
I do occassionally write on pen and paper...like when my kids are on the bench at their sporting events or during a long boring meeting. Ah, the practised art of pacing writing so it looks like you are taking notes. While people talk, you write, while they contemplate, you contemplate.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
Oh, I started on a manual portable Smith Corona Galaxie typewriter, so keyboard typing is what I'm used to. Last year I went back to that same typewriter---that I still have it is a tribute to my inability to throw anything out---to break a block of writer's block. It's what I was used to, so I equated it with "starting back at Square One," or "learning to walk all over again." (I suppose it must have worked...since the beginning of this year I've turned out a pretty good pile of copy. Mostly on the computer.)
I have three other typewriters---even compared to my other one, real antiques. Picked them up in a Goodwill for ten or fifteen bucks each. But then I switched to word processing, then to a full-blown computer, and they sit behind me as I type this, gathering dust. But I like 'em as artifacts, knicknacks, tchotchkes...spelling uncertain on that latter phrase. (One typewriter, I could never find a ribbon that fit it---remember typewriter ribbons?---so it gathered dust from Day One.)
I *have* written seriously with pen and paper---mostly poems but also a couple of short stories. I have to print things carefully or I'll come back to it to type up a copy and find I can't read my own handwriting.
(Sidebar: I got my typewriter for my fourteenth birthday, at my request. My brothers, whose birthday falls the same month as mine, got bicycles---I could have had a bicycle but I wanted a typewriter. Those bicycles are long gone. I still have my typewriter.)
(Sidebar sidebar: I got the typewriter in March. I fiddled with it from March to June. In June I got a book on touch typing, and worked my way through five of the ten easy lessons. At the end of June I had written my first official story, and in August I was submitting others to magazines. (They were rejected: deservedly so.))
(Sidebar sidebar sidebar: Once something pushes my buttons, I never know where---or how far off topic---I'll wander.)
Posted by x__sockeh__x (Member # 3069) on :
If the story doesn't flow well when you're typing it, go for handwriting. You wouldn't want a decrease in quality just so that you could type it. Personally, I write everything on my laptop. Mainly because of my high typing speed - the faster I write, the messier it gets. And my writing is never particularly neat.
Posted by Leigh (Member # 2901) on :
I don't have neat handwriting and no one, other than me, can read it. I sucked during school because I was called to the teacher to sit beside her and read what I had wrote. It never got clearer or better written. So I type, I type at an average speed of roughly 40 words a minute. I wish it was more but I doubt I can get it any higher before I make typing mistakes with spelling, grammar and punctuation. Hell right now I;m typing as quickly as I can and missing several keys and strokes! So I rather type than write, lol.
Posted by Marva (Member # 3171) on :
If I hand wrote I'd never be able to read it. So, typing for me. Heck, I don't even like to sign my name on a check anymore.
Hmm. I guess I should practice for book signings, though. ;-)
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
I can read my own handwriting, but nobody else seems able to do so. Besides, it's rather difficult for me. Enough so that I always considered writing an unendurable physical drudgury until well after I'd learned to type. As a child, I would literally rather be beaten senseless than write a page.
Posted by rcorporon (Member # 2879) on :
I write my short stories in an old notebook, but my novel I write it on the computer.
Don't really care either way. It's the brain, not the equipment.
Posted by Paul-girtbooks (Member # 2799) on :
All of my first drafts are handwritten, whether it's a 2000 word short story or a 120,000 word novel. Only when I come to doing the second draft do I begin typing the story into the computer. I strongly feel that computers are an editing/revising tool and should not be used in the initial instance of actually creating the story itself.
Now, some people may argue that that is double work, as I am effectively writing the full manuscript out twice.
Correct.
And you know what?
THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT!
Stephen King also feels this way, that the story has more immediacy for him when he's composing with pencil and paper. All of Clive Barker's first drafts are handwritten. Indeed, Barker will often do two or three handwritten drafts before finally going to the computer to type it in.
Posted by Ted Galacci (Member # 3254) on :
I like to work on the ideas and planning of stories with pen or paper but not to actually write them. Sometimes I "cluster" or just jot down lists and questions. But I like to write the story itself at the keyboard because, basically, I'm lazy and I don't want to do double work getting writing into the computer, where it must go eventually. . .