Joanna is wondering whether longhand is best for the first draft…
I know one very successful author who writes her first draft entirely in longhand while sitting on the sofa with daytime TV playing in the background. And I would probably kill for her sales. No names, no pack drill, but she’s a fairly regular reader of this blog. [Waving. Hi, ******]
I’ve recently gone back to keeping a daily diary, in longhand. And it set me to wondering whether my first draft would flow better if I got it down the same way. Sometimes, I do dictate my drafts to type up later. But mainly, I type them. As a touch typist, I can get the words down much quicker via keyboard than with pen and paper. And yet… And yet… My diary does seem to flow pretty well.
Writers of the past — think Jane Austen, say — had no choice. Imagine her writing a whole draft in longhand, on small scraps of paper that could be easily hidden if someone came into the room. Once she had it all down on paper, she had to edit those scraps into a coherent whole and finally, finally, write out a fair copy for her potential publisher in her best copperplate.
Many current authors will have started on a typewriter with paper and carbon copies. But longhand all the way? You’d have to be really dedicated to your craft to do that.
Then again, I suppose Jane Austen had no choice. And probably no one thought about RSI in those days?
We can choose between longhand, keyboard and more
If we do our first draft in longhand, it will have to be typed up at some stage. Either by us, or by someone else (probably for a fee). So there is definitely a degree of double working involved with longhand drafts.
The same is true, in a way, with dictated drafts though, in my experience, splurging text onto a recorder is much faster than any other method. If I have a scene in my head that I’m desperate to capture, especially a dialogue scene, it can be the best way not to lose it.
Dictating for half an hour can produce thousands of words.
Later, I type it up myself and edit/correct as I go along. But some people, I know, find dictating a story impossible.
Business letters, yes. Creative fiction, not a chance. As usual, it’s horses for courses.
What does science tell us about using longhand?
When I typed (!) “is writing by hand better?” into a search engine, I got loads of scientific references. They say that writing by hand improves learning and memory and involves more regions of the brain than typing.
Who says? Well, Scientific American for starters. Psychology Today says the same, along with loads of other sites. Food for thought?
But surely that’s all about kids, not adults?
Not authors?
Well, no. One article, on the NPR (National Public Radio) website, ventures into the question of authors and creativity. It says that Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman both write first drafts in longhand. Egan says the process quiets her critical brain so she can let herself riff.
Quieten the critical brain? Interesting, isn’t it? How often, when you’re at your keyboard, adding words to the wip, do you stop and change something because your critical brain pokes you to tell you it’s wrong or not good enough?
That’s the pesky boss brain (the management side) taking over and shutting down the creative side. It has a habit of doing that, sadly, and we modern folk tend to let it get away with it. (Giving free rein to the creative brain is one of the key planks of the Explorers workshop that Sophie and I run.)
The NPR article says this:
Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.
And this…
For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.
Hmm. Is slowing down a good thing when we’re working on a first draft? Gaiman finds it helpful, he says.
I’m not sure. If I’m seeing a scene in my head like a movie unfolding, I want to capture it quick, lickety-split, before I lose it. So NOT like snail-man here.
I know (my boss brain knows) that I can edit it later but capturing the ephemeral movie is what matters in the moment. So for me, it’s not longhand. It’s dictation or fingers on keyboard. At least for now.
That’s my take. What’s yours?
I just can’t write fast enough, so my writing becomes a scribble. Keyboard all the way for me. Tried dictating, but that doesn’t wort for me either – it makes me self-conscious (or hysterical)
Yes, there are lots who can’t dictate fiction. It IS faster but only if you don’t get self-conscious etc. So I quite understand why you do it as you do.
I’m one of those who drafts mostly in long-hand. I find it flows better. I don’t write the whole thing before typing, though. I’ll write a fair chunk, then type it up and edit as I go when I get a bit stuck. Often by the time I type to the point where I was stuck, the story has unstuck itself and I keep right on typing. Then I need to think again and it’s back to scribble. Scribble is permission to write rubbish. I find that scribbling does switch off that critical voice I call Editor B¡tch. That voice can be crippling in the first draft. With typing I seem to expect perfection. Scribbling means it doesn’t have to be perfect.
Interesting, Elizabeth. Know what you mean about the critical voice. I have it too, often. I find that dictating is the equivalent of your scribble. My dictated text will be full of pauses and repeats of sentences/phrases and general rubbish. When I type it up, I sort that out. But the great advantage is that I can get thousands of words recorded in a very short space of time. But then again, some folk can’t, as Louise Allen has just said.
When I was a security guard at weekends, I used to write longhand during the hours of sitting about between patrols. That worked well, because I would type it up during the week and edit as I went along. Reading my scribble was sometimes a problem! But then I’d have to rewrite that bit and it was probably the better for it.
Like you, I gravitated to Alphasmart, which I’ve stuck with since. It’s great in that you don’t get distracted as there isn’t anywhere else to go. But I do kind of miss longhand. I write up my journal (when I do) in longhand. It’s quite satisfying, I find.
I find writing my diary in longhand is satisfying, Liz. Like you. I no longer use an Alphasmart, as you know, but it did have real advantages because, as you say, there’s nowhere else to go and you can only see about three lines of text. Typing on a computer can push you to be perfect all the time which a first draft can never be. Probably not a final draft, either 😉
I loved my Alphasmart for train journeys but it got damaged and never replaced. Great for writing without distraction.
I wrote a lot in longhand when I first started attempting to write my romances. By the time I was published I had a computer and as a trained touch typist I never looked back. I do journal in longhand but honestly, with an arthritic thumb my handwriting is now so bad that I struggle to read my shopping lists.
Made me laugh, Liz. But I do sympathise on the arthritic thumb.
We discussed our writing methods at the Gloucs Soc of Authors the other day, and I confessed that I write my first thoughts in pencil (including plot and characterisation ideas), then type them up, print out, edit and rewrite, sometimes on the computer but sometimes having to go back to pencil and paper again. I need to feel perfectly relaxed to get my thoughts flowing, and that means lying on the bed, sometimes with a hot water bottle. The file for my w.i.p. has just crossed 1000 pages, and I’m only half way through.
That is one helluva file, Jane. Sounds as if you’re writing a real doorstop of a book.
This is fascinating. I certainly find that writing by hand helps me remember stuff. But quite a lot of my first drafts I’d rather forget, to be honest.
Like Louise, I get horridly self-conscious when I’m dictating, either into a tape or, as I had to do when I broke my wrist, directly into the Word document. Mind you, watching the words trip merrily across the screen has its own satisfaction. But good old Autocorrect steps in quite a lot too and some of that is priceless. Not good for staying with your characters, though. Once you’ve collapsed in hoots of laughter, you’ve lost that tender moment, I find. In art as in in life.
You made me laugh re autocorrect, Sophie. I’ve never used the dictation function. I’m old-fashioned and use a hand-held dictaphone so I’d don’t see my words. And since I only dictate while I’m alone, I don’t get self-conscious. Not sure why you and Louise do, but clearly it’s a thing for both of you and hence dictation isn’t an option.