Do You Have The Drive? Part Four

Jul 21, 2009 | No Comments | @andrewmarcec

Pens

From quills and ink to laptops and iPhones, people have been finding new and inventive ways to keep their writing output at maximum.  Now as the world becomes a more digital place writers have been adapting and growing with that technology.  With the release of the kindle people are now even reading paperless books.  What method to you find you are most productive with and prefer to read?

I am old school.  I feel that I am most connected to my work when I write with pen and paper.  Whether it be science or speculation I think that when my arm is actually moving and writing there is a physical link between my thoughts.  The words flow easier, and my ideas seem much more profound and better described.  However it is an incredibly unorganized way of doing work.  My apartment is littered with notebooks.  The notebooks are filled with ideas and half written stories.  There are many people who don’t understand my reasoning behind this method either.  “Why would you hand write things, only to have to go back and type them?”  It’s a question I’ve gotten many, many times.  I do have an answer though.  Editing.

Editing is one of the most difficult, yet easy things to do all at once.  With the first draft of your story, it doesn’t matter what you put down on the paper, so long as you are getting your ideas out and really thinking through the story.  Handwriting is great because you can let the words flow freely, do scratch outs, draw arrows, whatever works best for you.  Once that idea is fully mapped out, that’s when the work begins.  You start from the beginning again when you type it up.  Always embellishing and elaborating on the ideas and settings that you have set forth in your first draft.

I do have a Blackberry, and I can write word documents on it, or just type something out in an e-mail and send it to myself.  However, this is ineffective, in the time it took to type all of that out you could have written double the length and gotten more story onto the page.  The computer is best used to keep things in format for when you start to send things out to publishers and correctly order your drafts and file them away for safe keeping.

What way do you prefer to write?

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