No, It's Cool

No, it's fine. I'm not trying to revise that novel manuscript for an editor or anything. Go right ahead and lie down on it.

The Long(hand) and the Short of It

This is how I write:

I scrawl everything into a cheap notebook (I go through them like a kid through candy, so I don't bother buying the cute ones with Sanrio characters on them; if you hit the post- Back to School Sales period at Target you can get ten for 50 cents).

I have this sprawly huge handwriting so I have to use college-ruled notebooks or shit just goes crazy, as you can see in the above picture of my latest, non-college-ruled notebook.

After I finish writing a rough draft, I transcribe it into my laptop. I hate transcribing. I have this repetitive motion injury in my shoulder from typing at work (and um, surfing the web) so after about ten minutes I have this line of pure fire etched around my shoulder blade. I never really learned to type properly either, so I type with two fingers on each hand and make lots of mistakes that I have to go back and fix. But I can't hire anyone else to transcribe for me, because when I am turning my scratched-out squiggles into neat Calibri words, I also tweak and change things- usually small things, but still. This is my first revision.

After it's all typed up, I print it off, stuff it in a drawer for a week or two, and then go back and revise again. Then I print up the revision, stuff it in the same drawer for a week or two, and do my third revision. And then, finally, I am finished.

Not many people write longhand anymore. It does tend to slow you down, but I think it is only a very small part of why I am a slow writer (having a toddler and being easily distracted are the main obstacles). My problem is that I simply can't write at a computer. I can sit in front of a screen for an hour and nothing will come out. I can take a notebook and have twenty pages scribbled in the same hour. It must be some sort of psychological block.

Longhand works well for me. I feel like having to write everything by hand forces me to slow down and focus. I think I revise less than other writers who go directly to the computer (or iPad, or whatever) simply because I spent more time on the original draft (I revise a LOT; it just seems to me that other writers I know do it more).

So I don't resent my inability to talk to a machine. I just prefer talking to paper. There's nothing wrong with however you do it, as long as you keep writing, always.