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| Only blue. Why do none of these pics use blue ink? |
When I was first writing ALL my first drafts were longhand. I wrote about a million words worth of novels (if I count the fan-fiction, and honestly, for this finding my voice thing, I do) longhand before I even TRIED a first draft by computer. That is three novel-length Harry Potter stories and three novels, one of them over 200,000 words...
The first story I tried to type at the computer,
Deniability, was a spy story of sorts and sounded pretty darned clinical. It was for my first NaNoWriMo, so I really wanted to be able to OFFICIALLY word-count—something longhand doesn't allow. Now the MC is a psychitrist, so the clinical voice doesn't NOT work, exactly... but it is also not very... ME. I haven't had the heart to get back to it and see if it is salvageable. I still love the first line. "I slept with Bill Clinton." And it's very fitting... Ah, well.. I digress...
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| Well HE might have enough supplies... |
In that time I had begun blogging (only about 7 months in at the writing of that book)... and I think there was a sort of slow voice transfer... getting my longhand voice to flow through the keys. For BuNoWriMo in 2010 I did my first true COMBO attempt,
Kahlotus Disposal Site... some typing, some longhand (a person just can't sit in the bath long enough for 50K in a single month) and it actually worked out beautifully. It has had the most success of my non-cozies—a semi-finalist for ABNA and for a time, anyway, earning me an agent... I theoretically am querying with it now, though I only sent one and it was rejected... My heart isn't quite there yet... (to query-town). And so SINCE then, all my books have been sort of a combo... until this last... number 13 I wrote ENTIRELY by computer...
So now I have gone back to
Medium Wrong, Book #11, as I hope to enter it in the ABNA contest this year, and what do you know... I'd forGOTTEN about all the bloody TYPING I would have to do! I was SURE I only wrote a teeny tiny bit longhand, but NOOOOOOO...
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| Like this, only with less pink and more angst... |
You see, initially I really NEEDED longhand. I journaled for many years, laying my emotions raw onto the page, via medium blue ballpoint... Where by DAY (on the computer) I am a statistician (I know, right? Who wants to read THAT?) And my early first drafts were messier. I could justify the typing round as a first edit because there were so many changes. NOW, there are still changes, but I tend to do BIG changes first and it all has to be typed before doing the BIG changes. Did I mention the bloody TYPING? GAH!
But I still turn to longhand if I'm stumped... or if I have a really emotional scene to do. I make myself cry regularly when I'm writing longhand and I think I've only managed it twice typing. So there will always be a role to be played for me, but right now I am mostly grumbling about the darn habit.
Any of you write longhand? Anybody change over time?
