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I'm one of these people who when reading a story can't read from a computer screen. I prefer stuff in a book form. When I critique I found I am more effective if I print it off.
However when I write I can't help but use the Word Processor. However, going to the computer is not always portable, even a laptop is a bit luggish. Now I'm in the transition of moving, my wife and I battled with the AC, the bird's chirp at my gray matter... I need something more portable.
So I've tried writing in a notebook. I end up writing a line, scratching it out, rewriting, scratching out a word, then it becomes a mess. I rarely get anywhere. What is the secret of doing this?
posted
Whiskey! or one of those slate computers that looks a bit like a notebook that you write in, and it does handwriting recognition.
Posts: 2710 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
A palm pilot with a little keyboard. Works like a dream...I can carry mine around in my purse! Best little thing I ever bought!
Posts: 1041 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Yep... I've got me Palm; got me Palm Keyboard; got me "Documents to Go" which is Word for the Palm. Go somewhere, write. Come home and sync. Story in Word! Brilliant.
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If all you are going to use the laptop for is writing then there are small, light laptops with a minimum of power and features. They might be better than the standard laptop. There is also Mike's suggestion of a Tablet PC. Some laptops are convertible where they can be either a traditional laptop or a Tablet PC.
Many, if not all, Tablet PCs have handwriting recognition software that allows you to write directly on the screen with a stylus and it will "translate" it into a typed font. This gives you the creative flow of handwriting but allows you to cross out endlessly.
Toshiba, Gateway, Fujitsu, HP, Acer, and Panasonic all make some version of a Tablet PC. Apple has some tiny laptops that are very portable.
posted
That's sounds intriguing. I'm so used to a convential keyboard, more use using my hands to type than write. If I had to work with a tiny keyboard I'd end up pulling my hair out.
Still, if you were forced to use a non-computing method, the old fashioned paper and pad, like many of the great writers did in days of yore (or in the far future when commeth the Butlerian Jihad), what would be the secret?
[This message has been edited by ChrisOwens (edited April 04, 2005).]
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Spiral notebooks work for me. I also make a mess of them by writing, scratching it out and rewriting stuff, but it is worth it to capture those impromptu nuggets of gold. I carry it with me everywhere. When I get home I either type up what I wrote, or file the pages for future use. I have a Palm and used it for awhile. I really need to get the tiny keyboard, then I might use it more.
Posts: 579 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Most of the palm keyboards are mostly full-size; in a brilliant feat of engineering, they fold out magnficently. During the height of my euphoria, I recall studying the design of my old Palm V keyboard -- wait, most of you won't care about product design, at least not like me. Sorry.
Posts: 1520 | Registered: Jun 2004
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I love my palm, and I have a half sized keyboard, but I want a full size one. Usually though I use the on Palm keyboard I gave up trying to learn the graffiti. (Why should it be impossible to write a Y?) But Chris it sounds like your problem is you are trying to make it look good, give up it won't look good. What matters is that it is good. You just need to keep moving. I think a person trained on a note book would have the same trouble with a word proccessor with the new ability to delete a line and rewrite it they would constantly worry about that one line.
Posts: 1895 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Hmm, the secret? I'm not sure, although I do almost all of my rough stuff in a notebook. I rarely ever scratch things out or rewrite them as I go along, though. Crappy or not, I just let it come out. It's when I transfer it to my computer that I begin to fix things. I like it because by the time I've finished moving it, I've done a complete revision without really feeling like I've done a revision. It also feels less formal writing in a notebook, especially so given how horrible my hand writing is. When I'm on my computer I'm being 'serious' about my work. When I'm writing in my notebook, I'm just playing.
Posts: 270 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:So I've tried writing in a notebook. I end up writing a line, scratching it out, rewriting, scratching out a word, then it becomes a mess. I rarely get anywhere. What is the secret of doing this?
This is very much the problem I have when I try to write a story from scratch on the computer. I keep reading back over what I have and changing it. My solution was to type with my eyes closed, just describing the scene in my mind (of course this only works for touch-typists, but nothing is perfect).
I think part of the reason that I don't have this problem when writing by hand, is because my handwriting is a horrible scrawl that even I have difficulty puzzling out. Therefore I can't easily read what I've written, and have no desire to edit as I go.
So, my point is, try to find some way to keep yourself from reading what you've already written. The editor-on-the-shoulder can be a horrible beast.
posted
I've tried the Alphasmart full sized keyboard and the Dana. I like the Dana better as it accepts SD cards and will hold an entire book in its onboard memory. It is much better than folding keyboads and its battery life is maybe 20 hours instead of 4 hours like a notebook computer. I can read the results unlike my handwriting.
[This message has been edited by keldon02 (edited April 05, 2005).]
posted
Maybe I'm just low-tech but I have a little notebook that lives in my purse and in which I write whenever I'm waiting for something to start, or if I have a spare minute somewhere.
I find that I'm less likely to spend time editing my stuff when I'm writing in a notebook because I don't like scratching stuff out. It's great for me because I just go, and I don't worry about the writing itself. Just get the words out, then play with them.
When I'm on a computer, I tend to spend too much time playing with the spellchecker or the grammar checker (which is almost always wrong, at least in my experience), or moving sentences around, and I don't get a lot of work done.
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Successful notebook writing is simply a matter of habit. You're either used to it or you aren't.
I wrote 80% of my first novel in a notebook--well, several notebooks actually. I was accustomed to it. I had a lot of wasted time on my hands at that point in my life, sitting in the car waiting for the kids to get out of school. So I took a notebook and wrote.
By the time I was done with the story I was spending a lot more time writing on the computer. Now I hardly spend ANY time with the notebook and I'm not sure I COULD write in it again, unless I got back into practice.
So if you want to get better at it, do it more often.
posted
I always turn off my grammar checker. Can't stand the thing. And on the first draft I also turn off spell check. Those wiggly lines don't help the creative flow at all. There is always time to go back and fix stuff like spelling and grammar later anyway.
I also used to have a problem with crossing everything out when I wrote by hand, but something I did helped with that problem a lot. You may consider doing a forced writing exercise: where you are just focused on getting x number of words down in y amount of time. I did National Novel Writing Month, and found that since then my speed has improved, and I have been able to make notes or write scenes in a notebook without obsessively crossing everything out.
I still prefer my PC but can certainly function without it. I also agree that typing it into the computer later gives me the opportunity to do revisions with less pain than if I have the story already on the screen and am scrolling through and editing.
[This message has been edited by autumnmuse (edited April 05, 2005).]
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Reading this thread, I wondered what a writer from forty years ago would think of these options. Shucks, some of the Palm Pilots and their gadgets look like magic to me, and I'm still in my twenties!
Posts: 491 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
I'm a notebook person too. Usually have several on the go at once because I find it easier not to mix the stories up. Using the computer its more a case of slotting together scenes and editing. What comes out in the notebook is often terrible But it is something written down which can then be polished. If I sit down directly to a computer its far too much like work (I work at a computer all day in the office).
Also, I fear, if I waited for the computer in the evening, I'd never get anything done at all. Its rather in demand in our house...
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If I had to write by hand, then I'd either give up writing or learn a more literary language, meaning a language designed to be written rather than spoken.
That's it for me. I failed nearly every English class I had in school because I cannot write legible longhand and can scrawl my own version of lettering (all the capitals look the same to most people other than myself, and the rest is just a scribbly line) for about a half a page (handwritten, mind you, so that's about four or five lines) before my hand started to cramp up.
It's like asking a mother how she'd nurse her children if she got breast cancer and needed a mascectomy. The answer is simple. I'd feel bad about not being able to write anymore, but one has to deal with what is.
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I'm an odd one; I like to watch my pen (it has to be a pen because pencil smudges too easily--I've lost entire chapters that way) form letters on the page. It makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something that's truly worthwhile. When I'm typing, and all I have to do is hit the "delete" button to make all my hard work disappear, it doesn't feel like I'm doing as much.
But that's only for the first draft. Once I've got a first draft, there's nothing more convenient than typing it up, editing and changing things as I go (even though I've already gone through the story with a red pen once or twice). Computers are wonderful tools for editing. I'd hate to have to manually rewrite every single draft of every single story I have--that would take forever, and I think my hand would fall off. At the very least, I'd have to become ambidextrous.
posted
I think writers in the past didn't do rewriting as obsessively as we computer-trained writers do. They probably trained themselves to put the best thing they could on paper at a time, and rewrote it less times. That was probably just the way it was, but now people can be lazy and change things willy-nilly. I prefer the new way, but for most of human history people have had to do it by hand or not do it at all, so I imagine that necessity was the mother of invention then as now.
Posts: 818 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
I'm right with you there, Jaina. There's just something about scratching ink onto a page. It's transcendant. I even like watching other people draw, paint, and sculpt for the same reason.
Ok, I guess we're really odd people.
My problem with working longhand is that I have very little time to write, in general. That means that I need to cram as much accomplishment into the work as I can in one sitting. If I wrote my stuff longhand, it would mean that, first of all, it would go slower, and second of all, I'd have to type it into the computer at some point. Ignoring the editing benefits that go along with those consequences (although they're not necessarily negligible), I think that my time would be better spent producing new pieces or editing existing ones.
posted
I am both. i love to write with my laptop and i love to write by using a notebook. The best form that I have found is when I forget about having things perfect but the story has to be there. They didn't teach us in school about editing for nothing.
Posts: 21 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I only use the computer. When I'm out, I don't write; I trust to my memory to remember whatever it was until I get home. If I take along a little notebook, it never gets used.
I hate writing by hand sufficiently that, when I first started to write (remember my age, folks), I wrote on a TYPEWRITER. That's really a pain to make changes on. (But it's faster to get the words out on than handwriting, at least if you can type moderately well.)
posted
Yeah, I started using small electric typewriters back when (before I started writing, that's for sure). And didn't they have those little text editors for a while? I suppose that there just aren't enough actual writers in the world to keep those around, but I thought they were pretty nifty.
I do love doing calligraphy. But when every letter is a work of art in itself...that isn't writing, it's calligraphy. I use notebooks for doodling, making little sketches, writing notes (gasp!). I don't use them for writing, for the business of putting together a coherent text. Some people can...but I'm not one of them.
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