I've spent some time this weekend getting caught up on transcription. I'm sort of hoping once I get everything on the computer, I can take a stab at moving forward that way. As much as I like writing by hand, I don't want it to become a magic bullet or a crutch.
That said, in transcribing, I'm remembering some of the reasons I love hand writing, slow though it is. I do a lot of crossing out text, but leaving it for reference--something I'm not likely to do on the computer screen, with a delete function right there. Sometimes the crossed out ends up being better than what I'd planned to keep. And I go back and write notes and directions in the margins, so my final writing ends up being slightly ahead of first draft status.
And other times...well, where is the computer equivalent for this forgotten moment of catharsis I came across in an upper margin?
3 comments:
There is no better way to take notes on the fly than with a pen and paper. Messy though my handwriting may be.
The biggest reason I have trouble letting go of using pen(cil) and paper for my fiction writing is this: time and time again I write little things by hand and misplace them, rewrite on the computer because I'm in a hurry, and then find the original handwritten text and prefer it.
Just one example: as I continued working on transcription last night, I couldn't find part of one scene in my notebook, so I recreated as best I could from memory. On the computer, I wrote "...hit me like a blow to the stomach." When I found the handwritten text, it said, "...hit me like a sucker punch to the gut." Objectively speaking, I'm not sure one is *better* than the other, but I like the sucker punch. ;-) And it's almost always like that, handwritten vs. computer. I'm maybe more direct on the computer, simpler...but handwritten feels more honest.
Very difficult to give up a good pen or pencil and some paper. Writing my hand or typewriter is relaxing. Writing by a PC is a chore.
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