Love the way you write so you can love your writing and love your story. It’s all about love.

I don’t know about you, but the thought of an empty word document makes me nervous. The red underlining of misspelled words jumping out at me, the green underlining smirking at me, begging me to disagree and my slow growing word count down the bottom; on good days easily ignored but on days like this it’s sitting there, a small blinking icon that I cannot help but watch grow.

Empty documents are scary, but do you know what isn’t? A notebook. For the last week or so I have been experimenting with writing my work in progress out on paper as opposed to typing it up on my computer; here are my results:

An experiment with writing by hand

Aim: To write a couple of chapters by hand to see if there is an increase in productivity and the quality of the work and eliminate the use of the internet as procrastination.

Hypothesis: My wrist will hurt, my spelling will be atrocious and handwriting unreadable and I’ll only find more creative ways to procrastinate.

Method (flexible):

1.        Get a notebook/piece of paper, a pen and have some tea/coffee ready to drink.
2.        Clear your desk so you not only have room to write but a preferably flat surface. Also remove anything remotely distracting – laptops, lava lamps, small square pieces of paper you can fold into jumping frogs.
3.       Sit down at your desk.
4.        Drink some coffee or tea with you pinky outstretched and chew on your pen thoughtfully.
5.        Write the date.
6.        Look at it thoughtfully.
7.        Take a break and snack on some chocolate and drink more tea/coffee.
8.        Get back to your desk and write your first sentence.
9.        Take time to stir your coffee/tea counter clockwise three times and then clockwise four, repeat.
10.        Put on some music to help you concentrate.
11.        Put pen to paper and write.
12.        Repeat.

Results:

	By hand	On computer
Time spent writing/day	1hour	30min
Time spent distracted /procrastinating a day	1hour or so	2hours or more
Time spent on social networking sites/day	Too much	Too much
Words written in a week	Not many	More than not many but less than lots
Quality of the writing/day	Very good	Average
Time spent with writer’s block	Next to none	Just about the whole week

Conclusion: Writing by hand increases the quality of my writing and leads to fewer distractions as I am unable to access the internet through my note book (the paper kind). My hypothesis was incorrect - my wrist did not hurt and my spelling is understandable however I did invent some creative ways to procrastinate as predicted.

When I am writing by hand the words come to me slowly but never stop, not once have I gotten writer’s block from writing by hand whilst it is a frequently occurring event whilst using a computer. This has been good and bad at the same time as now it’s almost hard to stop writing and ideas continue to plague me long after I have left my desk.

Speed is certainly an issue but at the stage I am on, third draft, the plot is pretty well set so the concentration has shifted from there to the actual writing. Writing by hand is ideal for those that want spend time writing as the speeds you reach whilst handwriting are embarrassing next to those of typing (depending on your ability 

of course).

Pros and Cons from this experience:

Pros:

•  I can take a notebook anywhere, it’s thin and portable and requires no battery, all you need is a pen.
•  Writing by hand makes you think a little bit more about what you’re actually writing down so mistakes in wording are less common.
•  It can feel quite cool to sit there with your notebook, coffee or tea in hand writing.
• Few distractions
•  No more intimidating word documents and once you’ve written in your notebook the blank pages in those no longer feel as blank.
• You can draw little pictures in the side
•  No more scrolling up and trying to find things out – you just turn the page.
• You can stick pictures, magazine cuttings, things you wrote onto the backs of receipts into your notebook which gives it a lovely used scrapbook like feeling.
•  You can finally use up all those pens and notebooks you’ve been buying for years.
• You no longer need to print things out; it’s there as you go.

Cons:

·         Smudges and stains from food and coffee/tea are almost unavoidable.

·         Handwriting can get increasingly difficult to read as you carelessly fling ideas onto the paper trying to match the speed of your writing with the speed of your typing.

·         Ripped and dirty pages can be unpleasant to work with.

·         Lose it and there’s no backup (but this can be true with word documents and also you can counter this by photocopying or scanning each page as you write it.)

·         Family and friends don’t have to go through all those levels of security that are on your laptop to keep people like them from reading your novel.

·         Can start to fall apart

Tips:

•  If you’re left handed like me, rind binders and spiral notebooks are not your friends and neither are very inky pens.
•  Take frequent brakes, every 15 or so minutes
•  Stay hydrated – your hands will thank you for this
•  Keep a dictionary nearby if you’re like me and too lazy to stand up and get one if you need one or get a dictionary app on your iPod/iPhone/Cellphone.
•  Avoid eating and writing, unlike with your computer/laptop, you cannot simply wipe the chocolate stains away.

Now the real question is; will I keep writing by hand? I think I will, it has certainly been great having a notebook, physical proof that I am writing a novel. With each page that gets filled by my blue or black pen I am reminded what it is that I am doing – writing a book; it’s very real, no more virtual pages but ones that you can see and touch.

It is a bit of a hassle, my notebook is well worn; pages dog-eared, brown spills of tea splattered throughout it like an expressive work of art and stains where chocolate crumbs fell from my hands and were later pressed into the pages, not to mention the fact that I will have to type this all up but I think it’s worth the hassle and I will continue doing it till I at least finish my current draft.

What sounds more appealing? Curling up to a worn out notebook and physically putting words onto the page, smelling the fresh ink and marvelling at how the light from the fire illuminates it or curling up with your laptop, distractions buzzing in the background – there’s so many things that you can do. The light from the fire glares at you from its reflection in your screen making you shuffle away to protect your eyes and then the sound of typing, as opposed to the scratching of a pen, breaking the silence as you sit there letting your word processor make corrections as necessary.

Of course I love my laptop and will continue to write on it in the future, I just find writing on paper more romantic, soothing in a strange way. It may be the silence, paper doesn’t have a loud fan like my laptop but if your laptop is a really good one this may not be a problem. I’ve always thought that writing by hand will vanish one day, that computers will take over our lives and due to environmental reasons we will no longer have paper and nor will we have a need to make handwritten notes, maybe this is why I find it romantic; so many before me in history have handwritten novels, it makes me feel a part of that, a part of something big, a part of the secret world of writers.

I’m letting my imagination loose here, perhaps it is because I hand wrote this before I typed this up or because it is currently four in the morning, either way handwriting is something that I will continue to do.

If you are struggling with your writing, find that blank document too intimidating, too judgemental  try putting pen to paper, it’s a lot friendlier. If you aren’t struggling but are reaching for perfection as you write this may be your chance to think as you write, typing is too easy after all. If you, like me, are charmed by the thought but dare not to do it, try it, there’s no need to write out your whole novel by hand, you can just do bits and pieces, scenes that you wish to spend time with.

In my previous post I mentioned killing writers block with love, well that may not be enough; you actually have to love writing as well, the process of putting your thoughts down onto paper however you choose to do it. I challenge you to try another way of writing this year, if you write by hand but are getting nowhere try a laptop or computer, if you’re struggling on a computer grab a notebook and a favoured pen.

Love the way you write so you can love your writing and love your story. It’s all about love.

Janna

Killing the Monster that is Writer's Block with Love

Writing when not being able to write.

When writing, giving up is often a thought that follows us around, it’s only when you have truly fallen in love with a story that you’re willing to put in all that effort into getting it to near perfection. So here’s the hard part, falling in love.

Falling in love with your story; it’s one of those things that can’t be taught, it happens, it happened to me with my current story and others in the past, and it will happen to you with whatever you are writing at the moment, if you give your story a chance.

I think that’s the trick; giving your story a chance not pushing it away because it’s a little weird, it doesn't make sense or it’s a little out of the ordinary and you’re not sure about it.

Make it make sense, you’re the writer, you give life to the story, change it if you wish and as you wish, don’t let others talk you out of writing it and most importantly don’t let yourself talk you out of it, you won’t believe how common that is.

Writing is hard work; lots of people don’t realize this, if writing were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not the actual writing part that is difficult, anybody can write, it’s making the characters come to life, that’s the hard work. But once those characters are alive in your mind they begin to influence your writing and although they can be annoying, you will grow to love them and miss their presence when they shut up during writer’s block.

That’s what writer’s block is after all, when your imaginary characters won’t speak to you.

I've always found writer’s block rather strange as it’s only writer’s that get it, hence the name ‘Writer’s block’. You don’t hear people get ‘editor’s block’ or ‘teacher’s block’ or any other type of block; it’s just us writers that get this.

Because of this many have gone on to say that writer’s block is mythical, that it’s something we writer’s come up with, a creative excuse for being lazy. But, from someone who has experienced it on numerous occasions, it is most certainly not made up.

However, I'm not sure writer’s block is the right name.  Personally I feel writer’s block happens when you fall out of love with your story and therefore have no motivation to write it, what motivated you earlier; your love for the story is now gone, what remains is that little thought at the back of your head that tells you to write, the remains of your love.

This past week I've had writer’s block, it’s been an increasingly frustrating experience because this time it’s a little different; I have an outline. I know exactly what I'm meant to be writing but I haven’t been able to get the words down. Instead, I've been talking about writing, reading about writing and doing everything but writing.  

But I've succeeded in driving it away, for the meantime anyway. I managed to find a way to reawaken the characters within me and to once again fall in love with my story, because your love for your story is what makes you want to write.

Writing is still a bit difficult at the moment; I'm onto my third draft which means the plot is pretty solid. At this stage it’s only the way I present the story and perhaps the style in which I present it that is changing so I’m focusing more on what I write; quality over quantity.

It’s strange writing so slowly, usually in a weekend like this I’d get 10,000 words written, purely because I find myself so absorbed in my writing the time just flies and before I know it my word count has doubled. 

But now I find it difficult to write 1,000 words a night, I find myself carefully mulling over my word choice, ‘is this the right word? Maybe I should check the thesaurus and get something else, something more suitable.’

Maybe my English teachers are right, authors do chose their words carefully, or maybe it’s just me, desperately trying to sound professional, like a ‘real writer’ although I have begun to convince myself that there is no such thing as a ‘real writer’.

Regardless of this I am proud of what I have so far written; the words flow and when I go to read the sentences aloud there are only a few changes to be made, possibly a few mistakes that snuck in whilst I was flipping through my thesaurus.

If you’re suffering from writer’s block try to fall in love with your stories and your characters once more. Invite them back into your mind, place them into funny or strange situations and watch their reactions, remember your plot and most importantly remember why you wanted to write that story.

Fall in love, the writing will follow.

Janna