I was just wondering what other people prefer to do - type their stories/poems on the computer or hand write them. I have always found writing things by hand impossible. I feel as though I am committing myself to whatever I put down on the paper first, and I hate the way that I can't write with the same speed as I can when typing. Making mistakes it always messy, involving rubbers or crossing out.
I never thought this was a problem, but recently I read 'The Ode Less Travelled' by Stephen Fry (which I recommend to anybody interested in writing poetry). In the list of 'rules' at the beginning of the book, he said that it's vital to write your poems down yourself in a notebook. Other pieces of 'writer's advice' that I have read have said much the same. Would you agree? Is there something about hand writing your work that is either more satisfying or more effective than typing it?
Writing by hand has always had a very important role in my approach to writing. I have argued with myself for years about the right kind of notebook, and still have not come to any definitive answers, but I have settled on the fountain pen as an instrument of choice, not least because of the aesthetic of it. I have had people (mostly Israelis, by the way) come up to me when I was writing simply because they were attracted by what I was doing. I actually thought that as an alternative to busking I could just go and write on a street corner and leave my hat on the pavement. Might make more money from my writing that way, too.
But there is a more serious side to it. Writing by hand and writing on the computer are two different activities calling upon two different kinds of attention, and I find that when I work with them in concert it is just so much more satisfying. With writing by hand I have been known to be unusually fluent, making few corrections as I go and writing with relative ease and confidence, but what really matters to me is that I am free to express myself however well or sketchily I choose, and in fact I enjoy making a mess with all sorts of corrections and scribbles when I start going over what I write.
When I then take my piece to the computer, then the creative process becomes genuinely creative. I am not writing from scratch because I have already 'brainstormed' my ideas and thoughts, but I am really concentrating on the presentation. The dialogue between the handwritten page and the computer screen is something I enjoy immensely. Sometimes it is a peaceful transcription, but most of the time it is revolution and anarchy, as the computer-written text generally opens up the scope of what I am writing enormously.
If I had to summarise the above, I would say handwritten for immediacy and depth, type-written for presentation and scope.
Sometimes I do write without the initial handwritten phase, sometimes pieces just leap directly from brain the screen without the mediation of the hand, but at other times, when I want to get really close to myself, or to the intimacy of a moment or a place, the pen and my favourite notebook of the moment are indispensable.
I always use a computer or labtop. its a lot easier to correct mistakes and if i do have ideas i usually write them down in my notebook.
I am writing my novel in handwritten form first and I type everything up after that often making a lot of changes along the way. I have to admit though sometimes my brain is going quicker than my hand is able to write at. But I feel as though I have done all the hard work in my handwritten first draft.