In my third year in to my first draft i can finally say that i'm getting close to pick a name for my protagonist

@OldNerdLogan

3 ай бұрын

Whoa nice I’m not there yet

@BookClubDisaster

3 ай бұрын

Third year? Geez how many words?

@Terrificguyonline

3 ай бұрын

@@BookClubDisaster no trolling: 40k. I write very slowly and inefficiently and its going nowhere and i hate myself

@8ballstreet

3 ай бұрын

You better slow down

@Tato9412

Ай бұрын

Why would it take you so long to just pick one name if the draft itself has thousands of words

One of my favorite quotes I often think about when I sit down to journal is from Hemingway: “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

I've been writing by hand since age seven. Fountain pens makes it great too.

Yes, slow down and get serious about how to rethink and modify multiple drafts. Great advice. --

About a week or so ago I was asked by a coworker about my choice in taking a longhand approach to writing a novel. My response featured the versatility in settings invitative to a pen and paper approach; outside where there are no power outlets which we would otherwise eventually need if we are working on a laptop. I also like how much quicker it is to flip open a notepad to jot down those slickest and most elusive of thoughts and perfect sentences before they can escape our minds rather than hoping we can hold onto them until we power on our laptops. Lastly, I appreciate how raw and intimate it feels to write longhand. I never thought of the fact that it slows everything down. This is an awesome observation!

Interesting. Terribly sad to think of DFW crossing out his name. What you mentioned about the lingering importance of the person you learned to write from reminded me of something. Might be a little personal, but I think it’s got illustrative value! When I was 13 years old, I read my mother’s journals. She was artistic and her writing was extravagant. I decided to make it my own. That took about two weeks. I kept it through college until I was roughly the same age she’d been when she died. Then something happened in me. I felt like my skin didn’t fit anymore like it’d never been mine and like I’d run out the clock without noticing. Needless to say, it was Not a Good Time. Part of what got me through it was finding ways to differentiate myself from her, and the handwriting was a bigger deal than I’d expected. Every time I used her style (which was every time I wrote by hand) I thought about her and felt her absence. In retrospect, I must have been measuring myself against her although I never once thought about it consciously. This might be a bit outside of normal experience, but I’m sure it’s common that more memories are tied up in handwriting than people notice. I can’t think of another activity that more closely connects the structure of our thoughts with physicality.

Would definitely recommend the typewriter as a tool here. Especially a manual one where you have to literally press the letters into the paper. It’s slower than computer but neater than printing. Ideal for drafts I think.

@edifiedreader

3 ай бұрын

Also good in case your computer crashes or gets hacked.

I tried writing longhand for the first time a about a month ago, and I loved it. Neil Gaiman says it forces you to write (paraphrasing) "slowly, but in a good way" and I found that to be true. That, paired with shutting off my wifi using apps like Cold Turkey Blocker and Freedom, has really helped my productivity.

Recently moved to another country, and guess what, my handwriting changed. Interesting. I just bought the book, so thanks for relaying that information. For my next journal I'm going to use line-less paper. Looking forward to it.

@WriteConscious

4 ай бұрын

Yeah, you'll like a lot of the stuff. The first 89 pages are about changing things other than the written alphabet in your writing. Like marigins, the pens you use, and other good stuff. A lot of that opened my eyes and is somewhat more important to me than some of the alphabet changes I made!

Dude!!! So happy I discovered your channel!! Love DFW, Love longhand, and I am fascinated with your explorations of handwriting as a spiritual or meditative act. As a Zettelkasten AntiNovelist, I believe in Analog knowledge development 100%. I write drafts by hand, use the ZK for research and story development (all on notecards) and definitely agree writing by hand is transformative! Well done!! Subscribed!!

@WriteConscious

3 ай бұрын

That's crazy lol

Another banger video - my best writing comes out from longhand sessions

I like writing on lined paper… I’ll try unlined… I wrote two novels on early 80s word processor, a very different experience… but they were cyberpunk lol… My writing is very sloppy… I love it , but my attachment to it might be ego… Really looking forward to reading the handwriting book… I’m mainly a poet and always write out in longhand… I was always fascinated by the Paris Review features where they’d show a famous author’s page with handwritten corrections… Also of interest: Samuel R. Delany talking about being dyslexic early in life, laboriously writing out notes for his novels on 3x5 cards… Thanks for much for a lot to think about!

I met DFW’s professor in undergrad. He showed me his original manuscript of broom of the system

@johne.nobody2946

3 ай бұрын

That’s so sweet! Probably a bit strange, though, considering the circumstances under which it was found.

@tzirufim

23 күн бұрын

@@johne.nobody2946 How did it come up? I've never heard that story before

I was 22 years old when I decided to change the way I did the lowercase m. It was a spontaneous decision. I didn't like the way it looked. It took me maybe two weeks to truly change it, meaning that it took two weeks to do it the new way even when I was in a hurry and needed to put something down on paper quickly. It really showed me both the potential and resistance for change we have as humans.

another great video

@WriteConscious

4 ай бұрын

Thanks!

Cool channel. just discovered it after watching your video on Blood Meridian.

There have been times when I've been away from home and have just kept a folded a piece of A4 paper that it fits in my pocket (folding it in half twice) with me, then I'd write whatever it was that occurred to me in the available surface. Once a single surface was full, I'd switch to another piece, writing a different scene entirely. This way you'd get 8 different (and rather short) pieces written on the same piece of paper, and if you manage to fill multiple sheets this way, you'll have fun trying to figure out if anything written on any of them is related directly to anything else and the shortness of each segment lets you really look at them for waht they are. Switching from vertical to horizontal is something I did here as well as when writing notes during lectures, it's a lot more interesting to read afterwards when the orientation keeps changing, keeps you engaged (think House of Leaves). Also keep a notebook next to my bed for those latenight flashes of dubious inspiration. So yeah, writing longhand is something that I can get behind. There's a pleasure in filling the blank whiteness with graphite chickenscratches, an aesthetic kind of pleasure.

one of my favourite authors, H.E.Bates, always wrote in longhand, not on typewriter.

"If you share your pain with me, I'll share my ink with you." -A pen's promise to a writer

NOTES for my stories, always handwritten…DRAFTS, always typed. Works for me.

It actually makes sense for authors to strike through their name on the title page when signing their books otherwise you effectively end up with a doubling of the author’s name. The strike through makes their signature serve as a proper page amendment/edit.

It would be funny to know how DFW would take a book like that on "Handwriting". To me it seems just like another auto-promotional-motivational-marketing thing. Don't take it personally, but i think that the creative and writing process is more inconscious and spontaneous than we try to study and rationalize. True words are those about "slow down" as a writer. Agree, but only if it's spontaneous. BTW, great channel. I watch your videos everyday even if i'm italian.

longhand maybe not for all.. like for adhd/autistic minds, ideas reels through like morphology images.. like butterflies.. there’s no chance of pinning them down with longhand. simply trying to write it down disperses the thoughts away.. at least with typing the process can become less conscious and automatic and actually be focused on the ideas flitting through

That copy of Libra on your shelf is gorgeous. Also, what's that "Sandman" book on your shelf? Never seen that before.

@WriteConscious

3 ай бұрын

Thanks! It's the Sandman Omnibus! amzn.to/3Hy8mu8

I dont think stephen king writes longhanded. Someone asked him at a talk and he said hes tried it but it all has to end up in the computer anyways..

There are plenty of Architects and Engineers that have the same feeling about drafting and drawing in general being a much more fruitful and creative process when compared to CAD (computer aided design) and BIM (building information modeling). I have heard graphic designers with the same complaints about their field. There seems to be a real sense of loss for creators when they are given technological short cuts. If you have not experienced that loss, it is hard (or nearly impossible) to see the value in going the long way. Also, when you were taught all of your foundational skills for your process through the short cut method your attempts at slowing down will be frustrating. Your work quality will tank for a while because you are learning a new skill. Most people interested in trying an analog method will give up before they reach anywhere near the skill level of a person that has spent a career developing the skill set. Newcomers to a field can understand the idea of the value of slowing down, but they have to take it upon themselves to learn and develop, where the old method was part of education process for the old timers. In short - there is a significant barrier to entry. Perhaps we are meant to slow down and think while we create rather than just cranking out products.

Great video man. I will definitely start reading Wallace soon. Btw do you have any recommendations for books on teaching?

@WriteConscious

3 ай бұрын

High school teaching?

@arnolito2361

3 ай бұрын

@@WriteConscious Yes and maybe middle school too

@WriteConscious

3 ай бұрын

English? How many years have you been teaching?

@arnolito2361

3 ай бұрын

@@WriteConscious Yes english. I don’t have any experience teaching yet. I’m looking to start after finishing college and am trying to be as prepared as possible before I go into it.

I think it's a matter of preference. I think writers should learn how to write by starting with short poems or haiku to figure out what images and themes they like on a sentence level; then move to short stories to see how narrative structure works with paragraphs; then eventually they'll accrue enough themes and write so many pages of short stories that a novel will seem less daunting. It also teaches them that some things should be short stories while others are better as novels or plays (there wouldn't be as many bad novels around if the writers realized they didn't have enough substance to warrant the length). To that effect, Kafka said that writing a good short story should be done all at once almost in a dreamstate, French authors called it "État second", and obviously a computer or typewriter is going to be a lot faster at attaining that immediacy. "On The Road" would be entirely different if Kerouac wrote it long-hand, although that's also what led Capote to say of Kerouac's work "that's not writing, that's typing". While on the other hand, you get people like John Steinbeck, Roald Dahl, I think Joyce Carol Oates? who not only write longhand, but get to a point where they have specific paper and pencils they always use.

Agree mostly with your points and writing on paper, especially on paper with no lines. Look at some old writers drafts and you'll see them writing in any direction and angle, even doodling on their drafts. But there are some authors that can write on a type writer and computer at the same level. I think Vollmann is the only modern author I can think of who, at the start of his career, wrote exclusively on a computer. Although he had to stop and go handwritten when he developed carpal tunnel syndrome. Its possible but it takes someone extremely dedicated. Also wonder what your thoughts are on Vollmann?

@pseudoplotinus

3 ай бұрын

Vollmann is so dedicated to his craft and such a prosperous writer that it'd only make sense for him to write everything in that quick fashion described when writing on a computer. I even suppose that the prose style gets influenced by what medium you use. Vollmann's pynchonesque ambitious writing style requires quick adding and deleting and editing; Cormac McCarthy's relatively more minimal prose obviously has less of that complex ambitiousness when taken into consideration the fact that he used to write exclusively on a typewriter, where such an option is absent. And even though he now writes on paper, the prose style of Europe Central is so similar to You Bright and Risen Angels because that's the prose style he has adopted.

have you read anything about how to make your handwriting more visually pleasing? I write a lot but it always looks sloppy and ugly unless I write very very slow

@WriteConscious

4 ай бұрын

The book I mentioned "Your Handwriting Can Change your Life" is really good. Follow the tips she says in there even outside of changing how you write letters and things will improve.

@WriteConscious

4 ай бұрын

amzn.to/3SscnGD

Handwriting gives you a feedback of who you are, how you are as you write, specially when you're at young age. It helps to become conscious of who you are as you're expressing yourself non consciously. It's like the way of walking (the non verbal language) : it tells how you inhabits space and time without even think about it. And you can't control it. For instance, signature reproduction of someone by someone else is not possible, unless you have some type of idendity disorder maybe, but I don't know about that. Everyone has a different way of writing, as nobody is identical to another person. There's a lot of literature on the subject, like books from Max Pulver and Ludwig Klages among others, like french psychologists. Graphology (the study of handwriting and its meaning) is psychology applied to the movement of the hand on paper. And crossing its own name on a book is no positive thing to do for sure. As for the U that could mean this or that, it always depend on the overall context it takes place in (the speed of the movement; its tilt, forward or backward, or both; the size of the letters; the space between the words; the shape of the lines of the sentences, straight or not; the roundness or the angular shape of the letters, etc.)

To me, and only me, I’ve handwritten first drafts and I’ve typed them into a computer; and honestly, there isn’t a difference. The speed I type creative writing is no faster than what I do writing longhand. Everyone is different, but longhand versus typing seems to me to be much ado about nothing, or at the most, much ado about very little.

Do you have any published works?

@WriteConscious

3 ай бұрын

Short stories and poems. I will be republishing most of them on my Substack soon!

@JayDee-Plantnosher

3 ай бұрын

@@WriteConscious thanksfor your reply. Where can they be found. Forgive me if the answer is obvious. I did look around your channel, but I have no other social media if that is the answer

I have never before heard it described as "writing longhanded". Isn't "writing in longhand" the correct expression?

''Lugubrious''.

@WriteConscious

3 ай бұрын

lol

Hate to tell you, but MANY authors cross out their names on signed books. I have a shelf full of them. To my knowledge none have committed suicide. Crossing out the name is an age-old symbol of personalization. Google is your friend. 👍

@WriteConscious

3 ай бұрын

Bryan Garner and I will have to look into this thing you call Google

Absolutely not happening. You need to go fast when you're doing a rough draft. Fixing it is what revision is for. Also I think many authors are full of shit when they say they write longhand.

@Tato9412

Ай бұрын

Agree with you. If I had kept longhand writing the first draft of a novel project I have going, I wouldn't be even close to 35,000+ words in about five months. I need to put my ideas and progress of a plot first and then I can worry about the pretty things in it. This can be done by typing on a computer nowadays, and on a typewriter, before in the past, just like most of our classics were written.

@BookClubDisaster

Ай бұрын

@@Tato9412 the fact is the best thing that ever happened to writers is Microsoft Word and other programs. But writers think they have to make it harder because that's what their heroes did. But go back and read some of those 19th Century novels. They could have used Word! A lot of extreme wordiness that doesn't enhance anything.

lugubrious /lʊˈɡ(j)uːbrɪəs/ adjective looking or sounding sad and dismal. "his face looked even more lugubrious than usual"