I’m a vagabond these days. I bought a project house that I’ve been working on since August, but with the bathroom gutted, I can’t live there. As a result, I’ve been wandering from spare room to spare room among friends and acquaintances. This means I don’t have most of my usual writing tools at hand. My writing desk is in a storage container, as is most everything I own. My writing cats are living in Arkansas.
Typically, I write my first drafts longhand while sitting at my writing desk. I prefer a Clairefontaine notebook for their creamy paper, and a Pelikan fountain pen filled with slippery silicone-enhanced ink. Yes, despite being a fucking philistine in the rest of my life, I’m kind of a writing snob. My writing desk is an antique Abernathy library table.
Without my preferred tools, I had rather expected that this hiatus from homebound security would also produce a hiatus from writing, but I was wrong. In September I wrote a first draft of a book, and not in my usual manner. I hammered it out on a dinky little third-hand laptop with pixelated lines on the screen. No handwritten drafts. No handwritten notes even. It’s the first project I’ve ever tackled entirely on computer.
Write Tools
Well, almost entirely. When I came time to do the heavy lifting of revisions and edits, I fell back to form. I printed the whole thing out and started editing with pencil. Only a few pages in, I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t working. What was the problem? The pencil. I was using the nearest thing: a mechanical pencil. That was the problem. I always do edits with a real wood pencil. I don’t know why, but it feels easier. It’s warm and satisfying and mess and erasable, which is good, because I’ve been known to do some serious erasing while I’m editing. Plus, there’s something about rolling off wood shavings every few chapters that really appeals to the crafty side of me.
At least once I recognized the problem, it was easy to solve. I dug up some old wood pencils (shout out to my alma mater!), bought a really nice manual sharpener and a good Japanese eraser (Oops!Pig). I’m in business. Two hundred pages of edits done and two hundred more to go.
How about you? Are there writing habits you can kick? Are there ones you can’t? What’s the bare minimum you require to get a book on paper?
And now that I look at the picture I snapped, I realize that the last sentence shown is: “A blowjob on one page and some girl taking it from behind on the other.” Hmmm. So, what the hell, it might as well be a teaser. Here’s the text of that page shown, pre-edits:
***
“What the hell are you doing?” Kellen said. Two sleepless nights and too much adrenaline caught up with him, made his hands shake as he popped the clip and ejected the round in the chamber. He slammed open the kitchen drawer and shoved the gun to the back. “I said, what the hell are you doing? And goddamnit, you better answer me for a change.”
Wavy looked at him, as though to say, isn’t it obvious? A magazine lay on the table in front of her. Reading.
“Come on, pack your shit up. I’ll give you a ride home.” The back of his shirt was filthy from lying in the dirt working on Vic’s car and her dress was white. That was too bad.
He stomped to the front door to get his boots on, but she didn’t come. When he went back to the kitchen, she was still sitting there.
“Now. Goddamn right now. I’m not in the mood for this.”
“Walk.” She got up from the chair slowly.
“No, you’re not walking home.”
“Walked here.”
“Yeah, well it wasn’t pitch black out when you walked here, either.”
She shrugged.
“And how’d you get in here?”
Out of her dress pocket she took a key and laid it on the table. The spare from under the mat on the back porch.
Looking down at the key, he realized she was reading a skin mag. Not a skin mag. One of his magazines, from out of his night stand. She had it open to a page he didn’t even like to think she’d looked at. A blowjob on one page and some girl taking it from behind on the other.
Bryn Greenwood 
Before I had a pc, I had to write in a narrow-lined spiral-bound notebook with a blue ball-point pen, medium point.
Now I hammer out the first few drafts on the lap-top but, at some stage, I have to print it off and go through it with a blue ball point pen.
Thanks to a Purgie, I’ve printed off the latest version of Kestrel in a different font and a different color and I’m finding things I had never noticed before. I’ll do that for all my stuff in future.
[QUOTE]A blowjob on one page and some girl taking it from behind on the other.[/QUOTE]
Now I really want to read the book. 😀
The only thing I absolutely, without a doubt must have when I’m writing is my cigarettes. Trying to write while I am without smokes is almost impossible, especially when I am struggling with a sentence which requires a more delicate touch. Sitting back for a moment to chill out kicks off ideas which would otherwise not be prodded into action. Other than that… Nah. I can write on my laptop, on the main computer, in notebooks and on scraps of paper, with pencil, pen or on my ‘phone’s note maker.
If you are on the lookout for a decent laptop or computer, then hold out till after Christmas. You should be able to pick up a decent (and cheap) system in the January sales. There are a few laptops and notebooks I have been looking at as back-ups for my constant computer needs, and they are tumbling down in price right now, so after the Christmas rush they should be down to a fraction of their cost.
I’ve done all my books on the computer – it’s gotten so I actually get a weird little kick of inspiration looking at a blank Word doc. But I’ve written in a (college-ruled spiral bound) notebook when electricity wasn’t on the menu, and I can usually make it happen, even if I can’t always read it afterward.
I have a dozen or more habits attached to writing, but I think none I couldn’t kick under the right circumstances. However, I know I find it *easier* to write when I have a keyboard and a monitor in front of me, lyric-free music playing, a cup of something hot (or, alternatively, something alcoholic) next to me, and comfortable non-work clothes on. And anything that makes the words come faster gets added to the daily routine.
lol, love this teaser.
as for what I need? Computer, music or something on the TV/web for background noise (yes, I multitask by watching tv shows/movies while writing. so sue me), and something to drink and/or snack on.
I simply can NOT write without some sort of music or background noise. And two kids does not count as background noise. They count as fun distractions, when they aren’t getting into trouble.
Typically, I either edit on the screen, though sometimes I print it out and use a pen to go over it bit by bit.
I write court opinions mostly, and that’s all on the computer, either at work on the PC or home on the couch on the Mac. Anything headed for publication, I print out and read out loud. I edit other people’s work with pencil, unless we’re actually collaborating, which is done with a track changes program.
Yup, I have to do edits on hard copy at some point, and I always do the read-through out loud.
This is a great teaser. Some great character building. I would def love to read more of this.
I write on computer, edit on print outs, do even more rewriting/edits when I type in the print out changes and then I try to read the last draft out loud (from paper, not screen).
Your desk and pens give it such a romantic flair. I really don’t have anything that I need. I prefer my laptop (or any computer), but will write in a notebook if I have to. I’ve only lately gotten into printing out stuff for editing.
Great juxtaposition in the teaser between the girl, the magazine, and Kellen in relation to their conversation.
I love her attitude. It leaps off of the screen at me. The casual confidence is wonderfully written. Can’t wait to see more.
my daughter loves wood pencils! technology cant kill the classic pencil.
I’m looking into the fancy paper and pens. Sounds sexy as hell. And a writing desk! Oh, goodness. Some day.
For me, rough drafts and general ideas start mostly in a Moleskine. Plain ol’ ball point pen. Nothing special. Revisions go to the laptop, where I can cut-copy-paste to my heart’s delight and see it in a form that looks “published.” Sometimes I’ll print out a draft, scribble madly all over the paper, and then make edits according to the scribbles.
It doesn’t always go this way, but that’s the general pattern. Oh, and I spent summer ’09 in the garage where it was nice and quiet. Winter, I’m stuck in the office / studio. Better than nothing.
At any rate, I think that’s all for now.
DJ