A Novel Idea Part 2: The Medium of Drafting

My Fellow Contributors,

I am happy to report back to you that I have been progressing steadily through my first draft and am almost to the half way point. I heard somewhere in high school that Ernest Hemingway would leave his desk and stop writing for the day before he ran out of ideas, that way he could resume the next day and not worry about what he was going to write next.

My system of "Frames" is helping me avoid writer's block in my own way. My goal for the first draft is to amass fifty Frames in a composition notebook. Each frame is anywhere from a page to two pages of handwritten text. It should be noted though that these Frames act more like posted-notes rather than chapters. They are essentially one or two frames out of the movie in my head which is going to be the novel. They are snapshots, meant to spark more writing later during the editing and revising process. Like I have mentioned earlier, at this point in my writing process I am just trying to make the clay; shaping and molding will come later.

But Bermuda, what medium should we writers use to create this clay?

I am glad you asked as I can not stress how important it is to hand write the first draft of any piece you are working on. Handwriting has several advantages over an electronic word processor which I will go over now.

First, handwriting allows you to get the ideas and words you want onto the page with out the restrictions of having to type. Without worrying about spelling errors which pop up underlined in red and steal your attention. When you are handwriting you are less inclined to go back and are able to flow forward quickly.

Second, hand writing a draft allows you to make notes on the margins, over certain sentences, even draw pictures; it allows you to move in unrestricted ease.

Thirdly, a pen, and notebook can go anywhere; they never run out of battery and have no load up time. You can go out into the world and become an observer. Leaving no foot print, only words.

Lastly, if your handwriting is anything like mine (my cursive is a touch unintelligible at times) nobody is going to be able to read it, and sometimes not even yourself. Thus when you go back to type it out on a computer, you are going to have to reshape, recreate and revise your draft, so that what eventually comes out on the computer scene is an entirely new draft. The act of transcription is in fact another stop in the writing process that many authors who simply type into a computer never get an opportunity to go through.

I want to end by saying that I never understood before when authors said their characters wrote themselves; that they had one idea of how the characters should react and instead they did another. I am starting to understand this now as I write my own novel. Characters who I thought would be evil are now starting to do some heroic things and some of my more innocent characters are now getting blood on their hands.

As always

Undoubtedly Yours,

Bermuda