Back to Basics

I used to take public transportation to and from college: two trains and a bus. Yes, that meant I spent a lot of my time not only riding trains and buses but also waiting for trains and buses. To pass the time, sometimes I'd do homework. A lot of times I would read, both school texts and books for pleasure. Other times, I would write.

Because I didn't have a laptop at the time, my process was writing on looseleaf paper snagged from my binders for class and then typing it up when I had enough written to make it worth it. My first draft would thus be handwritten and I would then edit it as I typed it all up.

Since getting a laptop, I've gotten away from the whole handwriting-it-all-out thing, simply because typing is so much easier! I type a lot faster than I handwrite, even taking into consideration the fact that my finger is pretty much glued to the Backspace key, so it just makes more sense to type everything.

Due to certain circumstances this past weekend (read: going out of town for a family wedding), I bought a notebook to write in on the long car ride since I didn't want to drag my laptop with me. And I discovered that there's something about handwriting in a notebook that I've ... missed, for lack of a better term.

I felt more connected--both to the piece and to my own style--when I was trying to recreate my first chapter from memory rather than just rewording what I'd already written. I'd missed that, seeing a blank sheet of paper and watching it fill up with ink and words.

I realize I'm not going to be able to handwrite my 82,000-word magnum opus in a little one-subject notebook but I can use what I've learned. How about instead of doing my normal line-by-line rewrite for my edits, I go back to basics a little bit and try to recreate the chapter? Maybe I should even push the content I've already written further down so I can't see it and just let the edits flow, only going back to check when I feel I need some direction.

Maybe I'll have an easier time finding my voice if I give myself a blank slate, so to speak.