The Modern Writer
This is the first book I have written - not entirely, but a good part of it – directly typed into the computer. I’ve always been an advocate of longhand, I still am: it gets you, literally, in touch with your story. Writing longhand, you feel the tale through the pen. Crossing out is still quicker than hitting the delete key. And writing is physical, you move your body, you curl your arm around the page, you chew your pen top, you drum your fingers and stare into space, as if the story was actually happening, ghostly, before your eyes.
However, the fact is that I – like most other people I know – spend more time on a computer than doing anything else in the day. So writing on the computer becomes more natural – and it’s a heck of a lot quicker than writing longhand, then typing it up.
If there are any wannabe writers reading this, here’s a link to an excellent series of podcasts that take you through more or less everything you need to know. I’ve just been listening to the one on ‘conflict’ and finding it very relevant to the way I’m going about writing this book.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/audio/more/writingchallenges/
