Joseph Conrad’s manuscript of Typhoon.
Do you write by hand?
I do – that is, I type my stories, plays and blog posts, but for notes, lists and brainstorming I use the good old method: pen and notebook. It makes for a good deal of scribbling – which I quite like, but you won’t find me ranting against word-processors.
Indeed, whenever I find myself moving around whole chunks of writing on an electronic page, or copying and pasting, or shuffling paragraphs, or trying out different versions of a sentence with a flick of a finger on a touchpad, I can’t help thinking in some awe of all the wonderful novels, plays and poems that were written by hand – and in many cases, largely by candlelight…
Ah well, it was another time, another world – on which it is easy to open windows. For instance, by perusing these images of manuscript pages from twenty-five famous novels, collected by Flavorwire.
Quite lovely to see, aren’t they? And I like to play guessing games on what can be gleaned of each author’s method and personality…
Always remembering that Dumas Père’s precise and very neat quasi-secretary hand, covering endless large, pale-blue pages – with no punctuation at all, to save time – is rather hard to reconcile with his exuberant personality and colourful writing style.
Guessing games work only so far, but they are great fun – or else, they are great fun, but only work so far.
Related articles
- Handwriting (andrewhutchinson.com.au)
- The Original Handwritten Manuscript of an Early Version of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (laughingsquid.com)
Scribblings 
I love handwriting. But I know what you mean about the benefits of copying and pasting with a laptop!
I was wondering if I could include these words in a book I’m working on: ‘ type my stories, plays and blog posts, but for notes, lists and brainstorming I use the good old method: pen and notebook.’
It’s a book where real people who write talk about writing. It’s to inspire people to write and there are different sections. One section is about writing tools and your words would fit nicely. All credit would go to you and your name, age and location would be included.
There are also some writing questions you are welcome to answer and anything that resonates with me will go in the book.
All good if you want to decline, just thought I’d check.
JD
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I like your project, JD, and I’d be very glad to participate… Shall we get in touch?
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Yay, thanks so much. I’m so glad! Well, if you can let me know your name, age and location, that would be great. You can email the details if you prefer: wordslikesilk@gmail.com.
If you want to answer writing questions, here are some to choose from:
What do you write?
How did you fall in love with writing?
What inspires you?
How important is your writing space?
What is the best thing about writing?
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