There are days when my brain simply locks up when I have my fingers on a keyboard and my eyes on a blinking cursor on a screen.
I wrote the first two Frontlines novels by hand in A4-sized unlined notebooks. Then I got a publishing contract, and the deadlines involved required a faster pace of production than I could do by hand because the transcription step doubled the time involved. So I did what everyone else does and wrote on a laptop—mostly MacBooks with Scrivener and Word on them. But even though I write the novels on a computer, I still take all my story notes by hand, and I write most shorter fiction longhand as well. My brain just seems to work better when I have a pen in my hand. You can cross out stuff but still see your corrections instead of hitting backspace and sending the corrected word or phrase into oblivion.
Best of all, it doesn’t really feel like work. Typing is kind of a drudgery for me, but handwriting has a meditative sort of quality that really quiets my mind and gets me in the flow. (There’s also the fact that a notebook or legal pad doesn’t have an Internet connection to distract me.)
The scribbling on the legal pad in the picture is a draft of new jacket copy for CORVUS, the second volume in the Frontlines: Evolution series. You can see where I crossed out words and wrote in substitutions. And if you can read my handwriting, you now know the general gist of the novel, which is due out in June. This is what will end up as the marketing copy on the back of the book (for the paperback version) and the product page on Amazon. I wasn’t quite happy with the promotional text written by the publisher, so I gave them an alternate version to use instead.
(The pen is a Lamy Safari, which is a great and affordable workhorse fountain pen.)
What size of nib do you prefer on your pen? Reading your post about getting one of your pens fixed led me down a fountain pen rabbit hole. So far I just have a few of the Lamy Safaris, but I really like them. I like the flow of medium nibs, but I can read my writing better with extra fine.
It depends on the pen. For a German nib, I like medium or fine, but the Japanese pens (Pilot and Platinum) have the best extra-fine nibs.
Do you have a preferred ink brand? Also, I’m looking forward to CORVUS. The Frontlines universe is one of my favorites.
Noodler’s Bulletproof Black and Platinum Carbon.
Glad you like the series!
Perhaps try one of those new digital notepads. They have apps to turn your writing into text. Might give you the best of both worlds.
This one looks pretty cool mate:
https://remarkable.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=generic&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA0fu5BhDQARIsAMXUBOIIa04u0GErJvEVrVDCNq9RAJuGEBa3eLLgHYVYsm6XutiLJouWRScaAhnNEALw_wcB
Keep up the great work.
Cheers
Joel
I have a Kindle Scribe and use it for notes. The text conversion works very well but it still requires cleanup in the end. It’s still not quite the same tactile feeling of pen on paper, though, and I like when the pages pile up as I write.
Perhaps try one of those new digital notepads. They have apps to turn your writing into text. Might give you the best of both worlds.
This one looks pretty cool mate:
https://remarkable.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=generic&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA0fu5BhDQARIsAMXUBOIIa04u0GErJvEVrVDCNq9RAJuGEBa3eLLgHYVYsm6XutiLJouWRScaAhnNEALw_wcB
Keep up the great work.
Cheers
Joel