Stuck? Write longhand

I was talking to someone the other day who is in academia. He used to write often in all of the ways academics do, but because of his present position in administration the things he writes have changed (e.g., faculty review letters, and so on).  

I had admired his earlier work, so I began our conversation with, “So, what are you working on?”

He started telling me about a book chapter he wrote over the Christmas holiday. “It was hard,” he admitted. “There was a time when I could sit down and just crank out pages,” he recalled.

“It’s like a muscle, isn’t it?” I asked.

He laughed. “Yes, it is and I have muscle atrophy.”

We both laughed.

“But I got it done. I had to get old-fashioned.”

I leaned in, not sure what that meant.

“I got out the legal pads. I wrote longhand until I could get it (words on paper) flowing again.”

“Aw,” I said, settling down. “I do that, too, when it gets hard.”

“It’s funny how you have to lean on those old reserves,” he said.

“Yes, it’s muscle memory,” I concluded, before we moved on to promises about having lunch before the semester ends.

 

So what?

Will writing longhand help today’s student? After all, my colleague and I are of the generation that did not have access to computers in school, so naturally writing longhand would make us feel “at home.”

Does the computer interrupt the hand-to-mind-to-heart connection?

Why do I turn to paper when the writing is difficult?

How do you get started?

I often spend time thinking about writing processes, my own and the authors I have interviewed. Of course I have learned that there is no one process for any individual writer or project, and there is no one way to begin. Over the last week, I have worked on several writing tasks, and I began them all in different ways.

Book review 1 began with notes I dictated into TypeNote as they came to me.

Book review 2 began with me scribbling responses to an evaluation sheet I created.

Article 1 began while reading other articles. I wrote comments in the pdf file that “talked back” to the author about what I was thinking and experiencing influenced by the information I had collected about the topic.

Article 2 began with an outline. I scoffed at outlines when former teachers required them, but now they are my saving grace when I need to narrow a topic or share how I conceive of an article/book with a writing partner.

What does this mean?

How is this useful?

How will knowing this help me write better, quicker (I am always writing to deadline.)?

I don’t have the answers to these questions, but they seem important to me.

As a novice writer, I often chide myself for not getting started.

If I continue to document the details of how I’ve gotten started in the past, I might be able to create a list of options to try when I just can’t get going.  

This list has also taught me to be understanding of students who experience this problem, but beyond being understanding, it gives me some concrete strategies/suggestions to share with them.

 

Art from Tagxedo

I put my favorite quotes from Donald Gallo’s "The Writing Processes of Professional Authors,” English Journal, 83(5), Sept. 1994,p.55-60, into Tagxedo.

 

 

My favorite quote from the piece  belongs to Richard Peck:

“Nobody but a reader ever became a writer."(58)

 

"...[W]riters revise in different ways. Beverly Cleary, for example, says she races through her first draft, never re-reading her previous day’s work before she moves on. She does not write recursively..."  (59)

 

“Most of what we know about the process of writing has come from writers of
fiction. But most of the writing we require from our students is nonfiction.” (55)