How to write – literally

Catching up with Writer’s Almanac (www.writersalmanac.com) which is full of fascinating facts and quotes from and about writers from all over the world.

One item caught my eye about Jennifer Egan an American author I have to confess I hadn’t heard of.

She’s the  author of The Invisible Circus (1995), based on her travels in Europe; Emerald  City and Other Stories (1996), a short-story collection; Look at Me (2001), a finalist for the  National Book Award; and The Keep (2006), a best-seller.

What intrigued me though was the fact that she writes in longhand.  Because she started writing before the advent of computers (she was  born in the 1960s) she thinks that her writing on the computer is inferior to her other writing and needs more fixing.

One of my exercises when I studied business writing was to write out successful sales letters, by hand. Not once, not twice but three times.  The logic was that you picked up the rhythm of the writing much easier that way.  I have to admit that I do most of my writing on the computer but if I’m trying to pick up how another writer works then I do go back to the exercise.

It shows you all the quirks of punctuation, breathing in the writing and sometimes if you do enough of one writer, almost the thought processes that got them to the way they write.