So, after sleeping all day yesterday instead of going to Yule Feast, I’m feeling slightly better today and my fever is mostly gone. Yay! 🙂 So, however, is my voice: I can’t even croak!
I’ve been doing a bit more reading for my research paper, but mostly I’m thinking about what I want to say in it, and how. I’ve got my title and opening paragraph down on Word. Now it’s time for paper and pen, to do an outline and start writing a first draft.
For some reason, I find I can’t approach a scholarly paper such as this on my laptop for the first draft. Bizarre, huh? Maybe it’s because I’m a dinosaur. 😉 It also could be a hangover habit from my days practicing law, doing long briefs for appeals (usually at least 30 pages, often more). I almost always did those first drafts by hand.
By the way, the image above is from a 14th century manuscript of Njal’s Saga, which is one of the sagas I’m discussing in my paper. It was definitely done by hand!
With my paper, it just seems more organic for me to use pen and paper to start out with. And a more seamless way to organize my thoughts. But blogging is completely different: I can’t imagine doing that by hand!
How do you do your writing?
Let Us Live Like We Mean It! 
So you are now just croaking along? I miss the frogs in the backyard pond serenading me to sleep back in Penna when I was a young guy.
I remember the days writing, rewriting, editing, writing again, finding a spelling error, rewriting, more errors, rewriting…..and then just tossing the idea into the basket. Very tedious and unproductive. But now, children are not learning script in school. Could be an income idea tutoring kids how to write.
I love going straight to the computer, typing, deleting, typing again, spell check, edit, rewrite and then reading the result at least 8 times for content. Gee, much the same as before only less tedious.
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Interesting, Larry. I think you’ve made the transition to computers better than I have at this point. But after grappling with pens last night, I’m beginning to rethink the plan to do my first draft by hand.
Or this could all be an opaque exercise in procrastination! 😉
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I can understand your feelings about writing by hand versus on a laptop. It took me a long time to adapt to typing out initial thoughts and ideas. I used to tell my family that my ideas flowed down my right hand into my pen, then onto the paper. Nowadays my thoughts seem happy to go straight onto my laptop. They’re so much easier to delete, too!
Glad you’re feeling a little better … soon be back to normal. Just don’t try to sing and make your voice even worse.
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Thank you, Millie. I had to go out last night in the freezing rain on foot across campus to get yet another book for my paper. Not a great thing to do with bronchitis. I’m not feeling quite as good this morning. I think I’ll take another sleep day. My prof says I can take extra time to hand in the paper! Will it ever end? LOL 🙂
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Well, at least you have the option to hand your paper in later, if need be. That’s a comforting thought, if you’re feeling too unwell to focus on it. But I can imagine how you really it want all done and dusted.
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Oh, man, I will be SO glad when it is done! Meanwhile, I just popped out of bed to go get a piece of wood cut the right size to be my drawing board for the portrait of my niece that is due to be given to her mother on the 27th. There’s never enough time! LOL
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Oh Timi, you have such a lot on your plate, and you are evidently very bad at following doctors’ orders! Get well, first: drawing board later. (Mind you, I’m speaking without knowing the timescale and other details of the portrait of your niece.) Time is always the enemy.
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Yes, when I was younger I thought the old maxim was true that you either had time or money. Now that I’m older, I’ve discovered it’s eminently possibly, if not probable, to have neither! 😛
Now, after having taped my first sheet of new BIG mixed media paper to my new drawing board, fresh-cut at the lumber store and sanded here at home by me, and after sketching a few tentative lines, I must go back to that infernal paper! Will it never end??? 🙂
As you can see, I would never make a novelist, if I even had the imagination, which I don’t! I will leave such creative endeavors to you, especially since you acquit yourself so well at them! 🙂
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I’m sure your writing is excellent, Timi, and you could probably write a very good non fiction book or two. You have a wealth of knowledge to draw upon. As for the end of your paper … you’ll get there, very soon. Then you’ll be very proud of yourself.
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Thank you, Millie, for the vote of confidence. Right now I’m so incredibly ill that I simply must put off all thoughts of doing the paper, the portrait, or anything other than just getting better healthwise. That’s enough on my plate right now! 🙂
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For us a bit of both.
When we are on the road, we like to pen entries into a little book. Making references to it later when we transcribe digitally. For us it beats staring at the screen (with all that blu ray) trying to write. At least as we pen the book we can be staring at the wide yonder! Better for the eyes too we think.
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Yes, I can definitely see the point of using a little book and pen while traveling. As you point out, I agree that it’s important to actually look at the places you go. It’s an issue with photographing one’s travels, too. I want to really see these places and people instead of always mediating them through a camera lens. It’s a tricky balance since I do want the photos to commemorate my experience, but I have to actually HAVE the experience, too. Do you know what I mean?
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Absolutely! It’s a hard balance.
Perhaps the only remedy is time. Take the time to see a place and rush it!
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I write poems and an occasional idea for a project in a notebook while I’m traveling, and I transcribe everything at home. Otherwise, I work on my MacBook. Since everything I’ve ever done for a living involved typing, it’s not a skill but a reflex. What counts is getting the words out first and and worry about where else later.
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Thank you, Alan.
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If I’ve got what I want to write pretty much worked out in my head, I go straight to typing. But if I want to scope out a larger piece of writing, or a series of pieces, I often jot down some notes by hand while I’m thinking it through.
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I like your method, Denise. After struggling last night with pen and paper, I’m rethinking my plan to do a whole first draft by hand. Maybe just a loose outline with notes. Meanwhile I had to go get another book for the paper, which has contributed new insights into my topic. Great stuff, but it means having to re-frame everything!
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I can see how you managed to make yourself more poorly with all that going out in the rain.
I write by hand in an A5 notebook, then type it up. I find it quite hard to think medieval thoughts when I’m staring at a screen.
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Yes, working on a paper about medieval Iceland is also difficult to do digitally, I’m finding.
You no longer have to worry about me going out in the rain. Now we have about 4 inches of snow with more on the way…and I have to go to the doctor! 😛
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I don’t know why I laughed. I hate snow. We hardly get any here, but when we do it’s like the end of civilisation.
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The worst part is that we are trapped in an Arctic vortex, with high temps of -9 C and lows of -15 C. It is beyond brrrr–and made my lungs ache so badly! OK, enough whining, as we Yanks say. 😛
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That’s cold. It’s very warm here in comparison.
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Yes, it’s WAY TOO cold for me!
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I also love to do brainstorming by hand, rather than on the key board. I also keep a journal and just wouldn’t feel the same if I had to type it. There’s something about the transfer of thoughts through the long arm into grapho-motor activity that is simply not the same. I’ll always love writing by hand and am aghast by the current discussion that young kids should no longer be taught cursive writing.
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Amazingly neither of my sons, who are now 34 and 32, can write cursive! When they have to sign their names un-electronically, which is becoming more and more rare, their signatures are like printing that is just a tiny bit connected! 😛
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