Authors Electric

Me typing wistfully at the   American Writers Museum I featured here last September Raise your hand if you've ever used a typewriter. Wiggle your fingers if you made a living with one. Thumbs up if you still own one. Our numbers diminish. It's safe to say that most people alive today never as much as pecked at a mechanical keyboard. Despite this, a die hard few collect and still write with them, and some even dream of a typewriter comeback, though it's debatable whether typewriters ever really left us in the way of quills to become antiques. This isn't about technology or trends, however. It's about first love, and bonding with a writing machine in a way that one never could with a computer, even with an hypothetical, pretty robot. I got my first typewriter at the callous and tender age of 15 - a voluptuous -deco, 1950s, manual Smith Corona "Silent" portable (meaning it weighed about as much as seven or eight Powerbooks.) I inherited it when ...

It's quite unusual for me to write anything by hand, not least because of the difficulties in deciphering it afterwards. But I do have a series of writing notebooks, which I tend to use for planning novels, although I'm doing well if a plan exceeds a page or so, for editing notes and for making monthly and annual plans, each more flexible than the preceding one. For instance, I see my plan for September had 6 items in it, of which I only managed to achieve one. It was when I found my planning notebook and reached for a pen to start a new page for October, which I hope will be more organised than September, although I seriously doubt it, that I realised there were no pens on the table I use as my writing desk, in the corner of the conservatory. I read once upon a time in a book about de-cluttering - despite my failure to de-clutter, I often try to come to terms with it in the only way I know how, which is to understand it in theory - that if you get hold of lovely container...

As a writer I have been thinking about the different ways in which we write. Readers often think that writers fall into two camps, those who use a keyboard and those who write by hand. Indeed many writers would, themselves, say they are one or the other. Is this in fact true, and if true, is it always the best way? I am knee deep in editing at the moment and this entails sitting at a computer and going through the entire novel. I am sure most writers will agree, that it can be long and tiring work. Still, it is one of the most crucial aspects of writing a book. However, editing can, and should, be done in different ways. Once I have finished the edits on my computer, I will print the book out and will then go through it on paper. I will move to a completely different area of the house. Using another medium, and in a new place, can bring a fresh approach to the editing process. I will be wielding my pen and highlighting any areas which need to be changed or culled.  One...