{"id":7837,"date":"2018-03-11T16:52:31","date_gmt":"2018-03-11T16:52:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/?p=7837"},"modified":"2025-03-02T18:40:01","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T18:40:01","slug":"my-prodigiously-convoluted-yet-miraculously-productive-low-tech-writing-process-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/my-prodigiously-convoluted-yet-miraculously-productive-low-tech-writing-process-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"My Prodigiously Convoluted Yet Miraculously Productive Low-Tech Writing Process \u2014 Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writ\u00ading this blog entry on my lat\u00adest piece of low-tech equip\u00adment, an Olivet\u00adti Let\u00adtera 32 type\u00adwriter. All told, I now have six type\u00adwrit\u00aders:<\/p>\n

\u2022 The Let\u00adtera 32<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2022 A Roy\u00adal Qui\u00adet Deluxe<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2022 An Olympia SM9 Deluxe<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2022 An Her\u00adm\u00e8s 3000<\/strong> (Her\u00admes, son of Zeus and Maia, is the mes\u00adsen\u00adger of the gods, and the god of mer\u00adchants, thieves, and ora\u00adto\u00adry. By the way, fel\u00adlow type\u00adwriter folks, it\u2019s pro\u00adnounced \u201cair-MEZ\u201d not \u201cHER-mees.\u201d)<\/p>\n

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\u2022 An Olympia SG\u20113<\/strong><\/p>\n

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and<\/p>\n

\u2022 An IBM Selec\u00adtric III<\/strong>. (Although at times a gor\u00adgeous, high-main\u00adte\u00adnance bitch who reminds me of an old girl\u00adfriend from my ear\u00adly twen\u00adties, she is nonethe\u00adless the pin\u00adna\u00adcle of electro\u00admechan\u00adi\u00adcal engi\u00adneer\u00ading.)<\/p>\n

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Typ\u00adi\u00adcal\u00adly, when\u00adev\u00ader I start a new piece of work\u2014be it a nov\u00adel, a sto\u00adry or even a blog entry\u2014I write the first draft either on one of my type\u00adwrit\u00aders, or in long\u00adhand in pen or pen\u00adcil. My three pre\u00adferred pens are 1. my Mont\u00adBlanc 4810<\/a>, 2. the Pilot Var\u00adsi\u00adty dis\u00adpos\u00adable foun\u00adtain pen, and 3. the Pilot Pre\u00adcise V7 RT.<\/p>\n

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As far as pen\u00adcils are con\u00adcerned, I\u2019ve worked with at least 50 dif\u00adfer\u00adent brands and styles, and I\u2019ve found these three to be the best: 1. the Palomi\u00adno Black\u00adwing 602, 2. the Palomi\u00adno Cal\u00adi\u00adfor\u00adnia Repub\u00adlic, and 3. the Mon\u00adgol #2. Hon\u00ador\u00adable men\u00adtions go to the Pilot G\u20112 pen (black) and the Mira\u00addo Black War\u00adrior #2 pen\u00adcil.<\/p>\n

Okay, so I write a first draft of my work in long\u00adhand or, as I\u2019m doing now, on one of my type\u00adwrit\u00aders. When the first draft is fin\u00adished, I make a pho\u00adto\u00adcopy of it, store the copy in the trunk of my car, and the orig\u00adi\u00adnal in a draw\u00ader. I then move on to some\u00adthing new.<\/p>\n

The Draw\u00ader Method<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was in col\u00adlege, one of my phi\u00adlos\u00ado\u00adphy pro\u00adfes\u00adsors intro\u00adduced me to a step I could inte\u00adgrate into my writ\u00ading process that would enable me to gain some dis\u00adtance from what I\u2019d writ\u00adten and see ways to improve a piece of writ\u00ading when I returned to it. I\u2019ve been using this idea for 25 years, and it\u2019s nev\u00ader failed me.<\/p>\n

When I fin\u00adish the first draft of a piece of writ\u00ading, I box it up, put it in a draw\u00ader and for\u00adget about it for a while. Depend\u00ading on the length and com\u00adplex\u00adi\u00adty of the work, \u201ca while\u201d can range any\u00adwhere from a cou\u00adple of hours to sev\u00ader\u00adal months or years. The key is to lit\u00ader\u00adal\u00adly put the work in a draw\u00ader, close the draw\u00ader and for\u00adget about it. Even though the writ\u00ading is out of your purview, your sub\u00adcon\u00adscious will con\u00adtin\u00adue to think about it, solv\u00ading prob\u00adlems it knows are there.<\/p>\n

Also, by leav\u00ading the writ\u00ading alone in the dark of a draw\u00ader (or in a box in the clos\u00adet, if the draft is 1,600 pages long, like my lat\u00adest nov\u00adel), a mys\u00adte\u00adri\u00adous ger\u00admi\u00adna\u00adtion process occurs, such that when you return to the work, pas\u00adsages that you thought were dead ends now sprout green ten\u00addrils.<\/p>\n

Obvi\u00adous\u00adly I\u2019m not the first writer to put work away for a while, in order to return to it with a refreshed per\u00adspec\u00adtive. Mark Twain, for exam\u00adple, kept pigeon\u00adholes in the writ\u00ading room of his Hart\u00adford, CT house. When\u00adev\u00ader he was hope\u00adless\u00adly stalled on a book or sto\u00adry, he would tuck the man\u00adu\u00adscript in one of the pigeon\u00adholes to allow \u201cthe well to fill up again,\u201d and pull down anoth\u00ader man\u00adu\u00adscript and begin work\u00ading on that one again.<\/p>\n

The Blue Pen<\/strong><\/p>\n

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So, my work has lain in a draw\u00ader for a while. For me, \u201ca while\u201d is usu\u00adal\u00adly a few months. When I fin\u00adish the first draft of some\u00adthing else and go to put it in a draw\u00ader or the clos\u00adet, I\u2019ll look at the oth\u00ader books or sto\u00adries already in there and ask myself if I think they\u2019ve lain dor\u00admant long enough. (Right now, for exam\u00adple, I have the 1st<\/sup> or 2nd<\/sup> drafts of four books and a dozen sto\u00adries in draw\u00aders or my clos\u00adet.)<\/p>\n

Some\u00adtimes I\u2019ll read the first sen\u00adtence or the first page to see if it catch\u00ades my inter\u00adest or sur\u00adpris\u00ades me in some way. The best sign that the work is ready to come out of the draw\u00ader (or the clos\u00adet; ha, ha) is this: I start read\u00ading it and, because enough time has passed that I\u2019ve for\u00adgot\u00adten the details, I get swept up in the sto\u00adry. I might even find myself smil\u00ading or laugh\u00ading, etc. If this hap\u00adpens, I\u2019ll take the book\/story\/essay out of the draw\u00ader and read it straight through. The only nota\u00adtions I\u2019ll make on the man\u00adu\u00adscript dur\u00ading this read are \u201c!\u201d to denote sec\u00adtions I real\u00adly like, or \u201czzzz\u201d in places where things bog down. The \u201czzzz\u201d chap\u00adters, pas\u00adsages or sen\u00adtences become can\u00addi\u00addates for cuts dur\u00ading the next read.<\/p>\n

At this point, it\u2019s time for a blue-pen read. I read the entire thing again, but much more slow\u00adly, mak\u00ading marks in the text and mar\u00adgins with a blue Pilot Pre\u00adcise V5 pen. Many of these marks are inser\u00adtions or reword\u00adings of the text on the page. The marked-up man\u00adu\u00adscript then goes back into a draw\u00ader to \u201crecu\u00adper\u00adate\u201d from the trau\u00adma of revi\u00adsion.<\/p>\n

Typ\u00ading It Into a Word Proces\u00adsor<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I take out the marked-up man\u00adu\u00adscript again (usu\u00adal\u00adly with\u00adin a cou\u00adple weeks of edits), it\u2019s time to type the revised text into a word proces\u00adsor. For many years, this meant I would fire up Microsoft Word and type the marked-up man\u00adu\u00adscript into the com\u00adput\u00ader. How\u00adev\u00ader, after bet\u00adter than two decades of doing it this way, I dis\u00adcov\u00adered that Word and the computer\u2019s inter\u00adnet con\u00adnec\u00adtiv\u00adi\u00adty were too dis\u00adtract\u00ading.<\/p>\n

Rec\u00adog\u00adniz\u00ading this, four years ago I set up a \u201cWrit\u00ading Only\u201d account on my Mac\u00adBook Air (with the inter\u00adnet dis\u00adabled) and would type into MS Word that way. But even this I found dis\u00adtract\u00ading; Microsoft Word, with its end\u00adless vari\u00adeties of fonts, screen lay\u00adouts, and those annoy\u00ading green or red squig\u00adgly lines that appear under words and sen\u00adtences, con\u00adstant\u00adly invei\u00adgled me to play with Word\u2019s many \u201ctime-sav\u00ading fea\u00adtures,\u201d when all I real\u00adly need\u00aded to do at this point was get the god\u00addamned words typed in<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I decid\u00aded in Jan\u00adu\u00adary of this year to start using a ded\u00adi\u00adcat\u00aded word pro\u00adcess\u00ading tool at this stage of my writ\u00ading process.<\/p>\n

And you can read it about next week, when I\u2019ll describe this miss\u00ading link for nov\u00adel\u00adists and seri\u00adous writ\u00aders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writ\u00ading this blog entry on my lat\u00adest piece of low-tech equip\u00adment, an Olivet\u00adti Let\u00adtera 32 type\u00adwriter. All told, I now have six type\u00adwrit\u00aders: \u2022\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,3,67,22,23,7,76,68,10,26,270,13,14,233,15],"tags":[94,402,403,400,404,133,96,95,360,398,397,155,405,406,395,349,156,399,396,401,381,302,221,93,355,352,144],"class_list":["post-7837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-computersandsoftware","category-craft","category-index-cards","category-pencils","category-pens","category-personal","category-process","category-rewriting","category-technologyandinternet","category-typewriters","category-workspace","category-writers","category-writingexperiences","category-writing-life","category-writingtools","tag-chris-orcutt","tag-hermes","tag-hermes-3000","tag-ibm-selectric-iii","tag-montblanc-4810","tag-mysteries","tag-novelist","tag-novels-2","tag-olivetti-lettera-32","tag-olympia","tag-olympia-sm9","tag-orcutt","tag-palomino","tag-palomino-blackwing-602","tag-pencil","tag-pencils","tag-process","tag-royal","tag-royal-quiet-deluxe","tag-selectric","tag-typewriters","tag-writer","tag-writers-life","tag-writing","tag-writing-life","tag-writing-memoir","tag-writing-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7837"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9163,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7837\/revisions\/9163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}