Elmore Leonard

My AARP magazine arrived today, and I read an article about Elmore Leonard's writing habits. He said he, gasp, writes everything in longhand! OMG, I'd still be on my first novel if I did that.

I started out on a typewriter and the pages looked like something I wouldn't even show my cat. Seldom was there a clean sentence as I'm always editing as I go. Then I bought one of those word processors and thought I was in heaven. A few years later, I WAS in heaven with a computer, one of those early Macs. Oh, how I loved that thing. I could write, and with the cut and paste, I could edit to my heart's desire and it looked so nice and clean. I was inspired.

But write longhand? I had a romance-writer friend who always started out with a pen and notebook. She loved to write in that notebook, then, when she got it how she wanted, she transferred it to the computer. I told her the wonderful thing about a computer was the ease in editing, but she preferred her notebook. Whatever floats your boat is my motto, so I left her alone.

I want to write, but I want comfort and ease, just like camping. I love to camp - as long as I have an indoor bathroom. Give me a camping trailer or a small motor home and I'm happy. Give me a good computer with a cut and paste and I'm happy.

How about you? What are your writing habits?

I like to write stories in longhand but it takes so long! My hand can't keep up with my thoughts. I have a laptop now (just got it four years ago) and I do all my writing on it. Like you, Brenda, I love the cut/paste feature and being able to edit as I go. It's hard to imagine writing a novel on a typewriter.

That reminds me of the movie "Misery," where Kathy Bates' character makes an author burn the manuscript he's spent months writing on a typewriter. I cringe just thinking about it.

Funny thing about typewriters, though, is that when I took typing in high school one of the skills we needed to learn was how to correct something we had typed by using white out and then reinserting the paper back into the typewriter, lining up the text where the typewriter keys should hit, and then typing over the error. I made a lot of errors, so I got a lot of practice! Ha!

I also make sure to back-up my files. I'd hate to lose a story because of a computer glitch.

I usually keep a separate file for notes, lines I want my characters to say at some point, and any other side notes or outlines that I want to follow.

I remember using white out, Merri, and trying to line up the letters again. I'm so glad of modern technology, as far as computers are concerned.

I wrote BEARKILLER in long hand on legal pads, then typed it and sent it to my sister, a proof reader for a newspaper in Florida, who retyped it, before I got my first word processor and transposed it again. Now it's all on the computer. I keep my WIP on a flash drive so I can work at anyone of the three I have. A desktop in my home office upstairs, my laptop downstairs and my traveling laptop. I rewrite constantly, every time I go back to a WIP, I re-read to the point I stopped working on it and make rewrites along the way.

Keeping your wip on a flash drive is a great idea, Don. I save mine each day to a file, but a flash drive is even better.

I'm curious. How long did it take you to write the entire story in long hand?

Brenda,

It took me the better part of a year.

I use to write everything longhand, pencil and paper. Then I bought a Selectric typewriter and used that to death, literally, it died! I then got hold of a word processor but hated it, and tried a friends old laptop. I finally bought my own and have never looked back. I am on my second laptrop, it has all the bells and whistles but unfortunately none have migrated into my brain, so super intelligent computer, dumb as a stump operator. I am not a technical woman. I have never cut or pasted, have no clue and pictures, forget that. I can't do pictures to save my soul. SIGH!!!

Say there Don, I really like your feathers, oh big chief!!!

Chatty, you just have to learn. You'll be amazed at what all you can do.

My son sent his old Mac in 1992, and I've loved computers ever since. Only problem was, he forgot the instructions, so you should've seen me. I didn't know a thing about computers, and no one else, in the small town where I was living, did either. But I played and experimented, gave up and sent for a book like Mac for dummies, but that hadn't even been invented yet. So I bought one of those huge instruction books and didn't understand the instructions. It would say something about the window, and to me, a window was in my house and made of glass. Oh, what I time I had. But little by little, I started learning.

A few months later, I had painsakenly transferred my wip to the computer from the word processor, and one day my son called and asked how I was doing. I told him I was retyping my wip because I'd learned publishers preferred Times New Roman or Courier. I'd entered it with Helvetica or some such font. He was silent for the longest moment, then he started laughing. And, I could hear the darling telling his friends at work about his mom retyping an entire novel because she wanted to change fonts. I didn't get the joke, and when he finally quite laughing, he explained how I could change the entire novel with just a few key strokes. I was too thrilled with the info to hang up on him.

So that's about how it went, but I learned to do quite a lot on the computer and since those early years, I've had several desktops, then changed to iBooks. Love them.

Chatty, you need to get one of those books for dummies. Not only is it so simple to cut and paste, but I can delete entire sections, move them somewhere else, and if I don't like it, can move them back. You'll find an entire new world. I edit using the Word Track feature, which allows me to correct something, yet the client can see his original work alongside my edits and with a click of the button can accept or reject the change. Sometimes my suggestions will spark an idea in the client and they rewrite it themselves. The point is, they can see theirs and mine together. It's wonderful.

And Don, I take almost a year to complete a novel, and that's with the ease of a computer. But I write and edit, write and edit, then when I have it all down, I go back and edit more. As someone said, I'd edit, if I could, even after it's published.

Love the new avatar, but I miss seeing faces. JoElle switched to a photo and now you. I wish you'd post the one in your buckskins. That one's awesome.

I write everything long-hand. I type 90 words a minute which would help. However, I always want to correct as I type and that stops the creative flow. I am always backspacing to correct spelling, put in correct punctuation, or something. Then I lose my thought process. I find that as I am writing long-hand, if I correct as I go I don't lose that creativity.

I then type it onto my Mac. This helps me with the editing as I can not only catch punctuation and grammar mistakes, I am reading it as I go and check the flow of what I have written. I then cut and paste sentences, paragraphs, etc. where I want them. I edit from the typed version.

Then I send the document to someone else to read and see what mistakes they catch. There are several someones that I send my manuscript to critique and edit. That is just the beginning. But...initially I write long-hand.

When contacted by writers as to my method of editing, I tell them to type with as few errors as possible but if this is too time consuming, just type! Get their thoughts down on paper. They are going to be paying for an edit anyways so their spelling and typo's will be corrected in red so they can go back and fix and learn from them...

The story, characters and events are the meat of the book. The veges and desert of particulars can be added after the chef's assistant prepares them.

I tend to write in sections or scenes. I pretty much just write, write, write, then go back and proof and edit. When I'm done with a section, I move on. After I've finished the book, then I print it off and grab my purple pen and mark it all up, make the changes and print it again. Then I read it again. Words on a screen are much harder for me to edit. They look and feel different than words on a page.

We're all different, aren't we? Even so, we manage to get words on paper and eventually to a book for others to enjoy - at least we hope they enjoy it.

In my years of editing, I've seen about every genre, every style, from first person to third, to a single POV to multiple PsOV. Writers are wonderful, creative people, just like draw and/or paint artists. As long as we create something to contribute to the world, we're going good.

I used to write my books in long hand. When I was eleven or thereabouts, I hardly knew what a computer was, or what it could really do. Worse still, things like typewriters were inaccessible.

I do not really know how i used to manage, but I would buy a note book and start writing till I filled up the book! Intriguingly, I never cared for errors. I just wrote for fun. I dreamt of creating a library full of my books. As I wrote the book, I would even draw illustrations. After all is said and done, I would even design a cover for the book.

These little books often went missing because I would lend them to friends, and of course, there are always the bad kind who never want to return them.

Well, now things have changed. My dad got me a computer in 2006, and I learnt how to type.

Now I type away like mad. I am amazed at how I can practically do everything on computer. Even creating illustrations is fun! For example, the cover for the book I am working on 'School Trouble' i designed on computer. First, I drew the picture on paper, scanned it, then filled in the color using photoshop. It's awesome!

Well, for me, the whole point is never to stop writing. When my computer is down, I just pick up my pen and notebook and scribble away. However, I do find it cumbersome because I have to type it out again.

Talk about ease of editing. The computer makes it a breeze! That's one thing I have always appreciated.

I am the sort who prefers not to plan to the letter. When I start a story, I prefer not to know how exactly it will be. I just let my imagination carry me away, and the results are amazing.

Yep, writing is fun however you decide to go about it!

The first thing I ever write was published in a magazine of 250,000 circlation. It was written in longhand and submitted in longhand. After I got my first job writing a column for a newspaper (1970 something), I bought a little electric typewriter, but, even though I knew how to type, I wrote the first draft in longhand first, mainly because I was comfortable doing it that way, but also because I realized early on that everything gets a little better with subquent rewrites.
Once in a great while I'll be out camping or something and write the first draft of something, but I'd much rather be at the computer. I've typed so many words over the years that I just think words and they happen through my fingers without any thought of which ones to move. I love computers and email. It has made freelancing at least 10 times easier and faster.