I am seriously thinking about entering this little enterprise.

Why? Well, since about the beginning of this year I have been regularly keeping a handwritten journal. I'm very serious about it. 3 pages a day first thing in the morning. Handwitten. Longform. No editing, just writing out anything that comes in my head. If nothing comes into my head, I write that I can't think of anything to write about. (Usually something pops in my head by the time I've written this.) Just straight ahead 3 pages- I can usually do it in less than 40 mins, although I am now getting it down to around 25 mins.

Now I can write faster with my hand than I can with a computer keyboard, which is a remarkable turnaround of events. Until this year, I basically gave up uncessesary handwriting as soon as I got my hands on a computer keyboard. Now I actually feel more comfortable handwriting down ideas than expressing them on a computer. Which is another surprise given how unreadable my handwriting is. In fact, over the past few months my handwriting itself has changed: now it's far more compact and (more) readable. I can look at early entries in my journal, and then more recent ones, and be amazed at how much has changed. In fact, it's now at the point where I can start to tell my moods by the style of my writing. The more in in the groove I am, the more compact and readable my writing is.(Less mistakes as well.) It's almost like I am racing to fit in the thoughts in my head onto the page as fast as I can before they disappear. (Graphologists would have a field day)

Three pages longhand in 25 mins as well. I suppose the secret here is that I simply just write from my head without editing or, even a great deal of the time, thinking. This is a crucial difference from the computer. In fact, I would consider it an advantage. Writing put on the page is permanent. Even crossed out mistakes leave a history of their own. You can't delete anything and pretend it didn't exist. (This is one reason I prefer a Filofax to a PDA, although the latter has it's own advantages, so naturally I have both.) And so, I can simply turn up at the page, spark up my pen, and write solid for 25 minutes, and have 3 pages. I have been doing this since the onset of Spring, whereas before I tried to keep a one-page-per-day diary and usually petered out after the first month, and during that time strained to even fill a page.

Now you might say: isn't there a danger that simply writing your thoughts down is going to mean you end up with three pages of verbal diarreah? Well, yes, there is that danger, but you'd be surprised how quickly you settle down to running with things that matter to you, and getting into a groove where you can express your feelings. Once you do that, it kind of organises itself as you write, and so you can write a coherent paragraph about a subject dear to you straight off the bat, undedited. In fact, the only real danger I have noticed is that one can keep going on a stream of thought, and continue adding to sentence until one pauses for breath and realises that they have written a tortuously long sentence lasting about half a page. Or the nasty feeling as one realises that the groove is winding down on a thought and they have to talk about something else.

However those are small things: the fact is, I can now handwrite 3 pages a day of my innermost thoughts and feelings, and find it easier than doing a blog on the interweb. In fact, my handwriting express a part of me that I don't normally express by way of the computer. Whenever I feel like being creative with words, my hand reaches for the pen...

So here I am seriously considering entering a wily wheeze whereby one writes a novel (technially, novella) of 50,000 words in 30 days. And you're normally expected to do it with a computer. I have officially gone mad.

And yet, if can apply the way I handwrite my journal to typing fiction on a computer, then this might be the way to do it. After all, one thing about writing 50,000 words in a month, is that

  1. I have to write fast and lean, and
  2. there's very little time for editing...

In fact, why shouldn't I be as fast on the computer as on the written page? I think this is why the concept of National Novel Writing Month appeals to me at the moment.

So don't be too surprised if you start seeing big long rambling posts (Like this one, for example.) That'll be me limbering up for the November marathon. :)

(829 words, not too bad for a start. :) )