A Quote by Neil Gaiman

I love writing in longhand. Writing in longhand, I think, is a marvelous thing to do for a writer these days. If you have a notebook and a nice pen you can go off somewhere, you can write that's solar powered. You can drop it or get it wet and pretty much all of your work will continue to be there. If you suddenly decide to look up a word or check a reference you will not look up four hours later, blinking, finding yourself somehow in the middle of an Ebay auction you never had any plans to be part of.
My writing routine is: get son off to school and sit down at 8 A.M. I read what I wrote the day before, and then write longhand, into a notebook. I prefer paper and pen because it feels closer to my brain.
I don't have any particular rituals, I sometimes like to write in longhand when I'm searching for ideas but I do the vast majority by typing, I can't always keep up with my thoughts longhand. I'm not a coffee shop writer because I feel obliged to order more coffee and then I end up over-caffeinated.
If I'm writing a novel, I'll probably get up in the morning, do email, perhaps blog, deal with emergencies, and then be off novel-writing around 1.00pm and stop around 6.00pm. And I'll be writing in longhand, a safe distance from my computer. If I'm not writing a novel, there is no schedule, and scripts and introductions and whatnot can find themselves being written at any time and on anything.
I write my novels longhand. I love the feeling of writing; I love to see pen on paper. It feels more creative than typing, and it's a more visual process for me - I can picture the entire scene in my head and am merely writing what I see.
Curiously, the balance seems to come when writing is woven into every aspect of my life, like eating or exercising - one flows constantly into the next: I'll wake up and have coffee, read the news, then write a letter or two (always in longhand), then go teach, and after teaching write a bit in a journal - dreams, what I had for breakfast and lunch and why I had it, what's on the iPod, sexual habits, etc. - then read a bit, then work on a real bit of writing...you get the idea.
I think the first thing - if you want to be a writer - the first thing you need to do is write. Which sounds like an obvious piece of advice. But so many people have this feeling they want to be a writer and they love to read but they don't actually write very much. The main part of being a writer, though, is being profoundly alone for hours on end, uninterrupted by email or friends or children or romantic partners and really sinking into the work and writing. That's how I write. That's how writing gets done.
I am violently untidy. My desk is overcrowded. I write my first drafts in longhand in a long notebook using a plastic throwaway fountain pen. Then I work on a word processor using a different desk and a different room.
Ever since high school I've been writing in a spiral notebook, in pencil. Everything looks too polished on a computer when you start writing, and I can't really see it. I feel like the words are much more naked in pencil, on a notebook. I feel that my brain works differently, and words come out differently, if I have a pencil in my hand, rather than if I have a keyboard. I tend to add more in the margins. I tend to elongate the sentences as I'm writing and editing, and there is just something about the feeling of writing longhand that I really love.
Four hours of makeup, and then an hour to take it off. It's tiring. I go in, I get picked up at two-thirty in the morning, I get there at three. I wait four hours, go through it, ready to work at seven, work all day long for twelve hours, and get it taken off for an hours, go home and go to sleep, and do the same thing again.
I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.
While writing is a mystical process, it's also work. If you show up to work five days in a row, nobody's going to pat you on the back - everyone does that. Well, do that with your writing. Just show up. Be there for it. When you get an idea, write it down somewhere and then be a steward of that idea.
I write longhand; I make changes longhand, and I have an assistant who types it up. She lives 70 yards away. Every afternoon, I have a case I leave out on the porch, and she brings it back the next morning.
You see, writing down your meanderings gets something started deep in the recesses of your brain. That distant part of your mind knows that you want to write stories or poems or plays and not endless jabber, and it will get to work. It may take a while. You may have to write this stuff for hours or days or weeks, but eventually that subterranean part of your brain will come through and begin to send you ideas.
When it comes to actually writing the book/story, I work on a computer. I wish I could write longhand, but I can't.
I think I became a writer because I used to write letters to my friends, and I used to love writing them. I loved the idea that you can put marks on a page and send it off, and two days later, someone laughs somewhere else in the world.
Lady, lady, never start Conversation toward your heart; Keep your pretty words serene; Never murmur what you mean. Show yourself, by word and look, Swift and shallow as a brook. Be as cool and quick to go As a drop of April snow; Be as delicate and gay As a cherry flower in May. Lady, lady, never speak Of the tears that burn your cheek- She will never win him, whose Words had shown she feared to lose. Be you wise and never sad, You will get your lovely lad. Never serious be, nor true, And your wish will come to you- And if that makes you happy, kid, You'll be the first it ever did.
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