Who on earth handwrites a novel these days?

(handwriting benefits, plus a progress report where I drop titles for the next two novels!)

I mean, it if it was good enough for Jane Austen, shouldn’t it be good enough for me?

(Note: this first GIF takes a minute to load)

I started writing before the advent of the home computer (I know, I am THAT old). My first stories were handwritten into composition books. When we got a VIC20, I typed one of them and printed it out (alas, lost to time as the ink totally faded).

Yes, that means I’ve handwritten novels before.

The novel that became my first published Regency romance was typed up on an electric typewriter one summer.

I remember it was summer because I was still living at home and we all basically lived in the one air-conditioned room. I typed while everyone else watched cricket.

I have no idea what this means. They’re out? LBW? It’s a mystery.

Since then I have typed every book until I was done with publishing — or it was done with me. (Need to catch up on that story? See below.)

I Gave Up My Writing Career: What Am I Doing Here??

When writing decided to become a part of my life again, the only way I could accept it into my days was to make it all about play. If I was going to type it into a computer, it would feel too much like work.

Thus, I chose writing the way I wrote as a child.

By hand.

Above all else, this was not going to be work.

Work!

What I didn’t think about, even as I edited the book by hand (with lots of plastic tabs to link the bigger edits/rewrites) … was that I would have to write it all by hand again to create the mixed media journal with its hidden writing places.

As well as type it up for publication.

I made the mistake of giving myself a deadline of January 2024.

Which I decided not to meet, but that’s the good thing about setting your own deadlines, you can change them and nobody will care!

I chose to bring some fun back instead because honestly, it’s been more than a bit like work now, especially the rewriting into teeny tiny handwriting, way smaller than my usual style.

It got to the point where I bribed myself with a Cadbury’s chocolate Advent calendar to get through it all.

One page transcribed == one choccy

leanneshawler

A post shared by @leanneshawler

There are benefits to writing a novel by hand.

1. Your sh$tty first draft is down in ink. No deleting, no backspacing. (I did strike through text, even whole pages, but it is still all there.)

2. Typing from the edited first draft, another part of my brain kicked into action. I caught the lazy writing the handwritten editing pass missed and tightened up the prose.

3. Handwriting again from the typed text enabled me to find (hopefully all) the typos and I continued to edit as I went, tightening the text, although I do love me a good adverb.

4. I am using my stash of inks and notebooks!

Note: If I really wanted this to be work, I would also be writing down words and phrases that I overuse. But I can’t be arsed and I hope you won’t be too bothered by them.

Let’s talk Book Progress:

A Grail for Eidothea (book one):

• completely typed and edited

• mixed media journal completed

• bonus journal project about a third done (I don’t need to finish this before I launch)

• 3 entries scheduled out of 24

A Sword for Wellington (book two):

• opening scenes written

• original ASfW manuscript (a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart finalist) pillaged for text. Next step is to transfer it to a new document and get writing

• Maybe 10% written??

• 0% Mixed media journal (and yeah, I will be handwriting Eidothea’s story again, but not the new characters. Theoretically.)

• 0 entries ready to schedule obviously

A Soul for the World (book three):

• 2 scenes written

• 0% old sea dragon manuscript pillage (there’s only three chapters and I expect to rewrite whole chunks but there’s good stuff in there as a starting point)

• 0% plotted (I mean, it’s super vague, floating in my head right now)

• 0% mixed media journal

• 0 entries ready to schedule, obvi

Untitled Book 4 (prequel set in post-Roman Britain)

• won’t stop monopolising my brain space and is threatening to become the third book instead

• 5% plotted

• 0% pillage of a bunch of chapters from an old manuscript

Possible novella (also a prequel, but set during the 1780s-90s)

• just the idea and it will keep

I put progress notes like this into the Chat, but you need an account to access them. Sign up using email you’ve used to subscribe to this publication and a password!

Staying Fictional

I am also seriously considering staying in character once “A Grail for Eidothea” is done and I know me, I wanna talk about the Behind the Scenes stuff, share some historical tidbits I’ve borrowed for writing these books and moan about having to write the whole thing by hand. Twice.

I plan to be authorial (including links to my historical research) over in the Chat too.

Woo hoo! 75 subscribers!

Look, the numbers shouldn’t matter. And yay for all 75 of you! It would be kind of cool to reach 100 subscribers before we launch on February 3. You can help by:

Do you, or have you ever written fiction by hand? What’s your process if that’s the case? Let me know in the comments!