Author: Sreelata Menon
Three little words.
How-Where-When. Three clever adverbs so fundamental to a writer’s life.
Without ‘How’ no writer can write and without ‘Where’ writing is impossible and well ‘When’ could be anytime but is necessarily dependent on mistress muse.
So ‘How’ does one write? With pencil, pen, chalk or crayon?
‘Where’ do you write? Paper, computer, back of an envelope or note-pads?
‘When’ does inspiration hit you? Wee hours of the morning or in the middle of the day?
Most of us use one or the other without a second thought. But many of us, no, all of us are now slowly dispensing with our favorite pen or pencil, our note-pads and yes the Remingtons, in favor of the cut-copy-paste culture.
The pain of scoring, rewriting and scribbling out new thoughts over old and squeezing them in, on margins and top of pages ( usually illegibly!) have given way to the painless antiseptic click of the mouse that dictates where you insert, edit or delete.
It has made life easy hasn’t it?
Yet while the computer replaces the pen and the paper and is able to wing our masterpieces such as they are to the far corners of the world the fear that it will somehow displace ‘the book’ has yet to be realized. Papyrus still holding its own against a virtual world! J.K.Rowling will surely bear testimony to that!
Scribble, scrawl, type or print?
Does it decry our status as a writer or enhance it?
Does it really matter?
Do you think anyone least of all the editor/publisher cares as long as the fair copy is neatly typed, well punctuated with grammar intact?
So nor should you ….even if you wrote standing up like Thomas Wolfe!
Ever wondered how well known writers write?
Where they write?
And yes when they write?
Is there a patented formula?
Well let’s take a peek
P.G. Wodehouse apparently pinned pages on the wall with headings and probably walked up and down filling them in!
Proust wrote in bed at night pasting bits of paper on previously written drafts
Isaac Asimov it seems just wrote in one ‘unfolding’ stretch with no revisions or rewrites or editing!
Salinger used cards with the characters and outline scribbled on them, again pinning them on the wall
And dear Jane Austin churned out her ‘Sense and Sensibility’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice’ on a tiny walnut table that could barely hold a manuscript!
Bernard Shaw wrote in a ‘writing hut’ in his back yard while Roald Dahl never moved from his chair –he had everything within reach!
Short in height, Rudyard Kipling needed blocks to raise his chair to reach the table while our modern day best seller Dan Brown of Da Vinci Code fame intersperses writing spells with hourly pushups with an hourglass sounding the cue.
Stephen King must it appears roll out x number of pages per day without fail
And we all know the Rowling rags to riches story!
The bottom line- Who cares how, where or when…so long as it sells, sells and sells!
Please Note: Chillibreeze does not endorse techniques or views mentioned in the articles here. The articles listed here are provided as reference material for writers as a support service.
Check out the complete list of our featured articles for Indian Freelance writers and editors
Related Links
Courses, Certifications and Higher level tests evaluated by experts
Writing and Editing Assessments
Expert Review of Your Writing
Related posts:
- About
- What is Your Dream Job? Snippets from Writers’ Forms – 21st May 2010
- Making It Through Hard Times
- Making it Through Hard Times: Inspiring Real-life Tales for Writers!
- Exclusive Goodies for Twitter and Facebook Followers
Comments:
{ 1 trackback }