100% Unguaranteed Anti-Block #3

Hand-writing

Personally, I find handwriting to be quite magical.

Typing makes editing easy. Most of us are good at editing. Way better than we are at writing. So we favour the strong editing muscle, making it stronger, and neglect the writing muscle, making it weaker still.

Handwriting helps level the playing field. It makes editing a bit harder. Messier. Which encourages you to keep writing, which is what you really need to do.

Its easier to type a lie than it is to write it. No really, I mean that. Just like its easier to tell a lie dressed in a suit and positioned behind a desk than it is to do so in your favorite jeans while walking the dog in the park on Sunday morning. True things, the things you really want to write, are more likely to flow from your pen than a keyboard.

Writing, for many of us, is just plain old scary. This not just because of all those would-be editors out there (although they're also part of the problem). Its because we're all scared of going deep inside and coming up with nothing.

I handwrote the first 20,000 words or so of my longest novel. This also means its the only one of my three novels that had a true "first draft," because the manuscript had to be transcribed, a job which was surprisingly worthwhile.

I think its no accident that this is also the novel on which I've made the most progress. If you're not a pen addict already, why not try this for the early stages of your next idea? Could it hurt?

Added bonus: its fun to sit among the netbooks in Starbucks, and be the only one with a notebook - a real one, I mean. Deliciously Luddite. And you never have to worry about the batteries running out.