Is this why it takes Donna Tartt 10 years to write a book?
This might be the (not-so) secret to writing a book...
I spend a great deal of time looking into the approaches of different authors to write a novel. Call it research or procrastination, I’m fascinated by the different methods taken to accomplish the mammoth task of writing a whole ass book.
Earlier this year I attended the Auckland Writers Festival, a multi-day event with an impressive line up of famed authors presenting talks and workshops on their books and their methods.
I packed my days with a rather ambitious schedule, nine events across three days including a writing workshop. At each session I furiously took notes and paid close attention to the wisdom imparted from each author including Lauren Groff, Ann Patchett and Celeste Ng to name a few.
On the practice of writing, one thing came up time and time again: many of the featured writers and other successful writers like Donna Tartt, prefer to write their books by hand.
This seemed ludicrous to me.
In this technological age we’re living in, writing a book by hand seemed archaic and slow. Why not use a computer where you can write faster and keep track of your word count? How could one hold oneself accountable to hit a deadline when you have no idea how far you’ve come and how much further you have to go?
When I put this to Jerry Pinto during the writing workshop he hosted, he had this to say:
“When I write on a computer I might write three times as much but I make one third the sense.”
I still didn’t get it. At the time I had been working on a manuscript using Scrivener to write, and a detailed Notion template to track my progress and outline the book.
Every day I would share my current word count on my Instagram Stories in an effort to publicly hold myself accountable to my self-imposed daily target of hitting 500 words.
I thought I had the whole book-writing thing dialled in and I’d be just a few short months away from completing the first draft.
The thing is though, despite having the technical approach “down,” I actually kinda hated the story I was working on. I started writing it because I thought it was the story I SHOULD write. After running a true crime YouTube channel for a few years, it made sense to direct all that awful knowledge into something else in the hope it might make it worthwhile. I began writing a crime/thriller that on the surface had the makings of a riveting story, but despite showing up every day for my 500 words, I just couldn’t make myself care about it.
And then, as some of you might remember, it all came to a grinding halt when I discovered another author would be releasing a book with an eerily similar plot to my own. It was the final nail in the coffin for the novel I knew deep down I didn’t really want to work on anyway.
Something shifted in me after this.
Every time I would open Scrivener to start working on a new idea, I felt a strange sense of revulsion. I had begun to associate both Scrivener and Notion with the “chore” of writing, which I never wanted it to become.
So I didn’t write. At all. For months.
I felt that discomfort trickle through into other writings like here on Substack. I doubted myself and couldn’t ever seem to find a thread of an idea that led to anything meaningful, even in shorter-form content. I’d open Google Docs or the Substack Editor in the hopes that a different tool might clear the path and allow me to write again but it was no use. Every time I’d see a blank page in front of me I’d clam up and switch to Pinterest instead, scrolling for hours and hours, waiting for inspiration to strike even though I knew it never would.
Finally, in a desperate bid to find my creative spark again, I decided to try the method used by so many writers I admire. I found an empty journal and started to write. I took it with me everywhere, writing little tidbits and thoughts as they came to me, completely free from pressure or the expectation to create anything “important.”
After a week or so of doing this something strange happened. It was like the fog that had plagued my creative brain for so long slowly began to dissipate. I felt the familiar buzz of inspiration somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain like a precious tiny ember that if carefully nurtured, could set my creative mind ablaze once again.
I didn’t force it or try to turn it into a huge creative endeavour like my ADHD mind is wont to do. I just wrote little bits and pieces when I felt like it, letting it happen and observing where it took me.
And then I had a new story idea. My mind had been like a depleted, dry and trodden garden bed with little to no hope of anything growing let alone thriving, and this idea was like a fresh little seedling breaking through the cracked, impossible surface, exciting and inspiring me and giving me hope that maybe I could be onto something.
As I journaled on it and began to explore it on the page, the story began to grow clearer in my mind.
I thought about moving to Scrivener to write it and Notion to track my progress, but my gut told me that was the wrong thing to do. There’s something about writing by hand in a journal that feels somehow more special, more sacred. I finally understood what all these authors were talking about when they said they prefer to write first by hand.
It’s hard to explain the freedom that comes from using only paper and pen, but here are a few things I’ve experienced since switching to this form of drafting:
When you write by hand, you’re free to write in whatever order you want. I know that strictly speaking, you can do this digitally anyway, but personally I always find myself writing in a linear fashion when I use my laptop. In my journal, I write whatever comes to mind whether it’s the end of the story or midway through. There are no rules!
I don’t self-edit. I never go back to read what I’ve written previously in my journal, whereas on my laptop I’m likely to procrastinate by going back over past passages and editing or rearranging.
There is something so liberating about pen and paper. I find the ideas seem to flow so much more freely. It’s true that I definitely don’t write as quickly as I would on my laptop, but the quality of the ideas that I DO write is so much higher.
I like that I can bring my notebook with me everywhere, including into my yoga classes. Personally I always have my best ideas and breakthroughs as I’m lying in Savasana, being able to bring my notebook into the room with me means I can jot down these thoughts as I’m still on my mat before they have the chance to escape my brain.
I can jump around from idea to idea and it doesn’t matter if it “messes up” my draft or isn’t in the right place. My journal is filled with different story ideas that might come to me as I’m in the middle of finishing a thought about another.
I have no idea what my current word count is and I know that I will eventually have to transfer it all onto the computer for revisions and future drafts, but for now, I want to keep it close and personal for as long a possible. I’m not ready to share this story with the world yet.
If you’re the type who likes strict routine and accountability, this approach might actually be good for you. I think it helps to be free from the shackles of our minds and allow our creativity to just be. Maybe this is the point of the Artist’s Way and Morning Pages, idk. Maybe that’s a good place to start if you’re interested in the practice.
Writing by hand does feel a bit like writing blindly and there is definitely an adjustment period switching from writing on a laptop to writing in a journal.
However, once you pass the precipice, it’s magical.
I remember attempting to write a novel or two when I was a teenager on those big notebooks I got for school. I’ve never tried anything of that sort since then (I agree that it seem pretty scary to write blindly!), but I always, always always always write my ideas with pen and paper. They exist better that way, I think. There’s something that just feels wrong about writing them on my computer, and even worse on my phone.
Anyway, all of that just to say I loved this! Good luck with your new project :)