This November, instead of my usual drafting of a novel, I tried writing short stories with pen and paper. I was getting into fountain pens for the first time, and this felt like a good chance to use mine and have a lower-stress month than usual.
Ever since, I’ve been mulling over the experience.
a little background: writing month
Since I haven’t mentioned it on this blog, I want to take a moment to introduce Writing Month, my latest project release. In the wake of a statement by NaNoWriMo on Artificial Intelligence—which, by the way, is possibly the single worst take I’ve ever seen on the topic—people were leaving the platform, many of them deciding they wouldn’t even be doing any writing challenges this November.
Now, I’ve wanted to make a NaNoWriMo alternative for years, but never expected it to actually be successful with anyone except myself. This, however, was a chance to make something that would help people who were discouraged still have a community outlet for their writing.
Things were very rushed, but I did manage to put out a barebones site for writers by November. There are a number of design decisions I’m proud of, but one of the best was making it easy to choose your own goal.
With Writing Month published, I started thinking about my own writing project. I knew I wouldn’t have much time to write—November is normally very busy for me, and I expected I would be spending a good chunk of time fixing bugs in this newly-launched project. So, instead of my usual 50,000-word goal, I decided to try writing short stories. In particular, I set the goal of 60 pages of handwritten stories.
the results
In the end, I only finished sixteen pages, but those included a full story longer than any previous one in the series (this series of stories is a topic for another time). After a furious session typing it out, it tallied to about 2,700 words.
For context, that’s about as much as I can accomplish in a really good day of writing, on my computer. Nothing astonishing.
Still, something about the experience was different than when I’d previously written. Most of my writing sessions were at the park, outdoors in the sun, with no devices nearby to distract me. That’s something I can’t do when using an electronic device for my writing.
My conclusion at the end of the month was that this wouldn’t be something I’d do for my regular writing, but that occasional stories this way would still be a nice experience.
moving forward
What I didn’t expect was that I’d continue thinking over this experience. As unimpressive as the final wordcount was, it was actually the longest piece of fiction I’d written in months, and definitely a more interesting story than many of my other attempts had been. Writing in this slow, laborious way actually meant I spent more time while in the writing process considering the plot; I had a whole new subplot I added to the story from my initial outline that actually became my favorite section of the piece.
Yes, it’s slow compared to what I can do on a computer. Doesn’t that mean it shouldn’t be how I’m writing?
Well… I don’t know. Sure, I can write faster on a laptop, but recent history shows that I’m simply not writing on a laptop. There’s too much else going on that I can avoid the problem with.
And, really, it’s not that slow. The fourteen pages of this story, 2,700 words, were actually written in just the first six days of November (after which school started swamping me and I mostly dropped my writing). That was with the goal of writing two pages per day—at about 200 words per page, that’s 400 words per day. Not a ton, but… with such a high quality draft as the result, it’s definitely not bad.
Those 400 words would take me about an hour to write. If I dedicated an hour per day to writing (which I don’t, but should), this process would result in a high-quality 50,000-word draft in a little over four months. If I kept that up over a year, I would have almost tripled the highest rate I’ve ever written at. And, if I start spending more than an hour per day writing (which I would like to do), it would only get better.
I haven’t fully landed on an answer, here, but I do know that I want to continue this experiment, push it to its eventual conclusion. And to do that, I need to attempt writing something longer on paper.
At the moment, I’m thinking of getting a nice MD Journal to write in—it’s the same paper I’ve been using in my Traveler’s Notebook that I know I like, but should lay flat for an easier writing experience, as I don’t really need the level of portability the TN has for my writing. I also like the look and design of the notebook, and it has a ton of pages, so it could be a great option for a project like this.
So, we’ll see what happens. I don’t know what I’ll conclude, but I know at this point that the story isn’t over—writing on paper has a place in my writing process, though I don’t know yet if it’s a place for planning or for writing full drafts.
I’ll keep you updated here, once I start the experiment up again. If you’ve had experience writing fiction (or nonfiction!) on paper, I’d love to hear your thoughts. My email address is below.
