Typewriter Mania
I have no idea how long my handwritten novel is. One A5 exercise book is 240 pages. I average about fifteen words a line, and there’s twenty-five lines per page. That would mean there’s roughly 90,000 words in that book. I made it halfway through the second exercise book, which would make that first draft (not counting the annotated material) about 135,000 words. Given how scrappy it was, given the notes scribbled on inside covers, given it had taken writing a book to work out the story, I knew I had to rewrite it from word one (even if you could do something with a hideously handwritten novel). Moving up…
Short and Punchy
Some people probably think you go to school, or take courses, to learn how to write. While those are viable (developmental) options, I think you’re learning all the time. You learn through reading, and I used to read lots. I’d study the way the story was structured; how the punctuation functioned; the way the sentences told the story; the voice behind the story; how many characters there were, what each did, etc. TV and movies are also good educators, particularly in how structure works. And you pick up things from all sort of sources, or they influence the way you do things. When I was a kid, my writing suffered…