I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.
I don't feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it's so old-fashioned. I could write a whole novel on scrap paper, scribbles and things. I keep looking at it and something develops. For me, using a word processor would mean staring at a screen for too many hours.
The first drafts of my novels have all been written in longhand, and then I type them up on my old electric. I have resisted getting a computer because I distrust the whole PC thing. I don't think a great book has yet been written on computer.
I'm not typing. I write only by longhand. I've always written first drafts by hand and then once I was into a second or third draft I wrote insert pages on a typewriter. But I got rid of all my typewriters about three or four novels ago and now I do everything by hand. I write by hand because it makes me go slow and going slow is what I like.
When one has no particular talent for anything, one takes to the pen.
I'd like to take a course in writing. I'm not the best writer in the world. I'd like to write more neatly, even though people don't send many handwritten letters these days.
Man is a strange animal. He generally cannot read the handwriting on the wall until his back is up against it.
Ball points belong to their age. They make everyone write alike.
After ten years of word processing, I can't even do hand writing anymore.
I think I'm from the 18th century, not even the 19th. I don't even use a typewriter. I prefer longhand, and that's how I submit my manuscripts to my publishers.
To tell you the truth, I see any revolution as basically a penmanship exercise. It all loops around and winds up where you started.
I think best with a pencil in my hand.
All I'm about is just the pen.
I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.
I was a pen pal with one guy, a long time ago. I think we only wrote to each other twice. We didn't really keep it up that long. But, I love it. I think it's really sweet and very creative and freeing, when you get to put a pen to paper, 'cause you don't really do it that much these days, with all this technology.
I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.
Here I am, ninety years old and ready for the cooling board, using a brand new Macintosh computer, and there you sit, twenty-two and gorgeous, fresh as a new peach, yet scrawling on a yellow legal pad like an old maid in a Victorian romance.
I used to do calligraphy, and I'm afraid that has lapsed, but I've always been interested in book printing.
You may not be able to read a doctor's handwriting and prescription, but you'll notice his bills are neatly typewritten.
To hold a pen is to be at war.
To call that writing, madam, is an insult to quills and ink across the world.
Hold your pen and spare your voice.
Writing is the hardest physical work there is.
We have a problem in Africa with our education system. It is a relic from the past. The education system was meant to create clerks to help the administrative role of the colonial power. So the emphasis was on neat handwriting and how to write good reports and things like that, and if you move further, then you study Shakespeare and Molière. But we don’t have enough engineers and scientists. Two percent of African university graduates study agriculture, when 70 percent of our people are living off the land. Obviously, we have a problem.
I like the physical action of writing down by hand, and I don't just use it for writing my fiction.
