There’s something romantic about using a typewriter; the physicality of punching out words in the dull of the early morning, cigarette smoke in the air and a coffee laced with scotch to hand. The extra effort will somehow make the words stronger.
Well, maybe, but today I’m very happy with a computer thanks very much.
I’ve just gone past the fifty-thousand mark.
That’s fifty-thousand words of the thing I’m still refusing to call a novel in fear of jinxing it and grinding to a halt the day after tomorrow.
This was always going to be the first point where I printed everything out and started making changes. Re-reading everything for the first time and, wow, am I glad I don’t have to retype the whole flaming thing. It took most of yesterday afternoon to print.
I seem to be going quite quickly, four months effectively, but with an extra thirty-five-thousand words of short-stories (some of those words again and again, too) and however many are within this blog. Quite a work rate. I’m pretty smug, to be honest.
It is, of course, important to remember that this is all daft one-point-five stuff. Not very tailored. Not honed. Regurgitated quickly as they trip across my mind and a few amendments made here and there as I type up.
One of my tutors calls it Serbo-Croat, but I think that’s probably an insult to Serbians and Croatians.
Consequently, it’s highly debatable whether they fifty-thousand good words , fifty-thousand crap words, or a mixture of the two.
It looks nice, though. A big pile of paper covered in size ten Times New Roman.
Substantial.
(Heh-heh, I’d forgotten that joke. Oops typo there. God that’s rubbish. Oo. Nice.)
Sorry, a little distracted.
Come back tomorrow when I promise to be more focused.
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