Western Walkabout: How To Write Your Best
…I knew a competent writer who did some of his best reporting on the back of a cigarette packet, in shorthand, using a soft pencil, while smoking a pipe…
Richard Harris reflects upon writing habits, including his own.
The excuses writers use not to write are many and varied. Far more useful it is to consider under what circumstances you write best.
I knew a competent writer who did some of his best reporting on the back of a cigarette packet, in shorthand, using a soft pencil, while smoking a pipe.
A writer I admire enormously once explained that he preferred to write in pencil on butcher’s paper – this stopped him from over-writing and padding his story with material readers would skip. In short, it gave him marvelous economy and pace.
I’ve an old friend, a highly successful writer, who is still tapping out stories on an old fashioned typewriter. He’s far too well known for me to mention his name here.
Speaking for myself, I feel I write best at my computer – preferably without the cat calling at me for her supper, or trying to jump on my knee for attention.
But the truth is I write best wherever I am when the mood is on me to write. I’ve woken in the middle of the night and scratched ideas in an old bedside notebook – and they’ve been very readable hours later.
I’ve dashed out some interesting little pieces at the writers’ workshop with a notebook and ballpoint pen with a six minute time frame.
Do I need to be quiet? Not really, I can have the television on in the next room, or ABC classical FM nearby, as long as I can get my hands on a pen or fingers to the keyboard.
I seem to have a first wind of about 350 to 400 words, then with a short break I can go on to about 1200 words.
Overall, I seem to write best with a few breaks and sometimes by leaving the story to develop before knocking it out. Sometimes, my first ideas are not my best and the little bit of more mature reflection pays a handsome dividend.
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