Friday, April 24, 2009

Fast typing made slow

I have three spiral notebooks sitting next to me right now, giving me sad, disappointed looks. One of the notebooks has a big chunk of White Rose scribbled in it, months old. The other two have much more recent chunks of Little Sparrow. I've been meaning to type up all of the scribbling, but there's so much of it!

That's the main problem with writing longhand. Eventually it has to be typed up. I'm an extremely fast typist (typically I score between 90-105 wpm when I've tested for various jobs; I used to work as a transcription typist), and I like the free editing pass I get when I type up my handwritten work. If I keep on top of the typing, I hardly notice it.

It's when I let it slide that I have problems. The more typing I have waiting for me, the less motivated I am to type. The only thing that will really get me to work on it is the knowledge that I can't throw the stupid notebooks away until everything's typed up, saved, and backed up onto a flash drive. And honestly, it doesn't take that long!

I'll do it tomorrow.

8 comments:

Cate Gardner said...

My fingers seem to be permanently stuck to the keyboard... I should go back to writing longhand - no distractions.

Jamie Eyberg said...

My handwriting is so bad that if I don't type it out I can't read it within a day or two.

Aaron Polson said...

My brain doesn't think as well longhand. True story.

K.C. Shaw said...

Cate--I don't know, I manage to distract myself even while writing longhand. It's a knack.

Jamie--Wow. Are you sure you're not a doctor? *ba-da-bing!*

Aaron--I tend to think my longhand written stuff is worse than my typed stuff, until I get the longhand writing typed up, and then I can't tell the difference.

The Margin Wight said...

You throw your notebooks away? Should I feel as scandalized by that statement as I currently feel?

K.C. Shaw said...

I used to save my notebooks, but they take up too much space and I very rarely go back to look at them. I do have a binder where I keep any notes, outlines, maps, etc. that I think I might need later--I'll just rip the pages out of the notebook and stick them in the binder. But mostly notebooks are full of my terrible handwriting, so when it's typed up there's no point in keeping them.

Danielle Birch said...

I could never throw out my notebooks. I write all of my ideas and half of my stories by longhand as well - seem to be more inspired than sitting in front of the keyboard.

K.C. Shaw said...

I figure as long as I've typed up the original, I'll never want to look at the handwritten version. But my decision to throw old notebooks away did mostly come from moving cross-country with basically everything I owned in the back of my pickup.

Gosh, saying that made me feel suddenly reckless and carefree! I miss my pickup truck.