The New Project

Day of Rage? But Rage At What? A Friend’s New Book…

The New Project

I’ve been asked how my handwritten novel project was going…

Well, not that well until now!

The fact is, people get used to specific ways of working, I think. I decided to try writing a novel by hand because I felt it would allow me more freedom to work in different places, would give me more time to concentrate on a good, working first draft, and would force me to rewrite into a second draft more efficiently. I do still believe that by handwriting the draft I will end up with a cleaner manuscript in almost the same time as it would take to write on a keyboard.

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My lovely Visconti Homo Sapiens: designed just for me!

However, although I did start writing by hand last year, I had to give up. I was delayed for a number of reasons. First and foremost, my great friend, Andy Setchell, had a recurrence of his cancer, and his death preyed on my mind while I was trying to work. Then, the pen that I was planning to use for the project (for which I am eternally grateful to the brilliant Dante del Vecchio, the genius behind Visconti and who is now the leading light behind Pineider’s writing instruments) was unexpectedly delayed. It’s a prototype of a special model, and I think created some “interesting” challenges for the design team, but the delay also meant I was already getting late on my deadline. I had to crack on with the computer instead.

So, these issues led to me starting late on my project, and caused a certain amount of grief that didn’t help the creative juices!

A third issue which I had not anticipated was that, having the freedom to choose different locations in which to write, was quite a problem in its own right. It led to a lack of concentration when I needed it. Suddenly I could wander from one room to another, and that distracted me from the job at hand. All of which means, until now, it’s been rather difficult to see the wood for the trees.

But I have now got over these hurdles, I think. I have developed a new way of working. I have dedicated two specific locations for writing: a standing desk in my office, and occasionally the garden when it’s just too hot to stay indoors. This means I’ve been growing more and more comfortable with my working environment, and that means I can concentrate better and for longer.

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My main Atoma pad

I am also changing how I was working. In the past, I’ve merely written on notepads and loose-leaf paper. Now I am using Atoma pads. I have a binder punch from the ever-excellent Cult Pens, and that means I can use any paper to write on and hold them together in the Atoma ring system. If you haven’t seen it, I can recommend Atoma for every day use. Being able to insert fresh pages, removed them, reinsert them in new locations, and basically play with the order of pages and scenes is fantastic. But there is one aspect of this system that causes me – or used to cause me – headaches. That is, that when you have filled an Atoma pad with a couple of hundred pages, what should you do? Buy another set of Atoma rings? My problem is purely that I don’t necessarily want to carry all my draft with me all the time.

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Exacompta Harmonika

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Exacompta Harmonika

Because of that I have started trying out Exacompta’s Harmonika A4 folders. These are multi-division folders, so you can have a series of sections into which you break your work. I have gone for the twelve division version, which gives flexibility and a good amount of space. I will be using each section for a number of scenes and later deciding how to separate them into chapters.

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Only 5/8ths the thickness of 80 gsm

At the same time I am using paper which is considerably thinner. I have a lot of different types of paper, but this is 50gsm paper from a company called Q-Connect. It is not, I hasten to say, the best writing paper. It is a little “toothy” with a nib, which means you can feel the nib scratching ever so slightly. Even so, it’s good quality, has no feathering or bleed-through to the other side of the paper, and is very thin. The big benefits of course are that it is lighter to carry, that it is cheap to buy, and that it allows me to fit more pages per section into my Exacompta wallets.

I’ll be videoing the project periodically on YouTube (on my writerlywitterings channel) and talking about it here, too, no doubt, as I discover more pitfalls and headaches.

For now I should just mention that the pen was given to me for this project by Visconti, but I was also enormously fortunate to have the backing of Diamine Inks and Atoma, the pad makers. I’m very grateful to all three companies.

For the other items, I can recommend SBS Consumables of Bexhill-on-Sea for the Exacompta files – I ordered from them and the files were with me in two days flat (whereas an order placed with Amazon, and which was supposed to arrive on 19th, now will apparently not get here until next week – that’s been cancelled). The paper can be found from a number of suppliers, where it’s usually listed as “Bank” paper. I think this is because it was originally developed for use in typists’ rooms where many carbon copies of letters and invoices were needed.

Wish me luck!