Be Comfortable When You Write

Have you ever stopped to think how easily words tumbled out of you when you were simply messaging or emailing a friend?

With little problem at all, you dashed off a few hundred words. Maybe you were happily recalling an event from the past or describing some weekend retreat where your families were heading that weekend.

Writing can just flow out of us when we have something we want to say, and we aren’t worried about the grammar police or critics.

It’s writing freely and rapidly without a lot of deep thinking.

What the best way for you?

Some authors write books by dictating the words into the computer.

To tell you the truth, I’ve never tried it, but it’s certainly something to consider. You talk and the words appear like magic on the computer screen.

Many authors write in longhand before transcribing the words to the computer.

Still others, the real old-timers among us, bang out their words on old typewriters and wouldn’t dream of taking the leap into the modern age and write on a computer.

They like that certain physical act of hitting typewriter keys and having the words appear on real paper.

The late Harlan Ellison, a prolific author of New Wave Speculative Fiction, continued to knock off his stories on a typewriter well into the Twenty-First Century. So did Larry McMurtry, author of The Last Picture Show and Lonesome Dove and many other works of fiction and nonfiction.

Of course, before personal computers and laptops came along, typewriters were the principal tools of writers.

I say whatever way you choose to get the words down, just do it.

The main thing is to be comfortable and even confident in your writing.

Maybe you’re a lousy typist and take forever to tap out words.

Back when I first started writing books, I always wrote my first drafts in longhand. But after I embraced the fast-writing method, I found writing in longhand to have its drawbacks. My penmanship was poor, and I had problems reading everything I had written.

And so, here I am, many years later, tapping out prose on a computer, living the writing life, the dream.

How about your writing area?

Do you have a comfortable chair?

That’s important. 

You’ll be sitting your butt in that chair for days and hours into the future, and you don’t want one that is uncomfortable or creates problems for your back or neck—an occupational hazard for many writers.

It doesn’t hurt to have a place to yourself, a writing room, that is yours. This may not be possible if you live in a small house or apartment you share with family members or roommates.

Authors are known to have their own writing cottages or shacks, places away from their homes, where they escape from everyone to write. However, for most of us, that is something beyond our means.

Wherever you choose to write, make it a place you want to come to every day, a retreat where you can do what you must do—Write.   

Mike Reuther is a novelist and the author of Write the Darn Book, a guide for beginning writers, as well as other books on writing. Check out his Author Page at https://www.amazon.com/Mike-Reuther/e/B009M5GVUW%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share