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Agency for Literary Review offers unpublished authors and first-time writers the opportunity to have their work assessed for free.

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Agency for Literary Review

The Practicalities of Writing

Smith-Corona, Eberhard-Faber, and PC pretty much cover your choice of writing medium.  It doesn’t matter if your preference is hunt and peck on a typewriter or curled up with a pad and pencil or staring blank-eyed at the computer screen.  It is simply your preference.  And it has to be whatever you are comfortable with.  Each medium has its own advantages and terrors.  You might wish to explore both.

You might opt to use a typewriter because it has always been, to your mind, synonymous with being a writer.  It can even be a status symbol having a typewriter (especially one that shows signs of loving use over the years) sitting on your writing desk.  An advantage is you can’t waste time playing solitaire on it when you’re stuck for a mot juste or a line to perfectly end a chapter.  It gets neither bugs nor viruses and seldom crashes…and never in the middle of your very best chapter thus far.  You also don’t have to remember to save it.  All of your rewrites remain intact as well. 

An editor’s grease pencil will allow you to track all of your changes, and keep all of the earlier ones if you decide the first was the best (and yes, you should learn to read and use editor’s proof marks). 

A blank piece of paper on a typewriter platen can be very intimidating, however.  Doubtless, you have heard of writer’s block.  Whatever its psychological reason, it is generally caused by an inability to draw a conclusion or to make a decision.  A handy hint provided to us is to force the issue.  Mental blockage seems to occur at the first page of the book or at the start of a chapter.  If you are trying to begin telling a story, take a piece of scrap paper and write down what time it is and what you can hear.  Then go back to your story page and visualise what time it is there and what you can hear.  If you are stuck at the opening of a chapter, then write down the temperature and what you can smell.  Go back to your chapter heading and visualise the temperature there and what the smell is.  We are told it works every time.

Pencil and paper (although Eberhard-Faber has long since been swallowed up) offers all of the advantages of a typewriter and more.  You can take p and p with you wherever you feel like being comfortable.  You can write under a tree on a warm summer’s day or snuggled in bed when chill winter winds torment the trees.  You can write on a train or in the library as you do your research.  And you can easily stop while you take the time to write a note to someone you love or to whom you have not spoken for a long time.  Words seem to flow and take on a life of their own from the point of the pencil as it glides across the page on the grease of graphite.  You will find that you cover pages of script at a single sitting almost non-stop.  Some, unfortunately, will be drivel.  Some, just as likely, may be brilliant as your mind creates the scene that your pencil draws with words. 

Leaving your notebook behind somewhere, and forgetting where can be devastating.  Never finding it again can be frustrating.  The other disadvantage is you are not likely to find a publisher who won’t demand it be presented as a typewritten document.  However, you can always pay someone to transfer it to type or browbeat a family member or friend.

Dedicated word-processors or a PC with the appropriate software can, does, and will make difficult editing jobs a breeze.  Moving blocks of text around on a page or to another page is as simple as two or three key-clicks.  Repagination is done in an instant.  If it needs to be double-spaced and you have used single space, don’t despair.  You need only to issue a command (after you have learned it) and it will be done in moments.  Did you find that you misspelled a word?  No problem.  You can change every instance of that word in a few deft key changes.  You can select styles, fonts, choose a heading, and even insert illustrations if you so desire, and all with no more trouble than moving your mouse and making appropriate clicks.  On the other hand, you can eradicate hours of work forever by one false move or some inattention to what that little dialogue box asked you just before you clicked okay.

Learn to master your chosen medium for writing, and work within your comfort zone.