What Writing Looks Like Blog Hop

Today is the What Writing Looks Like Blog Hop, in which participants post pictures or print screens of a first draft. It can be written on any medium, with any medium. Posters will share a little bit about what they were writing and why they chose those particular media.

I handwrote a lot of my first drafts, in the days when we only had one computer and I had to wait my turn to use it. Later, after we had several computers and my parents gave me the older models (the ’84 and ’93 Macs were mine and mine only after they were replaced), I continued handwriting some things. Handwritten first drafts include all 8 (novella-sized) books of the now-shelved WTCOAC (We the Children of Atlantic City) series, Max’s House #1, #3, #7, and #8, the four books of the introductory Atlantic City series (none of them anywhere near novel-sized, except the first, after a significant rewrite and restructuring), and, of course, Cinnimin.

99% of Cinnimin is handwritten, and has been since I began it in September ’93. I really began it in December ’91, but the little I’d written is long since lost, and I later recreated what I could remember as a short Part I (one of the VERY few pieces that’s computer-generated). Yes, I’ve been writing a 12-volume book by hand since age 13, for 19 years and counting. I’m not like most people!

Here’s a recent page of writing, from Part LVI, “Crossing the Point of No Return,” Saga VI (Children’s Children). It’s late October 1998, and some of Cinni’s granddaughters are having a sleepover weekend while their troubled parents are extending a recent vacation to Hawaii.

Two shots of the same page. The top half of the page is written in one hand, and the bottom half is in another hand. Can you guess which hand wrote which? Hint: When you’re writing with your right hand, you’re pulling the pen across the page, but with your left hand, you’re pushing it. Some letters also have to be formed at different angles, like how A and O are counter-clockwise with the left hand.