Loosen Up Your Writing Grip to Banish Pain

It’d be easy to argue that the reason most modern writers become fatigued quickly when handwriting is because the muscles are out of service thanks to extensive computer use. The real culprit is grip strength.

Photo by CarbonNYC.

For those of us born and raised in the computer age, it is hard to imagine how novelists of yore hand wrote entire tomes before sending them on for editing and publication. Almost universally my friends complain about what a literal pain extended handwriting is. I hated written exams for that very reason: There seemed to be no way to avoid feeling as though you were slowly crushing your hand in a car door all while staring down the clock above the proctor’s head. At D*I*Y Planner, ever the defender of all things handwritten, they’ve shared a simple tip to ease your writing pain:

Hand getting cramped when you write more than a few paragraphs? Loosen up! Many people middle-age or younger are used to having to grasp pens and pencils very tightly to make lines. After a page or two of writing like this, the hand and wrist may begin to hurt. However, with gel and fountain pens such a tight grasp is rarely necessary.

I failed to make the connection between my Bic-crushing grip and writing fatigue until several years ago when I tried out the peculiarly but ergonomically shaped PenAgain. It never became my favorite pen, but the shape of the pen forces you to write with a very gentle and light touch. Ever since playing around with the PenAgain, I’ve written with a light painter’s touch instead of pushing the pen into the paper like I was carving into wood. The outcome of the shift was seeing the same results on the paper without the writing callouses and cramped hand. Whether you grip your pen with a Vulcan death-grip or you’ve discovered the art of light penmanship, let’s hear more about your writing style in the comments.

7 Tips on How to Write a Book

This article was first published here several years back, but we felt it could find new life to some readers who missed it the first trip around!

1. Write your book. Whether it’s non-fiction or fiction, Fantasy, Autobiography, Crime or Mystery, just write what you feel. Never worry about editing as you go; as that will bury your creativity.

2. Find a quiet place to write. An extra bedroom, office, or even a garage (preferably heated), are all good places “away from it all.” Never look for your muse where friends or family are always interrupting you.

3. Set time aside to write. It takes time to find your inspiration to write. It’s not likely you will write well or accomplish much in a ten minute session. Allow yourself at least two hours to work on your writing project.

4. Choose you books topic according to demand. Are there a million books already written which follow the path of your story or subject? Is there even an audience out there who will buy your book? With nearly 30 books being released in the U.S. every hour of every day, the competition is fierce. If you plan to sell your book to the reading public, make sure you will have a customer base before you put your time and money into publishing a book.

5. Draw an outline for your book before you begin. A well drawn out outline will keep you focused on your total project. Outline your story or information. For fiction book writing, an outline of your plot, when to introduce your characters, and path of the story, that is, the beginning, middle, and ending placed into chronological order. For non-fiction book writing, the same applies. Organize your information into a logical and useful order.

6. Choose your title carefully. Not only is a catchy title a must, but for non-fiction and some fiction books, your title words will most likely be used as “key words” when a potential book buyer searches the Internet for a book similar to yours.

7. Once your book is complete, find a professional editor to fix your mistakes. Spell Check in your writing software is not enough to handle the job.

Carol Denbow is the author of five books, including A Book Inside, How to Write, Publish, and Sell Your Story, available at Amazon.com. She is also a regular contributor to numerous writers’ websites and newsletters and has been a featured guest on radio and television.

Typewriter Forces You to Focus While You Write

Windows/Mac/Linux: Once upon a time, people pounded out their memos and missives on a typewriter. There was no backspace, spell check, or fancy formatting, just forward movement, and muttered obscenities when you screwed up. Typewriter brings some of that ink-stained experience back.

Joey Daoud, the film student behind You 2.0, a documentary on life hacking, found himself musing over the following quote from author Will Self:

Writing on a manual [typewriter] makes you slower in a good way, I think. You don’t revise as much, you just think more, because you know you’re going to have to retype the entire (flipping) thing. Which is a big stop on just slapping anything down and playing with it.

The idea intrigued him, and he wanted to mimic the process on a modern computer, but failed to find any applications which did so. He found a programmer to help, and a simple Java-based application was born.

Typewriter allows you to type, save to a text file, and print the document. There is no backspace function, no spell check, and no cut or paste functionality. If you want to force yourself to really focus and make every word count, Typewriter is an unyielding tool for forcing your thoughts to take shape before you commit them to the page.

If you like the simple interface and distraction-free writing, but you’re put off by the absolute lack of a delete key, make sure to check out similarly edit-friendly tools Write Monkey, Darkroom, and Writeroom. Typewriter is free and works wherever Java does.

Editing Your Book: A Crucial Piece

Finding a typo or grammatical error in a book is never good. It will probably make you question the credibility of the editor of the book, the publisher and ultimately the author. Now, turn the tables. Put yourself in the role of the author where someone was turned off from your book because of an editing error. How would that make you feel? What if the person actually stopped reading because of errors? That is certainly a situation you want to avoid.

How can you prevent this from happening to you? The answer is simple: Don’t skip the crucial step of utilizing excellent editorial services. Even the most experienced authors do not catch all of their mistakes. You are so familiar with your manuscript that your eyes simply glance over the glaring mistakes, the “their” instead of “there”. Since editing is such a crucial piece of your final book, here are some tips you can use when you are editing your book.

1. Write without editing. As you write your first draft, don’t think about having correct grammatical structures, spelling and punctuation. Just write the words as naturally as they flow out of you. Then later, after you’ve exhausted the flow for a chapter or maybe the entire book, go back and start the process of editing.

2. Cut, cut, cut. There is truly no other way to say it. Cut out unnecessary lines, words, paragraphs, pages, and even characters – anything that doesn’t help communicate a clear message to your readers. Use concise language that is active and not passive. If you’re writing a novel, write smart dialogue that sounds like a real conversation, not long, never-ending prose. Your readers will appreciate your use of the “cut” function.

3. Walk away from your book. When you do finish your manuscript, take a day or two (or 10) of rest and walk away from it. This break will give your brain a chance to revive itself, giving you the opportunity to look at your book with fresh eyes. Devote extensive time to editing when you do come back to your book, and be ruthless with the things that do not work. And make sure to appreciate the things you did well, too!

4. Read it out loud. Print out your entire book and take the time to read it out loud to yourself. Reading out loud will help you find awkward sentences that don’t flow, dialogue that sounds stilted or parts that just don’t fit. Make notes on the paper as you go so you can go back and make changes later.

5. Hire an editor. The best gift you can give your book is to have an experienced editor review it for you. You may consider using an editorial service from Balboa Press or hiring a professional editor you find on your own. Avoid using someone who won’t be honest with you as an editor, such as your best friend who is afraid of hurting your feelings. Editing is a messy, difficult process so it’s important you have someone who will point out both the good and the bad in your manuscript.

Editing is never easy. It’s hard to “kill your darlings” and be forthright with yourself about what is and what isn’t working. Swallow your pride and step into the editing process with an open mind. In the long run, editing will enhance your book and will allow you to give your readers a book of which you are proud.