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Are You Writing in Cursive or On a Computer? It may make a difference in your creativity. What do/did the “greats” use?
An exquisitely sharpened point on a Blackwing 602 pencil slides smoothly across the paper. Laying down a carefully constructed sentence and then paragraphs and pages, it is the beginning work of a premier writer. The writer, of course, was Truman Capote, who admitted that he was “… a completely horizontal author.”
Each draft of his writings, first composed in cursive rather than on a typewriter, on yellow paper, followed a set pattern. Thoughts were put down, then revised, in penciled cursive. A second go-round was also with the preferred writing implement, the Blackwing, whose lead gave life to his verse.
The third draft, again on yellow paper, would not be written by hand. “No, I don’t get out of bed to do this. I balance the machine on my knees. Sure, it works fine; I can manage a hundred words in a minute. Well, when the yellow draft is finished, I put the manuscript away for a while, a week, a month, sometimes longer… if all goes well, I type the final version on white paper, and that’s that.”
Literary historians, who have cataloged the path Capote took, noted all of the turns in the journey. But not a mention is made or a thoughtful moment given to his use of cursive writing.
Capote’s cursive was never considered as instrumental in his creativity and was dismissed as something authors use. The East Indian proverb comes to mind: “The eye does not see what the mind does not know.”
Some of Capote’s most famous and fretted-about work (Answered Prayers) never did reach his publisher’s office. Advance after advance would not budge the man who had lost his creative fire in a sea of addiction. The Blackwings were left behind.
Atwood and Other Writers
Margaret Atwood, best known for her “The Handmaid’s Tale,” is a prolific writer of novels, poems, and essays. Her creative process also includes using le crayon.
