Circa 2016, I wrote a sprawling novel while I lived alone in a cabin, just before my launch into fatherhood. I wrote it on a 1930’s Smith Corona Silent. Here is a photo of the actual writing process:

Classic Typewriter Co. sells these beauties here.

After I’d gathered up the pages, about 300 of them, I was overjoyed. To see pages stack up toward one’s dream is a significant thing, yes. But I am one of those odd sods that love to edit.

I tossed the manuscript and the dog into the car, and headed over to the beach in Jenner. There I sat, in a makeshift lean-to made of huge logs, bleached like whale bones by the sun, and I edited.

Of course, in my hopeful state, I’d expected to be bowled over by my own literary daring, my own passion, my own humor. I wasn’t.

Hemingway’s famous quote came to mind:

“The first draft of anything is shit.”

I cursed him for being right, yet again, and I continued to edit. There were occasional hinds of inspiration; a few emotional outbursts, and some very rough gems.

So I marked up the pages assiduously, in my nearly-illegible scrawl. Remember, by this point, our hero of the story had been rendered nearly fucking illiterate by spell check and google. (Thanks, billionaires). I had to reclaim my mind.

After I’d marked up the pages, I ran howling back to the car, Ginger in tow. We kicked up sand into the setting sun.

I then made the biggest mistake of my literary career; I began to type, word for word, the draft into the computer for refinements.

The Screenless Writer process has evolved for some years (if you start to do the math), and while I work on my latest book, The Screenless Writer (oh, it boggles the mind to think of it!), I’m editing the draft no. 4, which I’ve written from scratch yet again.

Because I didn’t want to merely sit at the typewriter for a burst of inspiration, turn out a ‘shit’ draft’, and then be tethered to a computer for countless hours. Where’s the joy in that?

By the way, I’d purchased the typewriter because I wanted to write after hours, and I was on a computer all day as a graphic designer.

The reason typing it in after draft one was a mistake, a huge mistake, was because":

It wasn’t joyous
It wasn’t ready
I wasn’t ready
The 1st draft isn’t made for copying

I’m giving a very brief outline of what I go through in the Screenless Writer book (which you’ll be able to order soon).

Copying into a computer is sheer drudgery. The non-joyous part seems obvious.

The first draft of a manuscript is like a mind dump; I call it The Blood Draft after Hemingway’s quote about sitting at the typewriter and bleeding. Some call it the Zero Draft, to showcase the fact that… it isn’t a DRAFT yet. It’s just an inner purge. So, ‘shit’ is an apt metaphor for Hemingway for more reasons than one… just get the mess that is inside to the outside, even if unpleasant to look at.

So, to go from first draft to computer edit is a flawed approach. The work will suffer alongside the writer.

Also, to only read through once and to do that? Or not at all? No. It’s too early, and screws up the conception of the order, which may already be flawed.

What I would at least suggest, if you’re hell bent on leaping to a computer, is follow up the Blood draft with three reads, careful edits, and then a true first draft… which is not so much a ‘copy’ verbatim, but a ‘Retype’ draft. Like Kerouac and his On the Road Scrolls.

You got the gist in the 1st draft, honed in on the message, and now, going into that equation more armed with knowledge, you can probably write it MUCH better. Without the pain of having to read word by word as you type.

Also, now that you know whither the road goes, you can freely add and subtract. (I usually have to subtract my tirades against the medical establishment or another huge corporate entity which I launch into at the least provocation… try me!).

THEN you read that few a few times, and you can proceed to copy that into a cleaner, tighter draft, preferably on paper.

Once you get a powerful draft in your hand, let’s say it’s on paper, and it’s damn-near perfection (keep it short), you have a lot of power. Leaping to the computer too early rips that away. It also corrals thought into acceptable realms.

So you can retype a draft from scratch as many times as you want. This will be ultimately freeing. You’ll actually get to understand the piece as you go.

Do you know what book is famous fro being long? Infinite Jest. Do you know how many drafts Wallace created of that monster? 5.

I’m refining some of the guidelines for numbering pages and the like, though that’ll primarily be a personal choice. I like to not do it in the 3rd draft, and I keep thoughts modular, so that I can shuffle pages around as needed to get the most poignant flow.

It’s liberating to have separate drafts (I used a different typewriter for each one in this adventure, and a different location for much of it). Instead of them merging into one (digital), you can always retrace your steps.

So, keep writing, and more importantly, keep ALIVE in the process so that your work is vivifying to write and to read. Otherwise, do something else on the computer… (accounting?).

Fight the power.

Write on,

Steven Budden

PS. That manuscript I typed and put in the computer. Books 2-5 are in a box behind me. Book 1 is eerily missing; it vanished into the computer under a digital icon of a folder called ‘novels.’ Shan’t make that mistake again.

If you need a typewriter, leap to the best, the Hermes 3k. Or our intro package is back for a short time.

(this is me working on draft one on a barely working Olympia SF).

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The Screenless Writer- Draft Flow