For those of you who write the first draft of a book with pen and paper, tell me how you back up your work. I switched from keyboard to pen about half way through my current project, and it is an issue I want to address soon. I already have about 10K words in longhand. đŹ
@jean photocopy or scan. And: with pen & paper you don't have to worry about your digital creation evaporating for mysterious reasons , so maybe just keeping your writing in a secure drawer is safe enough?
@jean I never wrote a book draft with pen and paper. What I have done, dating decades back to my college days, is write papers and stories on paper, by hand, a page at a time, and then type up the just-written page, revising as I went, before moving on to write the next page by hand. Basically, I wrote a first handwritten draft and second typed draft simultaneously. I continued this practice for several years after getting my first word-processor (1 handwritten â 1 wordprocessed page at a time).
@jean I haven't done this, but if you don't have a flatbed scanner available, probably the least expensive and easiest approach would be taking pictures of the pages with your phone.
You can use Apple Notes to use the camera to scan a document, which tries to adjust for the four page corners, but that takes a number of taps per page.
Just taking pictures of the pages in the Camera app, like in an old spy movie is probably the quickest.
@jean or potentially as part of your process (between sections perhaps?) you could type up / brief edit / review that section, do a regroup, then go back to the notebook. That way youâre âonlyâ out 10-30,000 words rather than the whole thing, if something happens⌠and you donât have a mountain of transcription to do at the end of the projectâŚ
I still have a typewritten manuscript I need to get round to typing up on the laptop. Itâs a hurdle!
@lymond @jamesdempsey @herself @alexink @JohnBrady Thanks for the input. I decided to try an app I use a little bit for scanning, SwiftScan (formerly ScanBot) and its ability to create a multipage PDF and its autocapture is well-suited to quick scanning. It doesnât need to be perfect or even crystal clear, just legible. Itâs good enough and I could do 10+ notebook pages in a couple minutes. I learned I need to give the written pages numbers!
The process for the class is to write an entire first draft with no editing. The rewrite class is a separate stage. As someone who usually edits as I go, it took a while to let go. The teacher advises we use the keyboard input process as a first light edit.
But of course I was paranoid about backups.
@jean This brings back a weird memory: back in the early 1980s, I developed a simple word-processor tailored for teaching first-year college composition courses. It included a âfreewritingâ module, where you could only enter text but not backspace nor move the cursor; it also had an âinvisible writingâ component where could enter text but not see what you had entered.
@kennylee Itâs a wire-bound notebook, so it wouldnât work with a feeder. But I was able to be pretty quick manually scanning each page with the phone. The scans arenât perfect and a few pages are distorted, but all I need is a backup in case I lose the notebook. Now that I know I am doing it, I can quickly scan 4-5 pages each day after a writing session.
@lymond writers are a funny lot; I would love this! Especially an app where I could write but not see the text, haha. Reminds me of Nicholson Bakerâs Box of Matches where he would write in the dark with the lid of his laptop nearly shut, with only enough room for his handsâŚ
