=Bill Adams=: Never lose an idea while I'm writing. (Be nothing left if
I did, m'lad.) God help poor sailors.
=Samuel Hopkins Adams=: Yes; but I catch a lot in the act of escaping by
keeping a reserve sheet of paper close at hand while writing, and I will
break off in the middle of a sentence if necessary to pin the fugitive
down. Pen or pencil. You can't head off an escaping idea with a
typewriter. I've never tried a stenographer for fiction; if I did, she
would lead a wild-goose chase sort of existence, for my mind constantly
courses ahead of my plot and brings in small game to be attended to
while the main chase proceeds.
=Paul L. Anderson=: No, because I have the whole thing planned
beforehand. Sometimes, if I have an unusual idea, which seems likely to
get away, I note down a word or two on a scrap of paper and keep it by
me while writing. This happens oftener with a turn of words than with a
fundamental idea. The fastest mode of production, by far, is dictating
to a s'nog'f'r, as they are usually called in conversation. Next, the
typewriter; next, the pen; last, the pencil--the blame thing keeps
getting dull and you have to stop to sharpen it! I can seldom afford a
stenographer, but when I can, and have a good one, composition is
unalloyed bliss; I can light a cigarette, put my feet up, and live the
whole story, without distractions. Joy!
=William Ashley Anderson=: With a typewriter of light touch I can write
most clearly and sharply, because, I think, I feel the restraint of the
appearance of words actually in type.
The most agreeable tool to me is a goose quill. I only used quills a
little while, in England, where they are still in use even in government
offices. There is practically no friction between the quill and paper,
and no noise. The effect is complete privacy and smoothly flowing words.
I do sometimes lose ideas which get away from me.
=H. C. Bailey=: I never lost ideas by forgetting them. I write in pencil
and slowly. Dictation or typewriting would be impossible to me for any
imaginative work.
=Edwin Balmer=: Typewriter.
=Ralph Henry Barbour=: I don't think my imagination ever gets so far
ahead of my means of recording that I lose ideas. As to those means I
prefer a typewriter. I have never tried to dictate--to a stenographer. I
don't believe that I'd like it. Or maybe the stenographer wouldn't.
Anyway, I intend to keep on pounding it out myself.
=Frederick Orin Bartlett=: I use a typewriter and find that travels fast
enough for me--as long as I don't worry particularly over what keys I
hit.
=Nalbro Bartley=: No--I do all my stuff on a typewriter. I revise it
personally--I make the final copy myself.
=Konrad Bercovici=: I never lose any ideas. I never begin to put them
down until they are rounded out in my mind. One never loses anything
except what he does not care to possess.
=Ferdinand Berthoud=: Yes, I do, but I mostly pick them up again
unexpectedly, perhaps months afterward. Always write my draft in pencil,
as it is easier to make instant alterations. Also the clicking and
mechanism of a typewriter are liable to bring me suddenly back from out
of my dream world.
=H. H. Birney, Jr.=: No; I don't think so. Story is pretty well outlined
in my mind before I start writing. I personally write entirely with a
fountain pen. Dislike the "scratching" of a pencil and the lack of
permanency of penciled notes. Have tried doing my work direct from brain
to typewriter, but find that the purely mechanical strain of using ten
fingers, returning carriage, watching right-hand margins, etc., tends to
hamper thought. Tried stenographer only once, so am not qualified to
express opinion there.
=Farnham Bishop=: I always compose mentally before I begin to write.
Conceived the plot of _Malena_ while walking post, outlined the whole
novel and held it in my head until I came off guard. Often come back
from a walk with one or two long paragraphs composed and memorized,
ready to be set down. I have held ideas and worked them over mentally
for months and years, before writing a word on the subject.
That being the case, I almost never write except on my trusty Corona, H.
& P. Method.
=Algernon Blackwood=: Imagination invariably travels faster than power
of recording it. I use shorthand to jot down bits that flash ahead of
the words I am actually typing at the moment. These flashes otherwise
prove irrecoverable. With a stenographer beside me I could not think of
a single sentence. I compose straight on to my own machine.
=Max Bonter=: Typewriter seems to afford me least check in recording
thoughts. I write Pitmanic shorthand two hundred words a minute, but
seldom use it in composition. In this case my hand is speedier than the
flow of ideas. Moreover, ideas that would flow as fast as that would not
seem to be reliable. Such a flow of bull would have to be edited very
carefully afterward--so why be so precipitate? Better take it easier and
pay more attention to logic than verbosity.
The clatter of a typewriter does not disturb my train of thought. I
don't need a sound-proof cell when I write. When I feel in the mood for
writing my spine is stiff and I sit straight in my chair and punch hard.
I like to feel the keys bounce back from the platen. It makes me feel as
if I'm punching something and getting somewhere.
=Katharine Holland Brown=: Yes. Either the typewriter or a pen. Never a
stenographer.
=F. R. Buckley=: Never lost an idea that way yet. I write extremely
fast, and without conscious effort, on the typewriter--up to ninety
words a minute. I used to write in pencil and pen when on English
newspapers; now I'm used to the typewriter, I find it and the
hand-methods' check equal. I mean, typewriter used to check me, now
hand-writing does. Just what you're used to. Typewriter for me.
=Prosper Buranelli=: It seems to me that a writer is a person with the
gift of gab, but whose gift of gab is slower than the jawbone. Slow
typewriting is about the speed of my gabble.
=Thompson Burtis=: Yes. I have never used any other means of writing
than a typewriter. I do not believe that I would be effective through a
stenographer, and I'm damn certain that I'd never write a line unless I
was starving if I had to depend on pen or pencil.
=George M. A. Cain=: I do lose ideas before I can catch up to them with
the recording. I have never done any writing for publication otherwise
than directly upon the typewriter. Any handwriting entirely confuses me.
I can use a typewriter blindfolded. I can write with it twice or three
times as fast as with the pen or pencil. Without having tried it, I
imagine that the presence of a stenographer would greatly bother me at
first. I have always thought that I might possibly get better results by
using a dictaphone and then cutting out about two-thirds of what I said
to it. Heaven knows I am prolix enough on a typewriter. I hesitate to
credit heaven with any generally distributed knowledge of what I would
do, if it involved no greater effort than talking.
=Robert V. Carr=: When manufacturing literary sausage I naturally want
to grind it out rapidly. But if I am working on what seems to be a good
story, I can get my ideas down with a pencil.
=George L. Catton=: Lots of ideas are lost that way, though they
generally come back. Pencil, with me, affords the least check on loss.
=Robert W. Chambers=: Do not lose ideas thus. Pencil and eraser.
=Roy P. Churchill=: I believe the mind can be trained to construct with
the means at hand. I have seldom lost any real valuable ideas by having
the spirit run away with the physical construction of some sort of
record. At first I wrote with pencil, which is slow, then on a machine,
which is faster, and now dictate to a rapid stenographer. I have had to
get the habit of each method, and time would be lost if I had to change
again.
=Carl Clausen=: Sometimes. Pencil.
=Courtney Ryley Cooper=: That depends also. I use every possible style
of writing. I have started a story by pen, switched to pencil, gone to
the typewriter and dictated the climax, the reason being this: I must
write character slowly. I must do action as swiftly as it is possible
for me to put it down. And when the action becomes too fast for my
typewriter, I dictate. In other words, although it is bromidic, I know,
I live my stories to a great extent. I personally go just as slow or as
fast as the story itself--there are times when I can not write swiftly
to save my life--because I am in a maze of slow characterization. Then
again, I have to go like an express train to keep up with my story.
=Arthur Crabb=: To some extent, but not seriously. I sometimes have
trouble in retaining ideas that come when I am off the job. Pencil.
=Mary Stewart Cutting=: No, as I said before, when I imagine anything, I
write it down and so do not lose my ideas. A fountain pen in my hand
greatly facilitates thought and expression.
=Elmer Davis=: Yes, but still worse because I sit around and think about
the damn thing before I start writing at all, and most of the good stuff
is gone by the time I drag out the old mill and get to work. Never tried
anything but typewriter, though I have seen stenographers who would take
a man's mind off the fleeting thought and the evanescent phrase.
=William Harper Dean=: No, I can keep up with my ideas, because I can
write fast on a typewriter. I seldom leave it until the story is done in
its first draft--an eight-thousand-word story will go down in the rough
before I leave the machine. Then come the long careful hours of revision
and rewriting, the thumbing of my Thesaurus. But I must get it down in
black and white while I am hot with it--that's why I'll never write a
book. I couldn't write a thousand words to-day and a thousand to-morrow.
No, when I'm full of the thing it must be written.
=Harris Dickson=: No. I am an expert typewriter and stenographer, and
have so few ideas that I can not afford to let one get away.
=Captain Dingle=: I can only write one way--typewriter--straight out
from my imagination. Neither pen nor pencil helps, nor any amount of
notes, except such as are necessary to avoid errors of date or place.
Imagination seems to keep up. When it slows, I know it's time to clew-up
for a spell.
=Louis Dodge=: If I get a good idea--conceding that I ever do--it never
gets away from me permanently. It'll come back. But I get along better
with a typewriter. It's easier, that's all.
=Phyllis Duganne=: I don't lose ideas because my imagination travels
faster than my means of recording while I'm actually working. I can lose
them through being interrupted before I've finished. A typewriter
affords least check; it's almost impossible for me to write with a
pencil. And my own typewriter is so well trained that it can write just
about as fast as I can put my thoughts into words.
=J. Allan Dunn=: I find that my own typing keeps up fairly well with my
imagination, a little behind, far enough to look over the situation
ahead and amend or alter it. But then I have usually thought out my
day's typing beforehand, probably several times over. The machine is
less check than any other medium, but it was not until I had acquired a
certain speed. If my technique bothers me I can sometimes dictate very
rapidly. I find, however, that the matter of proper punctuation, dialect
and unusual spelling suffers at the hand of another--this includes a
dictaphone. I had a hard fight getting away from pencil to the
typewriter, but I don't want to go back.
=Walter A. Dyer=: I write pretty rapidly, and so I seldom lose ideas.
When I find my mind running ahead it is usually a warning that what I am
doing is dull. If an idea jumps into my mind that I am afraid I shall
forget, I sometimes stop and jot down a note of it. Usually the best
stuff comes when the mind and the typewriter are well synchronized. I
used to write with a lead pencil, but I have learned to use a typewriter
with less effort and so with better results.
=Walter Prichard Eaton=: I lose ideas because I quit to play golf. When
I am writing I should certainly feel sore if I couldn't hold one till I
got it down. I never use a typewriter--never found one that could spell.
When I use a pen I write so badly that nobody can tell whether it can
spell or not. I can't dictate. I at once begin to write like Daniel
Webster's Bunker Hill Oration.
=E. O. Foster=: I lose ideas because my imagination travels faster than
my typewriter. Of the four channels--pen, pencil, typewriter and
stenographer, the typewriter affords the least check to my imagination.
=Arthur O. Friel=: Yes. Pencil.
=J. U. Giesy=: At times. The typewriter serves me best.
=George Gilbert=: I use the typewriter, because I am skilled on it to
the point where I can write two thousand four hundred words an hour. I
once wrote ten thousand words at one sitting, averaging two thousand an
hour. The story was not revised materially. I gained this skill
transcribing one hundred million words during my long career as an
Associated Press code operator, taking twelve thousand to fifteen
thousand words a night for many years. I can think on the machine
easily.
=Kenneth Gilbert=: While I do not lose ideas because of mechanical
inability to set them down rapidly, I lose enthusiasm for them, and,
perhaps, some of the precious fire that would make them glow stronger. I
find a typewriter the least check on my imagination. I have never tried
a stenographer, but I have long felt that a dictating machine would be
very helpful.
=Holworthy Hall=: Not yet. Pencil.
=Richard Matthews Hallet=: My imagination does not travel at better than
a snail's pace. I could do a cuneiform inscription without the sacrifice
of a single idea. Sometimes I compose on a typewriter and sometimes with
a pen. If you write fast on the typewriter, if you really do bring the
speed dogs into play, and you are a fast thinker, you gain momentum, I
should think. But I always gain momentum at the expense of nearly
everything else. I do at most two thousand words a day, even on re-write
stuff, and going at this pace, you can see that my imagination does not
feel the lag of the writing instruments. A friend of mine leans into the
horn of a dictaphone every morning and sprays vocal folly there; but I
never got courage for that. That horn would follow me in dreams.
=William H. Hamby=: Yes. To me the pen.
=A. Judson Hanna=: I certainly would lose ideas because my imagination
travels faster than my means of recording had I not adopted a plan for
nailing down these fugitive ideas. When an advance idea comes to me I
break off composition instantly, even in the middle of a sentence, and
record the advance idea. Later I run back over the rough draft, pick out
the fugitive ideas and insert them where they are most effective. I
began by writing with a pen, slowly; discarding the pen for the
typewriter, and finally settling down to the use of the pencil on any
scrap of paper that is at hand when the thoughts come, writing so
swiftly that I have trouble in deciphering my writing if I allow it to
become "cold." As my mind works now, I could not use a stenographer. In
fact, the mere presence of another person in the room where I am writing
disconcerts me and disorganizes my train of thought.
=Joseph Mills Hanson=: My imagination seldom travels faster than my
means of recording. I find it easiest to do original writing with a
pencil. The next easiest method is with a typewriter.
=E. E. Harriman=: At times my ideas seem to run down a smooth chute at
lightning speed and no stenographer or human tongue could keep up with
them. I lose some on the way. The machine for me every time.
=Nevil G. Henshaw=: I often lose ideas by not being quick enough to get
them down. For first draft I can't go beyond a pen or pencil.
=Joseph Hergesheimer=: Pen.
=Robert Hichens=: No. I write always with a pen and not very fast.
=R. de S. Horn=: Yes; that is one of the most provoking things about
writing. The imagination so far outspeeds all methods of recording that
I can command.
=Clyde B. Hough=: I am able to express ideas as fast as I can compose
them. Dictation to a stenographer is the easiest method in writing for
me.
=Emerson Hough=: I never have any ideas to lose. Sometimes I write in
longhand, sometimes on the typewriter. I dictated about half of _The
Mississippi Bubble_ direct on the machine in my business office. Wrote
the rest at home between ten o'clock at night and four in the morning.
If you _think_ the medium does not matter, does it?
I don't really see much use in trying to get at these things. Every
fellow writes in his own way, or ought to do so. So far as these things
helping other writers may be concerned, I really don't think there is
much in it. It's a hard enough game, and so far as I can get at it,
experience is the only teacher in it that is worth a cuss. Sometimes not
even experience is worth that much. Advice is nearly always worth a
great deal less.
=A. S. M. Hutchinson=: Not, I think, when I am actually writing.
=Inez Haynes Irwin=: My husband, Will Irwin, believes that difficulty in
the mechanical means of expression makes for lucidity and elegance of
style. He always uses pen or pencil. I think this is only partly true. I
think there are times when it is impossible to get things down with
enough speed. I am sure that sometimes I lose ideas and expressions when
imagination is flowing free and I can not register its outpouring
quickly enough. I can of course get my ideas expressed more quickly when
I dictate to a stenographer. There is no doubt in my mind that a story
gains _directness_, a certain fluency, fluidity and plasticity--and a
quality, which comes from the spoken word alone--in dictation. Perhaps
equally it loses in precision and compression. I started writing with a
pencil; rejected the pencil for the typewriter; the typewriter for
dictation to a stenographer. Now I am writing with the pencil again.
Next month, I may revert to the typewriter. In my opinion an ideal way
to compose would be to dictate the story first and then rewrite the
dictated version with a pencil.
=Will Irwin=: I can not remember ever losing an idea because my means of
recording was not fast enough. In writing fiction, and generally in
writing journalism, I use a pen or lead pencil. I have a tendency to be
diffuse, and a slow and difficult means checks this. I regard the
typewriter and dictaphone as the enemies of style.
=Frederick J. Jackson=: My imagination travels fast, but I get a death
clutch on my ideas. Typewriter is my favorite: cleaner, more effective
copy. Pen next. Pencil too mussy. Stenographers are the bunk. Haven't
found one who can take my stuff right.
=Mary Johnston=: There are ideas too swift for our catching--as yet. I
prefer a soft, black pencil.
=John Joseph=: Yes, my pencil lies beside the machine and I make a great
many notes, otherwise I'd lose many good (?) ideas. The typewriter
affords the least check to the imagination.
=Lloyd Kohler=: Yes, I have often lost ideas because my imagination
travels faster than my means of recording. A pencil or fountain pen
affords the least check. I have never tried the stenographer plan--I'm
afraid I'd be a little self-conscious; gun-shy, you know.
=Harold Lamb=: No, when the imagination travels over a bit of ground it
is always able to return. As for ideas, a penciled note, a word or so,
will bring them back A typewriter gives least check, probably due to
habit.
_Tamen shud!_
=Sinclair Lewis=: Rarely. Typewriter.
=Hapsburg Liebe=: My imagination often travels too fast, and then I make
notes. I use a pencil for writing names of characters and the situation
roughly; the rest I do on a typewriter; _it makes a better, clearer
picture for me to see as I go along_.
=Romaine H. Lowdermilk=: I do lose ideas that way. I can get them down
better with pencil, for it gives opportunity for quick substitution and
marking-out. Still, I do most of the work on a typewriter, as it is more
convenient when it comes to revision (double space). I can't always read
what I write by hand. My imagination works best at night; criticism in
the morning. I do best thinking in hot weather. I don't get up at night
to write but have lost good ideas by not doing so. And I hope there's
something useful in the foregoing!
=Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.=: Not often--not often enough. Ideas are slow
travelers. I wish they could keep up with my fingers on the typewriter.
Typewriter affords the least check, or about the same as a pencil.
=Rose Macaulay=: Yes. Waterman's safety fountain pen.
=Crittenden Marriott=: Pen and stenographer about the same.
=Homer I. McEldowney=: I have a skeleton of my entire story. It is
simply scribbled in a hurry and I keep the pen moving fast enough to
prevent the ideas from getting away before I can rope and hog-tie them.
=Ray McGillivray=: Stenographer. Often she interjects ideas into the
scripts I never even imagined. Still, she's not bad, though a letter
like this would burn out her bearings.
=Helen Topping Miller=: My stories are usually fairly complete in my
mind before I begin to write them. Usually the first thousand words are
so completely formulated that I could recite them before I put a line on
paper. No matter what I am doing--traveling, teaching, going about my
domestic tasks, I am "making up" stories "in my head," as the children
say. I write on a typewriter, usually, though I am able to work as
rapidly with a fountain pen on rough paper. I can not use a pencil.
=Thomas Samson Miller=: I use pen, and sometimes an idea slips in
memory, but nothing of great importance, and if it is best work--work
done over and over--the idea is picked up again.
=Anne Shannon Monroe=: Yes, I am never able to keep up with my ideas;
often I have to stop typing and make a note on a scrap of paper, of
something on ahead, fearful lest I forget it when I come up with it. I
use a typewriter altogether.
=L. M. Montgomery=: I don't think many ideas ever get away from me by
reason of slowness of recording. My aforesaid note-book habit has been
of tremendous value here. I write with a pen and couldn't write with
anything else--at least, as far as prose is concerned. When I write
verse I always write on an ordinary school slate, because of the
facilities for easy erasure. But for prose I want a Waverly pen--this is
not an advertisement--I just can't write with any other! a smooth
unlined paper and a portfolio I can hold on my knee. Then I can sail
straight ahead and keep up with any ideas that present themselves. But
these are only personal idiosyncrasies and have nothing to do with a
writer's success or non-success. So no aspiring beginner need despair
because his or her stationer is not stocked up with Waverly pens!
=Frederick Moore=: I sometimes lose ideas because my imagination travels
too fast. It may be that those ideas are like the fish that got
away--not so big. But just the right angle on a situation will sometimes
slip away and won't come back for days. Then it is not wise to chase it
too hard, for it seems to get out of reach entirely if pressed too
close. It frequently comes back under the queerest circumstances and
when least expected. The writer works all the time--at the theater,
walking, and sometimes when talking with another person on other
subjects. My own hands on the typewriter beat everything in the way of
creating. I have tried all others. The other person, in dictating, seems
to act as a barrier with me. I find myself watching the effect of what I
dictate on that person, or the secretary makes faces or looks bored, or
makes a noise when he breathes, or looks at me. So I have to do it
myself to avoid assault and battery. And I won't allow machine copying,
for I find that if I copy myself, I change the turn of a sentence or add
to something that makes an improvement. And a stretch of writing is more
exhausting than a similar period at the hardest of labor. Only the
writer knows what a sapping, wearing job writing a story happens to be.
That is what makes 'em so cranky.
=Talbot Mundy=: The typewriter seems best, but I am going to try a
dictaphone by way of experiment. As regards the losing of ideas, "when
found make a note of" is probably the remedy. Then the only difficulty
is to force yourself to consult your note-book and, having consulted it,
to link up again the hurriedly made note with the wonderful winged idea
that inspired it.
The only stuff really worth writing is poetry, although I'd hate to have
to read nothing else! The stuff I enjoy reading most of all is
philosophy and metaphysics. Next after which, good books of travel and
treatises on finance and bee-keeping hold the board.
I believe that the apex of exquisite enjoyment is, for instance, reading
Kant or John Wesley and shooting their arguments all to pieces. But I
can't afford to enjoy myself.
=Kathleen Norris=: To "lose ideas" seems to me to imply an untidy sort
of brain. The imagination needed for a story should not be a spasmodic,
incoherent, impulsive sort of business, but an orderly production. A
person who would lose ideas would also lose her purse, her friends, her
petticoat, and eventually, I should suppose, her mind.
=Anne O'Hagan=: I think I'll answer this the other way around, naming
the things that oppose the _most_ check in their order--pen,
stenographer, typewriter, pencil.
=Grant Overton=: I always compose on the typewriter. I should lose ideas
if I had to write by hand, but I generally sit down to a day's work of
possibly three concentrated hours with only a vague idea of what I shall
write about. I may know a sentence or two. I let it build itself up from
moment to moment. All the ideas and most of the pictures grow out of the
moment before.
=Sir Gilbert Parker=: I could not dictate a word, and I never used a
typewriter. All I do is written by hand with a pen.
=Hugh Pendexter=: Often. But they usually come back to me without any
conscious effort to reclaim them. The typewriter is my best medium for
setting down the story. I never use pen, pencil, or dictate. But there
is no medium ever invented that can keep up with a man's imagination and
preserve all the coloring and minutiæ of effects.
=Clay Perry=: I used to lose ideas because of being unable to get them
on paper fast enough, but since I educated my two forefingers to the
hunt and touch system on the typewriter that happens very seldom. Having
done practically all my fiction work for the past five years on a "mill"
and never through dictation, I can not say whether dictation would help
more. A pen or pencil would "cramp my style" very badly, now. I've
synchronized my mind to the "mill." However, I believe this is purely an
artificial, mechanical condition which could be worked out, one way or
another, in necessity.
=Michael J. Phillips=: Newspaper training has disciplined my mind so I
lose nothing through failure of speed to transcribe. It is all right for
some, but I would be afraid of a yarn that forced me to such speed. The
thing would be impossible when I had finished it. Usually use typewriter
and copy all of my own short manuscripts, having longer ones copied by
stenographer. The newspaper game has taught me to dictate either over
the phone or to stenographer; to typewrite; and to write with pencil
with equal freedom. I wouldn't care for a pen. Under the circumstances,
the typewriter is the most practicable, so I use it almost exclusively.
=Walter B. Pitkin=: I lose much through inability to record fast enough.
I work best when typing myself; next best with a pen or pencil. I am
totally unable to dictate anything but the deadest form-letter stuff to
even the most sympathetic stenog! I have two utterly distinct styles and
manners, one when writing freely and one when talking to a secretary or
stenog. The latter is simply awful.
=E. S. Pladwell=: No. My imagination travels fast but I do not lose
ideas because of it. Out of a hundred ideas, five are good. Those five,
if good, need not be forgotten. It works out automatically. I remember a
good idea. The rest can go hang.
Being a newspaper man, I use the typewriter constantly and now I can not
write longhand without a cramp in two minutes.
=Lucia Mead Priest=: Sometimes my thoughts get ahead of me. If they are
not nailed down they are likely never to come again.
I can keep up fairly well--if I do not have to _decipher_ the _next
day_, I am safe.
I do not use the typewriter for several reasons. Mechanical things are
irksome; I am lazy.