First Books: How Did Hemingway Do It?

- from Susan

When reading has been integral to your life and books are your most trusted friends, it’s hard to remember a first, or even a set of firsts. Just a couple of weeks ago, a LadyKillers topic I drew dealt with books we remember from childhood, even books that helped form us as crime writers. I loved so many of that week’s blog entries and realized for the umpteenth time that we who write professionally, or aim to, love books the way other people love fast cars, fashion, or chocolate. (The fact that writers also love these other wonders of life doesn’t detract from my point – it’s possible to obsess about more than one thing.)

What I remember most vividly about the first novel I wrote is that, it being 1976 or so, I did it on a typewriter. I am a terrible, two-finger (three, actually) typist, which means I have to look at the keyboard as my fingers hover in search of the correct letter. Looking at the keyboard mean I’m not looking at the paper to see a blunder until perhaps three lines later. Awkward sentence structures scream out at me when I reread a page, and the realization that the sentence order in a paragraph is wrong, or that the last sentence of the paragraph is really the first sentence of the next plague me to this day. But in 1978 it meant I had to retype the entire page. Probably for the fourth or fifth time. No wonder that I rationalized some crude writing, word choices that, on reflection, weren’t precise or strong enough, or paragraphs that went on far too long.

I got about three quarters of the way through that first novel before giving up. The reasons I abandoned it had everything to do with the mechanics of getting it on the page. The next one, a pretty advanced idea for the time, was a biotech thriller, and it, too, died in a wash of paper before I’d written the climactic scene.

Today, the e-book world is overrun with self-published fiction by people who no longer have to struggle with Wite-Out and carbon paper, and the fear of losing the only copy of a 500-page work. In theory, having been computer-generated, these e-books should be free of the kinds of errors I committed back in the 70s. So it surprises me to hear their authors shrug off their published typos, mis-spellings, and inconsistencies, saying they’re happy to correct them and re-boot their books when readers point them out. I guess I thought the wonders of computer programs – and they are wonders to someone who remembers the Before Time – eliminated the temptation to turn a blind eye to small editing mistakes. Except for the common mistake of typing “pubic” for “public,” which I almost missed in a university annual report I wrote on a computer in 1990!

 

Comments

[Camille Minichino]

Some typos are more fun than others!

I never thought of that point, Susan -- that we should be seeing fewer, or 0, typos now. Doubly aggravating!

I remember living in a dorm in grad school and going down to the dining room where everyone was carrying her thesis under her arm, afraid to leave the only copy alone upstairs!

[Susan C Shea]

Camille, that's a great image - all these young women linked physically to their thoughts and their hopes for success. Would make a funny cartoon!

[Margaret Lucke]

A writer friend told me about a coworker at her day job who bought one of the early PC's. He announced that he planned to become a writer since now that he had a word processor, writing would no longer be work. Wish that had proved true for me!

Susan, I saw that particular typo in the first sentence on the first page of a published book. One of the few times a typo has made me laugh out loud.

[Susan C Shea]

Peggy, The FIRST sentence? And it made it through to print? Now, there's poor proofreading. I'm a pretty decent proofreader if only in self-defense. And working for non-profits (and writing in the president's name), I got really paranoid about the possibilities for horrible typos, the worst of which was that one.

[Margaret Lucke]

That's my recollection. Certainly it was in the first (short) paragraph. I wish I knew the name of the book, but I spotted the typo as I was flipping through books in a bookstore and I recall only that it was a biography of someone in the arts.

As a fellow proofreader, I know how easy it is to miss gaffes in obvious places, like headlines, while burrowing deep into the document in pursuit of the errors lurking there.

[Michael A. Black]

Ah, the bygone days of the typewriter . . . When writers were writers, and they had to retype the whole page to eliminate the discovered typo . . . I must confess to a sincere admiration for those who had the tenacity to pound out their manuscripts on those old manual and electric typewriters. With computers of today I think we all have it so much easier, but the bottom line is you still have to have the drive to get it down on paper . . . or in an e-file. Good post.

[Priscilla]

OK, confession time. I became a much better writer with the computer. Hand-written things were terminally self-indulgent--and barely readable.The typewriter was too mechanical. For some odd reason, the computer gave me much needed objectivity while letting me type horribly with minimal frustation. But no matter what method we use, line editing is still part of being a professional.

[Susan C Shea]

Priscilla, I think I write better on a computer too, for mechanical and editor's eye reasons. And I totally agree with you about line editing!