That week last fall when my laptop died mid-chapter and I wrote the ending by hand

I was working on a short story for a local contest, 30 pages in, and my laptop just bricked on me. No warning, no backup, just a black screen and this sinking feeling in my gut. I spent the next three days writing the ending in a spiral notebook at a diner downtown, using a $2 pen from the register. The weird thing is, the hand written version turned out way better than the original draft. Has anyone else had a tech failure actually improve their writing process?

2 comments

2 Comments

terry15d ago

That happened to me once but with a different twist. My phone fell in a puddle right as I was trying to type out an idea for a poem. I ended up scrawling it on a napkin with a grease pencil from the burger place next door. The napkin had this weird texture that made me write slower and more careful. The poem ended up winning a little online contest and I still have that napkin taped to my fridge. Something about the physical act of writing really does change how the words come out.

mark6115d ago

Wait did your buddy ever try that?