The mechanics of writing

On Desert Island Discs the other day, Peter Ackroyd chose a pen and some paper as his luxury. ‘Do you write longhand?’ asked Kirsty Young. Ackroyd’s reply was really intriguing: yes, he does write longhand – but only his fiction. To write one genre by hand but another on computer might seem bizarre, including to Ackroyd himself, who responds to my enquiry about why he works this way with an admission that he doesn’t know. He is, though, far from unique in having a strange approach to his craft. Many writers have been very … how can we put this … ‘particular’ in the way they turn words in their head into words on the page.

In centuries past, of course, the ‘pen versus typewriter versus computer’ question didn’t arise. Even then, however, there was room for quirkiness. When Jane Austen started writing she used very small pieces of paper, so she could hide them under a blotter in case anyone entered the room.