Yeah, well, it’s not the craziest of things to do.
Yes, that is a Batman belt holding my book open on the slope.
I know it looks a bit nuts, but I like to copy out books. And I’m not the only one, Stephen Fry once said he has typed out a P.G Wodehouse novel.
I prefer to write things out by hand, though. It’s calming. A kind of mediation. I started when I was a child, when I wanted to write but wasn’t always sure what to write. I would copy out poems and Shakespeare sonnets. When I was at secondary school I wrote out whatever play we were studying, and any piece of prose or song lyric I came across that resonated with me. To write out any old novel with a lot of functional scenes or banal but necessary conversations would bore me, though. It needs to be a classic or more of an epic poem, or a play full of beautiful combinations of words. I am currently reading and listening to Ulysses by James Joyce, and have found quite early on the need to take so many notes and impress so many lines into my memory, I’ve decided to copy it out so I can read on ahead without having to keep stopping.
The longest single piece I have done was Wuthering Heights (107,945 words), and Ulysses is a bit of a doorstop (265,222), so this may take some time.
In days of yore, I’d have made an awesome scribe. Except they were generally dudes. And often monk dudes at that.
Lucy
Sarah
Wish I could write things out by hand. I envy your handwriting stamina 🙂
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Thanks, I have a callus on my pen finger, which I’m bizarrely proud of 🙂
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I think there’s something in this. I know myself that there’s a quality to writing by hand over tapping onto a keyboard, that makes me feel more connected to the process. Maybe writing out someone else’s words is like reading but on a more physical level. After all, when people learn to play the piano, they learn by playing other people’s music – playing it, not just studying manuscripts or listening. Maybe it’s a bit like that.
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You’re definitely onto something there, I never thought about it as music. It is a case of flow and feel and not just watching words go by. If I read a book, listened to the audio book and then copied it out, I think I’d know it in all ways possible!
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A proofreader if I ever heard of one! I even baulk at copying my hours into my spreadsheet so I can check my pay!
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Ha! Oddly enough, I once had a job proofreading at a printers. we mainly did trade journals, and newsletters for churches and things like the WI. It made me want to scoop my eyes out.
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You’re right, that does look nuts! That said I can understand the motivation… I could imagine doing this for certain passages, but not a whole book. I have to admit to never even making notes while reading, which I think is a policy I have to review. It made Gravity’s Rainbow even more challenging than necessary. Ulysses is on the TBR pile, but to be honest, probably right at the bottom.
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Hello 🙂 Yep, nuts! I do generally just do it for passages, but now and again, there’s a book where almost every passage wants me to write is down. Plus, I forget who people are!
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