I don't have any real justification for it, but when I was about to start on my latest novel in February of 2025 I decided I was going to write it out longhand, which I'd never done before.

Maybe part of it is that I spend all day in front of a computer for work and didn't want writing to be more of the same. And maybe the speed and ease of typing makes me more inclined to fill space with things that aren't necessary. But ultimately I probably just thought it would be neat to have a whole book written out by hand.

Well, 15 months later, I finished writing it out. It shouldn't have taken that long but there were long gaps where I let the notebook gather dust for months at a time. It was only after my break-up when I stopped going out or talking to people that I started putting every free minute into it and got across the finish line.

Phase two now, which is equally fanciful and hard-to-justify, is transcribing it with my manual typewriter. I'm not doing any meaningful revisions as I do this. It's just kind of fun and produces what I think is a pretty cool-looking manuscript. I guess it does force a pretty close reading to remind myself of anything I may have forgotten about.

Hunter S. Thompson supposedly typed out The Great Gatsby once just to absorb the style. Don't know how that relates to my situation but it does pop into my head.