The Art of a Rough Draft Leads to Lessons of the Day

I haven’t spoken much about it lately, but I still meet monthly with a group of senior citizens for a creative writing class. The size of the group ebbs and flows, but the energy remains constant (we have a third anthology in the works and another reading scheduled for January). I continue to be amazed not only with their stories but often with their methods.

One woman always types her pieces on thin paper in cursive script. Another brings essays revised using old-school tactics: sissor-cut passages scotch-taped over an earlier version of a draft. But last Saturday when I sat next to the oldest member of the group, I witnessed a new kind of “rough” draft (don’t think “tactile,” think abbreviated).

This writer is 95 years old. Her hands shake, but that doesn’t stop her from putting pencil to paper. She often comes with a handwritten draft, but this time I noticed something different about her copy: words in struggling script on the top half of the page followed by row after row of loops and curved lines, right angles and tiny circles. Like Arabic but not.

I worried at first, thinking she’d fallen into scribbling and had not noticed. But as she tapped her pencil along each symbol in quiet study, as if she were reading word by word, I realized she’d written her draft in shorthand. When I asked her about it, she said she can read her shorthand easier than her own writing these days. Determined to do the work, it didn’t matter how she got the story down on paper, just that she got it down.

Shorthand is a lost art, I am sure, and I wish I had taken a photo of this draft with its transformation from writing I recognized to short, succinct strokes that illustrated storytelling in a magical way. Still fascinated by the image the next day, I did what any writer would: research.

Here’s where I am ever grateful for libraries within walking distance and for compact shelving that houses old books. I found a shorthand dictionary with a list of 19,000 “most popular words” in 1930 correspondence, like festoon and quinquennial (!) and another book entitled Thomas Natural Shorthand.

I can’t imagine trying to learn shorthand, (though I wonder if that might up my word count in a single day of noveling). But after reading just a few pages of Natural Shorthand, it’s clear that Mr. Thomas understood the challenges of writing in general. His five “Suggestions for Mastering Shorthand” fit right in as good advice for writers today.

1. “Be systematic. A single week of planned, systematic study is worth a month of haphazard endeavor.” My flawed efforts revealed: some days “haphazard” is systematic.

2. “Select good equipment. Use the best writing materials available. A good fountain pen is preferred [and] good, quality standard notebooks.” So, I will always take a detour down the aisle of school supplies in the grocery store in the name of good study.

3. “Form correct writing habits. Sit erect, with your feet flat on the floor….” As slouching on a couch during mid-afternoon hours encourages…well, haphazard study.

4. “Develop reading ability. Practice reading…material until you acquire the skill that permits you to give your listeners the meaning intended. To be an expert shorthand writer, you must first be a good reader. This ability is important.” I repeat: to be a good writer, be a devoted reader.

5. “Decide now to be an expert. Your future lies in your own hands. If you want it, you have to work it.

Sometimes you show up at class as the teacher, but you leave as the student.