Print Out Your Writing
There is power in the print-out!
That Word doc you keep typing in?
Print it out.
Yep. The whole thing. Print it.
Oh, you don’t have a printer?
Think about buying one.
Seriously!
Besides my laptop, the tool I use most often for my writing is my printer.
I’ve had this Brother printer for 12 years now. Yes, the ink can be expensive, but I only have to change the cartridge once a year, and I print a lottttt of shit.
Black Friday is coming up. It’s 2023. What are you waiting for? Buy a printer.
There are plenty of articles out there that will claim that printing your writing will allow you to become a more objective editor of your own work. And while that’s very true, that’s only part of the appeal for me.
Here’s the reality: printing my work just makes writing more fun. Marking up a piece of paper feels sort of ~enchanting~ in a way that typing on my laptop will never feel!
Reminds me of something the poet Mary Ruefle once said about her love for writing by hand:
“The whole wrist-moving action is why I write in the first place. I don’t like tennis, or knitting. I like writing with my hands.”
So let’s get handsy, shall we? (With our writing, that is.)
Here are my recommendations for a successful print-out.
BIG MARGIN ENERGY
Make the margins bigger so you can write all over them. I find that 1.5” margins all the way around the page give me enough room to play with my colorful pens.
I also like to increase my font size to 14, which is something the writer Chelsea Hodson recommended in her Morning Writing Club newsletter:
“Printing the pages out single spaced in font size 10 makes the page look impenetrable, complete. But what you want is something you can cut into—perceiving this visually is the first step. We have to see the space between the words, space between the lines—this reminds us of how malleable our work remains in this phase, because we’ve only just begun.”
BINDER + THREE-HOLE PUNCH
I loooooove slipping my printouts into a Barbie-pink binder so I can bring them everywhere with me. If I’m revising one short story or essay—something that’s too short to warrant a gargantuan three-ring binder—I’ll slip the pages into a three-prong folder. I cover all of my folders in stickers.
My favorite move: I’ll bring the printout to the library with a big bag of pens and highlighters and leave my phone and computer behind completely. Nothing helps me focus quite like that.
FUN WITH HIGHLIGHTERS
One of my favorite parts of Matt Bell’s book Refuse To Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts, which is our next Book Club for Writers pick, is his section about revising with a pack of highlighters.
Some things Matt Bell recommends highlighting while you revise your printout:
Explanations
Backstories
Weakest sentences in every paragraph (omg)
Strongest sentences (an ongoing craft lesson!)
Wherever you’re moved (because we have to know what not to cut)
Also, no one asked, but these are my favorite highlighters.
GO AHEAD AND PRINT
I’m telling you! It’ll make all the difference in the way you revise.
And you can always recycle the paper later.
LET’S DISCUSS A BOOK TOGETHER
On Sunday, October 29 at 1PM EST, my Book Club for Writers will meet on Zoom to discuss Refuse to Be Done, Matt Bell’s book on drafting and revision. While the word “novel” is in this book’s subtitle, I’d recommend this title to anyone who’s curious about writing a book-length work!
HOW DO I JOIN THE BOOK CLUB?
Become a paid newsletter subscriber to join. Subscribe for the month for just $5, or save 27% and subscribe for the whole year. (NOTE: subscription prices are going up in 2024, so if you want to join, there’s never been a better time.)