The Great American Novel...created in longhand, edited one keystroke at a time

by Nancy Sackheim

You've written the first draft of your novel (also known as the Great American Novel) in long hand, but you realize it will never be the Great American Novel unless you make some changes.  Who are you kidding?  The manuscript needs a major rewrite, a second draft that cleans up all those meandering maundering sentences you painstakingly committed to paper in your more or less legible handwriting. 

Making changes in a manuscript is a grueling exercise, an almost unendurable exercise if the writer continues to create in longhand.  What seemed elegant and creative the first time around has devolved to pretentious and self indulgent in the second draft, which needs to be finished two weeks ago.  

Time to pull out the big editing guns, an app or program that will not only convert your loopy scrawl to text, but editable text.

There are a number of apps and programs that will convert longhand chicken scratch into editable text.  Microsoft's OneNote is free and may already be on your computer.  The handwriting can be scanned or written live on a touchscreen.  Evernote is another app that will allow you to convert your handwriting to text, thus potentially truncating the process to less than half the time it took for the first draft.  Give yourself a break from the cursive that has brought you this far, find a handwriting to editable text program that is a good fit and the next thing you know...you'll be starting your third draft of the soon-to-be Great American Novel.