Donna Tartt drafts her novels by hand, in spiral notebooks, with pens and colored pencils. The messier the pages get, the closer she is to a finished draft. The physical process breaks down like this.
Longhand First, Always
Before anything reaches a keyboard, Tartt writes it out by hand. She scratches things out, underlines in different colors, and cuts the paper up with scissors so she can move sentences and paragraphs around. When the handwritten pages get too messy to follow, she types them into the computer and prints fresh copies.
The mess is the method. Rearranging by hand lets her feel the shape of a scene before it hardens on a screen.
The Notebook System
Tartt buys notebooks in the fall, when school supplies hit the shelves, and stocks up on ones with distinctive covers. The covers do real work. Each pattern is a memory cue, so she can recall which notebook holds which scene.
In the fall when the school supplies are in the store, I'll tend to buy lots of them so I can get just the kind I want: silly patterns and colors are, for me, an important aide memoire, a mental filing system.
Donna Tartt, to Omnivoracious
While finishing The Goldfinch, she's said, several of her notebooks had Beatles album covers, which made it easy to think 'I wrote that in the Hard Day's Night notebook.'
Color-Coded Drafts
Once she's typing, Tartt prints each draft on a different color of paper. For The Goldfinch she tracked a pink draft, a grey draft, and a blue draft, so she always knew which stack was newest. She's credited the color-coding trick to an old French teacher. Read the full Donna Tartt writing routine for how this fits the wider process.
What You Can Steal
- Draft by hand if the screen rushes you. Longhand slows the sentence down.
- Build a physical filing system. Different notebooks, different covers, instant recall.
- Color-code your drafts. You'll never lose track of the newest version.
- Let the page get messy. Scissors and cross-outs beat a clean file that hides your thinking.