fannywrites

Recently, I heard Patti Smith interviewed on NPR about Sam Shepard, her good friend who passed away in July of ALS. That’s when I learned that he wrote either in longhand or by typing on a typewriter. He didn’t use a computer. That’s mind boggling. This playwright, writer and actor wrote without a computer in this day and age.  I also learned that he seldom did extensive revisions. I think that’s why his method worked for him.  It is so difficult to revise without word processing. You have to retype whole passages or pages. You can’t change the sequence of scenes easily.

In his final days, Sam Shepard dictated Spy of the First Person into a tape recorder and his daughters typed the manuscript. A writer to the end of his life!