The coffee shop is packed with them: young, hip, ironic writer types purporting to work on short stories, dissertations, even a couple of novels. Small wobbly tables support MacBook Pros with Retina Displays, along with half empty mocha latte cups, and the latest version of iPhone. The human operators of these machines are creative and intelligent, if somewhat distracted. In between all of their tweeting, posting, and emailing, some actually manage to write! Beyond the technophiles, in the quiet back corner, sits a writer with a plain black Moleskine notebook and an ordinary-looking enamel pen. She’s not stylish, hip or modern; there isn’t an LCD screen within reach. And yet her hand moves steadily, and the pages slowly fill with… words. It’s the classic tortoise versus the hare, and it looks like writing by hand will win this race. Writers like Truman Capote and Susan Sontag are well known for their writing habits and use of specific pencils, pens, and places. Capote was habitual in his longhand writing, completing first and second versions by hand before switching to the typewriter. Sontag demonstrated loyal devotion to the felt tip pen, pencil, and yellow legal pad. And it continually astounds that Nabokov wrote Lolita by hand, on index cards no less. Looking beyond the eccentricities of famous writers, there is real science to support writing by hand. We first learn the alphabet by seeing and singing the individual letters; however, it’s not until the child practices forming each letter by hand that…

In its fifth year the Ithaca Literary Festival, Spring Writes, presents a weekend full of workshops, readings, and performances. Check the calendar for the full schedule of activities. Here’s a few highlights to entice to you to one of the dozen venues downtown to participate in the festivities. There are more than 30 events to inspire you. Sponsored by the Community Arts Partnership in Tompkins County, all events are free and open to the public. Friday, May 2, 5:30pm-7:00pm at Buffalo Street Books The Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts presents an all-local group of past and current Saltonstall Fellows. They include Sarah Jefferis (2014 Non-fiction), Fran Markover (2010 Poetry), and Bob Proehl (2013 Fiction). Saturday May 3, 10am-11:45am at Buffalo Street Books If you’ve ever heard the expression “Write what you know” and thought, “Hey, I don’t know anything worth writing about,” this is for you! Especially geared to teens with an interest in storytelling, three local fiction writers — Anne Mazer, Shawn Goodman, and Rob Costello — will lead a fun and freewheeling workshop designed to introduce some of the basic writing tools that can help any writer spin a good story out of practically anything. Pen, paper, and imagination are all that’s required! * Anne Mazer is the author of 45 books for young readers: The Salamander Room, The Oxboy, The Amazing Days of Abby Hayes series and more. * Shawn Goodman is the award-winning author of the Young Adult novels, Kindness for Weakness, and Something Like Hope. * Rob Costello has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young…

How we spend our days is who we are. Or maybe it’s how we’d like to spend our days. And while some people measure their credibility with degrees, workshops and residencies, or publishing credits, here’s a list of my own criteria to help you decide if you’re a “real writer.” You feel naked without a notebook and pen. Worse, you find yourself isolated and scribbling away at parties, family gatherings, and work meetings. You read like you’re holding an X-acto knife, ready to carve out anything useful or impressive, so that you can study techniques and strategies. You study book releases and NYT Best Seller’s lists the way a fisherman studies his tide charts. Knowing where trends are moving toward, or away from, is critical as you pin yourself and your work to the shifting literary map. The favorites bar on your web browser has links to GalleyCat, Theseaurus.com, Fake Name Generator, word frequency counter, or Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips. Whether you’re looking for the perfect word, the perfect name, or the proper use of lay vs. lie, you’ve placed these sites at your fingertips. You belong to a writers’ group or guild, like Association of Writers and Writing Programs, The Author’s Guild, Society of Childrens Book Writers and Illustrators, or a local group. You have read your work out loud in front of audiences, with or without Ativan. You won’t answer the telephone when it rings, but you’ll send multi-paragraph text messages composed with complex sentences, anecdotes,…