CAMBRIDGE - Kilayla Pilon curses her confounding cursive.

"I have horrible penmanship," the 16-year-old author admitted as she sat on the wooden bleachers in front of Galt Collegiate Institute after last class on Thursday afternoon. "Basically, hieroglyphics."

But, luckily, her right-handed longhand is not unbreakable code. Otherwise, the Grade 12 student's first book, "The Prophet's Daughter," would not be available online.

Is that ironic? A 164-page postapocalyptic science fiction work - 62,000 words - that began with a handwritten first-draft on foolscap is, for now, being peddled by the most modern means.

Pilon's first version, scrawled in a smudged smorgasbord of pen and pencil, was delivered into the world in a more modest and archaic mode.

"It was a little pink notebook I got at the dollar store - maybe a hundred empty pages," she said. "I filled it."

Pilon, born in Vancouver, didn't have a laptop she could tote to school last December when she began crafting a short story to keep busy. She figured she'd write it first by hand and then transfer to it over to a computer. So she wrote until her pinky ached.

Then all the aspiring author, a "Hunger Games" and Harry Potter enthusiast, had to do was go back and decipher a hundred pages of her tightly crammed scratchings without the aid of a personal Rosetta Stone.

"Fun," she deadpanned.

But the finger-fed approach fed her creative muse. The slow flow of lead and ink allowed her ideas to unravel gently, rather than bounce awkwardly off the rattling character buttons. The book grew and evolved, like its hero, Arin Lovelock.

"Write it, thentype it," she said.

"That was the most amazing tip I've ever gotten. That's how it managed to create itself."

A fountain pen is her key to unlocking inspiration. Once freed, she can tame those visions further with a typing tablet.

"A lot of people I know take their notes on Google Docs or on their phones or laptops," Pilon said, glancing at her high school. "Some teachers say you have to handwrite it. But a lot of teachers don't."

Pilon is working on a sequel to "The Prophet's Daughter," which led her to do a signing at a Kitchener book store earlier this month.

She's only on Chapter 2 of the second book. So far, it's going slowly.

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"I'm typing it right now," she admitted.

"I'm thinking of switching back to handwritten. It's just a lot easier to get it out."