"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Ruminations on Writing Spaces

When I was young, I remember writing my first stories in colored folders filled with loose leaf paper (better than notebooks, since I could add or removes pages as I needed).  I wrote in my bedroom, at the kitchen table, on the couch, on the stairs, in the corn crib of our family farm, and occasionally in the grove behind our house.  My grandfather, who had a wood shop, made me a portable "lap desk" that could be used both to write on and to store works-in-progress in an inside compartment.  It even had a handle on the side so I could carry it anywhere.

Nowadays, I have a writing folder on my laptop, and that brings with it all the legibility and no-hassles editing that computer technology can provide.  I have subfolders to divide my work by long or short story, poetry, drama, or screen work, and my computer makes it much easier for me to dabble with different media.  When I wanted to make a screenplay out of a novella I'd written, it was incredibly handy to copy and paste sections into a new document and adapt it for my new purpose, rather than copying laboriously by hand.

Despite these advantages, I still hand write a great deal.  First of all, a binder filled with paper, pockets, and pencils is easy to bring wherever I choose, and I don't need to worry about how long my battery will last.  It's also convenient to pick up and put down on short notice - my job includes a certain amount of downtime, and I like to write when I'm free, but I have to be able to spring into action at the drop of a hat.  Springing is ill-advised if there's an expensive computer in my lap.

More than that, however, initial writing seems to come more easily for me when I do it by hand.  For some reason, my mind feels freer to explore.  That seems odd, since a Word document allows infinite opportunity to do and redo to one's satisfaction.  Yet, it feels natural for me to sit down to a fresh sheet of paper and simply begin writing.  I hardly ever maintain a steady flow when I use my computer - unless I have a rough draft sitting beside my laptop, ready to be typed.

I think part of my issue is that, especially in early stages of writing, I often like to pull myself in different directions, and I like to be able to keep my varying ideas on hand, in case I want to incorporate a previously discarded idea later.  I like scribbling notes in the margins and musing about what order in which I want to arrange my assortment of stanzas.  While I suppose I could open multiple documents for one work or be less generous with the "delete" button, I have a hard time operating that way on a computer.  My laptop tends to be the place where I type my rough drafts, where I work in the notes I've added and maybe take a short detour in a new direction.  As I edit, I might remove, replace, or add sections, but only after I've already written my initial words and copied them into the computer - after my eyes have passed over them often enough to see that they're ineffective or incomplete.  Between this important condition and the pluses I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I can't imagine myself going wholly computerized anytime soon.

(On a side note, I wrote this posting entirely on my laptop in one sitting, with no college-ruled assistance.  School work, it seems, plays by different rules.)