![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=88.8){kind=small}
Modern Writing
When was it that we set down our pens and took up the keys?
I remember when I was young, getting my very own typewriter and loving that thing (literally) to a clattering, leaky, noisy death by rattling out day by day one of those sprawling middle school epics that we used to write when talking to friends and family seemed a tall task when life came to bite down. But for the life of me, I can't remember ever writing... REALLY writing, with a pencil. Can you?
Here and there, while on the bus or in the margins of other things, I've written (in my opinion) some pretty darn entertaining ideas and the seeds of stories that pop up when I'm away from a typewriter or computer, but (with little to no exception) I can't think of anything that I really carried out on paper. Even if it started there. Why not? Sometimes I think that writers today have slowly regrown an umbilical cord that links us to our keyboards as the superior method of jotting down our thoughts and the stories that come unearthed like fossils from the aether. Sure, it's a lot faster and there's usually the niceties of spell-checks and thesaurus programs (not to mention Dictionary.com <3), but does that take something away?
I have a very dear friend who writes, when the whim takes her, like a madwoman whose ear is pressed to those fossils from the midspace. When she's writing it's nearly impossible to get her attention. She shuts down to distraction and really WRITES, it's fantastic. Matter of fact, if you need to get her ear, it's not a bad idea to bang pots together and start rattling doorhandles as a more effective method than the regular old "Hey, would you like some cocoa?", or "Help! Where's the damn toiletpaper??" (in the latter case, you'd better just hope she mysteriously left some under the bathroom sink that you managed to glaze over in your desperation). In all honesty, I do this too... though to a lesser extent, since I'm of a more anxious nature than I'd normally like to think or admit.
All matters of textual writing style aside, the main difference between her writing methods and mine are pretty much nil except for one thing: When it's a story screaming and rattling in her brain till it just NEEDS to get out, she writes with a pen on lined paper, and the whole thing ends up on a legal pad or wire-ringed notebook. She's like a modern-day Whitman. Writing on the computer keyboard is secondary, rather than primary medium.
Admittedly, this prolly doesn't sound too important (or even relevant) to anyone, but it makes me think. What happened to us as writers? What would Emerson think about us, typing away with all our energies flowing through the umbilical cord of our fingers and powercords into a cold machine that, with the slightest provocation (spilled coffee, anyone?) make our work disapear with a spark and a fizzle?
I take my sketchbook and pad of writing paper into the woods with me when I hike, along with a sandwich (maybe) and some coffee (usually). It's rarer and rarer that I get to do that, since hiking with company kinda kills the opportunity to disconnect from all distraction and really just sit in the shade somewhere and write or sketch. I'd personally laugh at anyone who brought their damn laptop on such an excursion, snubbing them outright as technobabbies... but then I'd go home later that night and I'd connect again, not thinking twice. After all, typing is easier on my hands by an enormous leap compared to using a pen and paper.
Did we lose something? Maybe. Probably. Enviroment dictates appropriate culture after all, but I can't help but feel like the powerplug and the keyboard are somehow inferior by far to the cramping muscles and stained notebook stories (even if there are a million places with free WiFi).
I remember when I was young, getting my very own typewriter and loving that thing (literally) to a clattering, leaky, noisy death by rattling out day by day one of those sprawling middle school epics that we used to write when talking to friends and family seemed a tall task when life came to bite down. But for the life of me, I can't remember ever writing... REALLY writing, with a pencil. Can you?
Here and there, while on the bus or in the margins of other things, I've written (in my opinion) some pretty darn entertaining ideas and the seeds of stories that pop up when I'm away from a typewriter or computer, but (with little to no exception) I can't think of anything that I really carried out on paper. Even if it started there. Why not? Sometimes I think that writers today have slowly regrown an umbilical cord that links us to our keyboards as the superior method of jotting down our thoughts and the stories that come unearthed like fossils from the aether. Sure, it's a lot faster and there's usually the niceties of spell-checks and thesaurus programs (not to mention Dictionary.com <3), but does that take something away?
I have a very dear friend who writes, when the whim takes her, like a madwoman whose ear is pressed to those fossils from the midspace. When she's writing it's nearly impossible to get her attention. She shuts down to distraction and really WRITES, it's fantastic. Matter of fact, if you need to get her ear, it's not a bad idea to bang pots together and start rattling doorhandles as a more effective method than the regular old "Hey, would you like some cocoa?", or "Help! Where's the damn toiletpaper??" (in the latter case, you'd better just hope she mysteriously left some under the bathroom sink that you managed to glaze over in your desperation). In all honesty, I do this too... though to a lesser extent, since I'm of a more anxious nature than I'd normally like to think or admit.
All matters of textual writing style aside, the main difference between her writing methods and mine are pretty much nil except for one thing: When it's a story screaming and rattling in her brain till it just NEEDS to get out, she writes with a pen on lined paper, and the whole thing ends up on a legal pad or wire-ringed notebook. She's like a modern-day Whitman. Writing on the computer keyboard is secondary, rather than primary medium.
Admittedly, this prolly doesn't sound too important (or even relevant) to anyone, but it makes me think. What happened to us as writers? What would Emerson think about us, typing away with all our energies flowing through the umbilical cord of our fingers and powercords into a cold machine that, with the slightest provocation (spilled coffee, anyone?) make our work disapear with a spark and a fizzle?
I take my sketchbook and pad of writing paper into the woods with me when I hike, along with a sandwich (maybe) and some coffee (usually). It's rarer and rarer that I get to do that, since hiking with company kinda kills the opportunity to disconnect from all distraction and really just sit in the shade somewhere and write or sketch. I'd personally laugh at anyone who brought their damn laptop on such an excursion, snubbing them outright as technobabbies... but then I'd go home later that night and I'd connect again, not thinking twice. After all, typing is easier on my hands by an enormous leap compared to using a pen and paper.
Did we lose something? Maybe. Probably. Enviroment dictates appropriate culture after all, but I can't help but feel like the powerplug and the keyboard are somehow inferior by far to the cramping muscles and stained notebook stories (even if there are a million places with free WiFi).
