Note: I won't be in class tomorrow and I'm sorry. I try not to get catastrophically ill during the first month of classes, but, alas, this sinus infection is getting worse by the day.
I had a friend once in high school who would only write stories longhand. She said it helped her to be able to see the words, even when she had them crossed out. The delete button had too much finality for her liking. She was a lousy friend and a mediocre writer, so I never paid much attention to her peculiar creative process, but Baron makes me think she may have been on to something.
My all-time favorite xkcd take on the evolution (or devolution, as some would argue) of writing can be found here. Indeed, the sentiment expressed in the post is almost entirely opposite Baron's early reminder of what in incredible invention the pencil was. We, as modern writers, tend to look on past technologies as bygone eras, useless but for their effect of paving the way to modern writing methods.
For example:
How we feel writing longhand:
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The typewriter, as Baron points out, was considered "so threatening...to the traditional literatus that in 1938 the New York Times editorialized against the machine that depersonalized writing" (emphasis mine). How different is that from the opinions of modern word processors. But how, I wondered as I read his piece, can something depersonalize writing if its only function is to facilitate that transfer of words from your mind to the page? What about pen and paper makes writing more personal that keyboard and screen? Does our romantic outlook as writers really so define our ability to adapt to new methods of annotating our thoughts? And does it hamstring us along the way?
In all seriousness, the universal in the changing reactions to new writing methods is the fear that, somehow, this new method will make writing less sacred than the method it replaces. Writers attach a deep significance to the way in which they writer (much like my friend from high school). To displace that sacred form is not to steal the words from the writers head, but to convince them that without their pencil/pen/typewriter/computer, the words are not worth writing.
And in that sense, my old classmates dislike of the delete button is just as valid as Baron's idea of the innovation and evolution of writing technology. Both are thoughts on new technologies, and while one is far more eloquently expressed, the other is more visceral and, in that way, more effective as an emotional plea.
Here is another favorite comic of mine, dealing with writers and their processes, much more than with their mediums. However irrelevant to the topic, go ahead and have a laugh: XKCD - On Writing (bonus round)
I really like this sentence:
ReplyDelete"To displace that sacred form is not to steal the words from the writers head, but to convince them that without their pencil/pen/typewriter/computer, the words are not worth writing."
It shows this amazingly powerful connection to our writing tools, to our process, and to our rituals of writing. That's essentially what it becomes: a ritual; so when someone tries to tell us a new way to do it (in other words, a new literacy) we kick and scream because its not natural, it defies physics or time and space, but then we get the hang of it and never go back - we find new ways to say those words that truly are worth saying, and in a more effective manner, perhaps.
/sentimental
I enjoyed this, while finding it slightly humorous because just before I sat down to read your blog I was debating the method I'd use to write my next paper. I currently don't have a computer so I've been using various ones at the library and I've found that there are some desktops that are delightful to use while there are others (like this one *cough *cough) whose keys stick and annoy me to write with. I literally thought "If I write on that computer my paper is going to be terrible." It's a strange but true fact that the tools we habitually use to write define HOW (imagine italics, I couldn't figure it out) we write. It's interesting we allow technology that power, but I suppose that writing itself is a form of technology so I shouldn't be so surprised.
ReplyDeleteThe rush of blood flowing through the veins of the hand that rested on this paper, sounds much more poetic than her fingers typed keys that transferred letters onto a screen. Yet, no one can deny the romantic story of You've Got Mail, an updated version of the handwritten letter version of The Shop Around the Corner. We romanticize the notion of writing because it is a personal act. Although writing a letter or a postcard by hand might seem individual or personal to the reader/writer, I find it much more personal what we are doing now. By exchanging ideas online there is a sense of vulnerability about the fact that everyone can see it, anyone could access it, that is if your blog is made pubic. I can't help but wonder if it is not the rhetorical tools we use but the rhetorical situation in which we are using them that makes writing romantic.
ReplyDelete