People have been writing things down for several thousand years, and telling stories for goodness knows how long. Certainly now the bulk of our storytelling is done via the written word, though oral traditions are still alive (open mic nights, reading to children etc). Most of my readers will be familiar with the Brothers Grimm, or at least some of the stories they recorded. Two hundred years ago, with industrialisation changing the ways in which people lived, they were prescient in collecting orally trasmitted tales with roots going way back, and without their efforts perhaps we would not have those stories today. What will become of the stories we tell now?
There are many issues tangled up here. One is the act of storytelling - by what means do we share what we have to say? - another, the nature of those stories - are we more individualised and isolated now through devoting our time to personal items of technology, or has it made us more globally collaborative? - do we tell stories to each other by mouth, or via our keyboards? - and how long will these stories last, and where will they go?
I hope to post about some of these things in the coming weeks.
Expect some level of haphazardousness, if that's a word. If not, it should be.
***
In keeping with the two main threads running throughout thig blog - the uses of technology, and approaches to writing - I made this short list:
Evolution of writing technologies (or, sometimes the way forwards is the way back)
- handwriting
- typewriters (manual, electric, electronic)
- word processors
- portable electronics (WPs, notepads, PDAs, laptops, netbooks, iOS etc)
- retro-enthusiasm (DOS, steampunk ethic etc - desire to simplify)
I have tried all of these. I wrote a novel by hand, with a fountain pen; I typed it up into an old standalone hardware word processor; I transferred that to MS Word; and now I have it as a Scrivener project, awaiting its final (and I mean FINAL) polish. A couple of years ago I decided I was sick of the modern word-processing/DTP environment and dug out an old PC, installed DOS 6.22 and hooked up a dot-matrix printer. I bought an Alphasmart but as DOS has no native USB support I picked up a Tandy WP-3 as well. I carry a notebook with me everywhere, and still draft almost everything in longhand. But at some point, all my work ends up on the computer, currently a Mac Mini, and is processed using Scrivener, Pages, and (gasp) Text Edit. I've even just bought a typewriter (more on which later).
Why? Am I wasting my time? Does it even matter?
I believe it does.
I have not yet found any one environment in which I can comfortably make notes, draft, re-draft, edit, polish and finalise any text-based document of any kind, of whatever complexity, with anything like a smooth and manageable workflow. Perhaps it's down to preference, but I would much rather keep all these activities separate. By taking each process discretely, I can more easily come to grips with what it is that stage entails, and more effectively complete it.
It almost exclusively begins with paper, and a pencil (yes, the one in the header of this blog).
Paper has been around for a very long time. Scribbling with a small hand-held implement is quick, convenient, cheap, requires no batteries (and thereby precludes any concerns about either the duration of the working window, or the time spent recovering it) and is quiet and instantaneous. Keep a notebook in a pocket, and you need never be concerned about losing ideas while your laptop boots (or not), or just checking Tw*tter or Farcebook before you begin writing and thereby forgetting all the ideas you were ready to get down. If you enjoy writing with a drink, you need never worry about spillage (paper dries out rather more successfully than electronics, I find) and a new notebook is something less intimidating on the wallet than a replacement machine.
The process of drafting by hand also forces a kind of speed limit. If I write fast, the words become illegible pretty quickly (though my slow handwriting is not much better). As someone who can type at a reasonable speed, I find handwriting slows me down, allowing more time to consider the impact of the words as they come out, and to perhaps more effectively select them in that slightly elongated period between their appearance in my imagination and the scrawling of them on the page. Truman Capote's famous remark about Kerouac might apply here. There is an argument against editing oneself while drafting, but I do not believe that to be the same thing as making a more refined choice in the first place.
Editing by hand is also a valuable process. Regardless of the tools I have used in drafting a piece, I will obtain a printed copy for further work. I make changes in pencil...
...and changes to the changes, again in pencil. Once I am happy (or the pages are obliterated beneath a heavy cowl of carbon, which is more likely) I again type up the results.
This might seem a long and laborious process, and it is, but it allows one to pay much greater attention to the evolution of a text than any equivalent electronic method. I have never enjoyed any software version of this process. Nothing shows me what I have actually written like a stack of paper with notes all over it. Scribbling in the margins of a story, or writing alternative versions of a paragraph on the rear of the page opposite, is easy, immediate, and permanently visible - the original has never been erased, so fears of recoverability are invalid - and the simultaneity of visible alternatives gives easier, and perhaps greater, scope for intersecting choices to be made. It could even be said that the process of editing by hand is a story in itself, and by reviewing your own efforts as they are permanently evident in this way is a sobering and educational activity for a writer.
For all these factors, I value handwriting on paper above all other tools.
Interacting with the broader world, however, is another story, for another day.
Later.
***
http://www.themillions.com/2012/04/high-wire-act-why-i-started-writing-by-hand.html
Neil Gaiman talks of his reasons for writing Stardust by hand in this old but informative interview:
http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/mar99/gaiman.htm
And yes, I drafted this blog post in Text Edit...
