As a kid, I was
very big on hand-scripting first drafts. In part, it was because notebooks were
a lot more portable than typewriters (even portable typewriters) in those days.
Another part was because I wasn’t a particularly good typist (I’m still not,
but much better than I was). Not that I had particularly good penmanship,
either. The choice between typescripts and handscripts was pretty much the
choice between scribble over scrubble.
As a young adult,
I continued to do a lot of my early-draft work in spiral-bound notebooks.
Again, it was the portability. It must have also appealed to me that even
though it was a notebook, it was
still a book. The covers were thin,
but it still felt like a book.
That was when I
did a lot of writing, but I hadn’t yet learned, to some extent, how to be a writer.
I still had visions of pages upon pages with nary a scribble or a
cross-out. The words came out freely and unhindered – too bad the majority of
them were crap.
This is not to
say, also, that I didn’t type. I typed up a storm, in spite of being the worst
typist in the universe. I think I was in the fifth or sixth grade when I
received my first typewriter for Christmas. It was a machine that printed all
caps. I was forty years ahead of the times if I was planning to write comments
on social media posts. Everything I produced looked like it came off a broken
teletype machine. Luckily, my mom had a 1949 Royal Portable typewriter – or
what passed as “portable” when dinosaurs ruled the earth. But I put that old
Royal to work. When I was in eighth grade and home with some sort of terrible
sickness for a week and a half, I used the time to write a book about the
movies. Yes. I wrote a book. Not a long one, but a book nonetheless. Not only
did I type the whole thing, I typed it with two (2) carbons(!!!).
And yet – I was a
lousy typist. A typist of necessity, not of talent. I didn’t type well, but I
typed a lot. That’s how you “got it done” back then.
That is still how
you get it done, though the keyboard is no longer fixed to a physically
mechanical device in quite the same way. Your fingers move over the letters
that make the words (and the punctuation) in the same way, and you press down
in the same way, though maybe not so hard.
I know writers
who never hand-script a thing. If it weren’t for keyboards, they wouldn’t be
writers. And I need to add that most of those writers are prolific. Not only do
they get it done, they a get a lot of
it done.
And that’s fine
with me. Every writer has to find what works best. Some have a proscribed
methodology. Others work within the confines of a continuous riot. There is
order and there is chaos and there’s a lot of room in between. There is an
order in chaos as well and, conversely, a chaos in order.
With that in
mind, I’d like to suggest to some of you who are still working out what works
best for you, that you try an intermingling of both.
Usually, one
works at hand-script first, then transfers or transcribes what was written by
hand to the keyboard. That’s supposed to be the natural progression of things.
Recently, though,
when I worked on the novel, and then on “The Man Who Put the Bomp,” I kept
switching back and forth, typing up what I had scribbled, then scribbling what
I had typed down. The process was born of necessity. I very often had to work
on these projects while in transit, or in spare moments before heading into an
office. I didn’t have a laptop computer handy, but I still needed to get work
done. Some folks have notebook computers. All I had was the notebook. And a
pen. And, very often, a printout of what I had typed up the day before, or a
week before, or whenever.
Going back and
forth between keyboard and pen, I noticed something very unusual, to me at
least: we write differently when we type than we do when we write with a pen,
scripting out each letter by hand; also, we read
differently when we engage in these processes.
It may be that
each process utilizes a different part of the brain, or if not that, it uses
the brain differently. Typing up scribbled notes is a different task than
composing on the keyboard. Hand-writing sentences that have already been typed
out applies a different kind of scrutiny to what you have written. You’re
looking at the sentences in a different context – it provides you an
opportunity to look over your sentences and read them with a greater distance –
or if that “greater distance” phrase seems hackneyed, look at it this way: it’s
a chance to read your work and separate your self from your words.
I’ve never been
into this “your brain is hardwired to do this” kind of thinking. The brain
precedes hard-wiring and the metaphor is, as all metaphors about the brain are,
flawed. Some researchers, so I’ve read, are catching up with this insight.
They’re also
becoming aware that the brain does not work in isolation.
It is tied to a
nervous system that extends to the body’s extremities – hands, for example.
Brain and hands work together. Brain and eyes work together. Brain and nose
work together. And ears. And so on.
We read a page of
your handwritten work differently. We read a screen of your prose differently.
We also read a printed page of your prose in a way that puts your sentences
into a different context. The writing and reading of your prose in various ways
involves processes that are substantially different but not unrelated to each
other. We learn from each of these processes and, with a little thought, we can
use their interrelations to become better writers.
Years ago, when
“right brain thinking” and “left brain thinking” were all the rage, my prof at
Columbia, John Schultz, would make a point that he included in his text, Writing from Start to Finish, that this
notion was an oversimplification. Early brain scans demonstrated that people
who were writing used both “parts” of
the brain (and a few parts not usually counted) – sending messages back and
forth. “Logical” brain was as necessary as the “aesthetic” brain to create a vivid
piece of writing.
And that work was
done over a half century ago. Today, my guess would be that every part of the
neural network – every part that can be utilized – has been observed
contributing to the process. Brain, eyes, hands, fingers, feet, gut – you name
it.
Over all these
regions of the neuro-system, memory rules. You remember your fingers scribbling
out a phrase, or tapping keys that produce figures on a page – the way you
remember how to run, or ride a bike.
Which is to say:
a great part of the writing process is visceral. It’s exercise. The best kind
of exercise your entire nervous system can get.
Not to mention
your mind.
And it doesn’t
hurt your writing, either.
I’ve noticed over
the years, and even now, that when I ask my students to read from something
they’ve just started working on, a good half of them will pull out notebooks,
filled with words they’ve placed there by hand, printed carefully or in cursive
script. When I see that, my fears that the end of the world are near
significantly alleviate. There is hope.
In the meantime,
if you spy a writer in the library who has both a laptop and a couple of
notebooks spread out before them (along with a few old books and a cup of
coffee) you have found either me or an ally.
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