I could be sleeping. I should be sleeping. Instead I've got pencil to paper writing this article. Yes, it may be a bit inefficient, this analog-analog-digital writing, but sometimes the graphite gliding over the paper helps me to think. The paper has teeth that grab at my pencil lead yielding a therapeutic friction. In fact, just the sound of my scribbling is amusing. It seems a bit big in the late-night, post-rain stillness, twitching across the page like a seismograph. So, is there anything lost in a lack of penpersonship? What does the stunningly intricate motor skill of writing do to help or hinder out thoughts? Can a writer infuse their work with Pollock-style energy and genius with a keyboard?
One of the most brilliant writers I've experienced, Harlan Ellison, writes on a typewriter. But an old fashioned, non-computerized, non-correcting typewriter forces a sort of discipline on the writer. There's no turning back. Revision is something that must happen after the fact. You type line after line, crawling down the page like a slinky on stairs because the machine enforces the futility of rewriting on the fly. You can't tinker with each phrase, copying, cutting, pasting, deleting like you can with a word processor. But is the ability to do all that literary gynastics a good thing or the only answer? I'd like to think not. Just the name "word processor" gives the whole act a different flavor. You're not writing. You're processing words.
Life as a technical writer is supposed to give me a greater sense of the empirical in words. My employers pay me to scoop information out of peoples' heads and use words and pictures to convey meaning effectively... and it all needs to be shown in the best possible light. I need to work a certain number of hours in the week. At the end of the day, I need to prove that I've done something other than surf the Web and fondle my trackball. It's a little mysterious sometimes even to me. Although one of the first things that developers, product managers, sales people, and customers clamor for is documentation, no one really understands what's going on. With code, you can quantify it more easily. It's the nature of the beast. The system works or doesn't. If it doesn't, it is painfully obvious. Engineering must shoulder Atlas's burden, working long hours and weekends. At some point, the system can be said to work enough to fool someone into laying down good money for it. God forbid you try to sell the software to somebody without documentation. However, the creepy thing about documentation is that if it works, you don't hear anything. If it doesn't work, the sky falls. We try to write so that we think it should make sense to our target audience, but it doesn't always work out that way. It would be nice if development cycles allowed us to rewrite and revise the way we need to.
I'd really like to know how much Ellison rewrites. From his exhilarating forewords and introductions to his storefront writing exhibitions to his improv writing-without-a-net for radio, I get the impression that revision doesn't play that big a part in his creative process. But what do I know? Precious little. Enough gushing. Take a look at his Webderland.
What is the value of revision? How often does anything of value come jumping out of someone's head Athena-like? That is genius, which I do not have, at least as far as art is concerned. Some may say I have a genius for backrubs or intestinal gas production, but not for writing. I can guarantee that these words have been chewed over in their final analog-digital conversion. The results are not any more impressive than if I'd typed them (obviously), but the scribbles on tree carcass made me feel better.