Ty Webb wrote:Steve V. wrote:FUCK THAT! FUCK THAT RIGHT THERE NOW!
Dude, typewriters are like the vinyl of typing. Didn't you get the memo? Everything you put on paper is immediately more important if you typed it with a portable Remington. It like, makes you look indie. Red/black correction ribbon = colored wax. See the relation?
HA! Well played.
But seriously...you type everything twice just so you can use the typewriter?
Well, heaven knows I know full well the strange rituals writers need to get their muse to sing.
Usually, when I do something that I actually end up liking in the long run, it is as a result of a three-prong process.
1) Write it out longhand, using cheap yellow college-ruled pads from any random office supply store. I put four or five pencils out in a row (a trick I stole from BER when he mentioned it on the board once if I remember correctly) and just scritch scratch away. I wear a pencil down every two or three pages since I write everything in all caps all the time so it seems everything I write is meant to be read as if being yelled at. Anyways, I reach a stopping place, and that's that.
Then it goes into the freezer...literally. I read in Henry Miller's
On Writing that he put his writings in the freezer and came back to them much later, although his freezer was just a figure of speech. I wrap the pads or notes in saran wrap and pop them in the freezer. And just leave them there until I get another idea to extrapolate. It's humorous more than practical.
2) Usually, after a good thing has been going consistently, meaning I'm hooked on one generally more-than-decent idea, I pull it out of the freezer and begin editing, which is really just re-typing everything. I usually get into "the zone" when I start hammering away, so the work more often than not takes off at this stage. There's additions, there's subtractions, divisions, chemical bonds, molecular theory, alternate tunings,
taijin kyofusho, etc. Then I take a pencil to the draft, make little notes, re-type some sections. Once I re-read it and can't make one single note or add one more line, I consider it done.
Since I primarily write short short stories, almost short enough to be considered flash fiction, this task is not as daunting as say, if I was attempting to write a novel. There has been a novel idea floating around my noggin now for weeks, and I have outlined and re-outlined it in a few Moleskine cahiers, so I think the next step is attempting it for real. Novel(la) # 1? Perhaps. Scary.
3) Word processing. Since the computer is obviously the greatest word processor, it cleans things up. Usually I pay no attention to the grammar suggestions, of which you are probably aware given the rambling nature of many of my posts. Sometimes it is unnecessary; I've sent quite a few photocopied manually-typed scripts out, but some publishers, especially those who have websites in the Writer's Market for Novels/Short Stories, request SPECIFICALLY that it is formatted on a computer, which is the standard. Understood. If the difference between getting and not getting is one more round of typing and editing, so be it.
So there it is. My process. Maybe that is why so many of my stories get extremely caught up and sit unfinished for a very long time. The typewriter is truly essential to my ability. Honestly. It is a tool unlike any other. You can play a guitar with a different string gauge and it feels off. Odd. Kilter-less. I can't get a lot of ideas off the ground without that "chattering" of a typer. It just makes me feel good. Makes the flow easier. I love it, honestly and truly. It is an intimate thing, to be hunched over this old machine that has undoubtedly had hundreds of thousands of words and so many receipts and failed prose pass through it. It may be another analog/digital thing, who knows? Every machine is unique, there's a way it feels, a way it sounds. The crispness of an ACTUAL PAGE OF PAPER coming out inked and finished. With you on it. Right THERE! On it! In front of you! It is beautiful.
Until you type on a laptop again, and almost kill your keyboard. Fuckin' pussy machines.
