The Empty Page
Disjointed thoughts about writing on paper composed on the computer after having read Colin Walker's blog (which you should be reading too).
It's fun to read Colin Walker's thoughts as he moves to writing everything by hand. There's real joy there. I know that feeling, even though I'm drafting this on the computer in Writer: The Internet Typewriter an editor I've loved for years. It's great for creation (and surprisingly good for revision), but like any electronic writing tool it can disappear words too easily.
I remember computers in the nineties. I'd write for hours until someone tripped on the power cord. The machine would go black and quiet. All was lost. Rebooting led to a blank screen and blinking cursor, confirming the unsaved draft was completely gone.
I lost seventeen pages that way once. Poof.
Technological breakdowns like that have been largely overcome, but the biggest dangers of writing on the computer remain: the delete and backspace keys and the writers who use them too much sometimes on pages and pages of work. It seems the same as crumpling paper and starting a new sheet but if feels different and has very different consequences.
Colin Walker is describing the power of analog writing and the need for things touched, felt, and held onto. I have a handwritten story from tenth grade (1983) that barring disaster can easily remain readable, tactile, and (dare I say it) delightful for centuries. Every time I dig it out, I smile both at the thought of myself back then and at the feeling of holding those pages.
The power of analog creation begins with the blank page on the desk and the pen in hand, the writer palpable in the process and not mediated by electricity, networks, or file formats. Palpable means able to be touched and such things have more heft, a feeling about them of value. Filling half a page by pen, I'm likely to keep going with my thinking and accept the imperfections. Filling the whole page, I begin to feel the act of writing revealing what I want to say as well as how I want to say it. Even if I crumple it and throw it in the bin, until the recycling is collected, there's still the artifact. It's right there within reach. I can see it. I know it's there.
Analog writing depends completely on the actions of the writer. Auto-correct kicks in when I feel a misspelling or misplaced comma. Formatting consists of underlines, circles, the occasional use of all-caps. Revisions are actual marks on the page, lines drawn from place to place, and scribbled in additions. Sometimes the writing flows around a drawing, post-it, or coffee stain. It's all up to me.
One reason I don't much like Microsoft Word is that it wants to do more of the work for me. I'm more creative when I'm alone with the words and, quite literally, left to my own devices.
Writing on paper connects me with the act of writing. It changes my thinking. On paper I'm a writer, not a publisher or editor. I write words, lots of them, and that takes me places.
Walker sounds like a writer and thinker here:
I now find a blank page inviting, a place of discovery where I don't know what I am going to find but will enjoy the hunt."
The blank analog page, once marked, can't be made blank again. That's its killer feature.