composition media
I've long been familiar with the research which indicates that different mental processes involved in speaking, writing by hand, and by typing, and I've certainly exploited these differences when I can. If I am especially stuck with a particular passage that I am trying to write -- by hand or by typing -- I will try to say out loud what it is I am trying to articulate, and that often helps.
I learned how to type roughly the same age I learned how to write, and from the start, the bulk of my fiction was composed on the computer rather than hand-written. I remember finding, when I was a teenager, that I simply couldn't write by hand fast enough (not without the material degrading into illegibility). Not only could I not get the words to keep up with my thoughts, when I did write by long-hand, the process of doing so was slow enough that my mental perception of how much time was passing in what was being written was distorted; I'd read back my words and find that much less time had actually passed than I thought had during the process of writing it. So everything was all messed up, temporally, and it was clear that my writing style and skills had been developed to the specific mode of typing.
As an undergrad, and as a grad student, I took all my course notes -- very copious course notes -- long-hand. I did this because it was the process of taking the notes that mattered, not the having of them. I very rarely ever went back and consulted what I wrote down (as witnessed by the number of classes where I took my notes in mirror script as a way to fight off boredom; because I knew I'd never need to read these notes, ever, and I was right), because having written them down was what I needed.
All of my essays and term papers, and later academic papers, were all drafted on the computer, and, eventually, in LaTeX. I've been writing papers in LaTeX for more than a decade now, and I find that when I am composing a paper, I think in LaTeX; the composition is both text and code. One consequence of this is that when I'm preparing a paper for a journal that doesn't accept .tex files but requires .doc or .rtf, I will often write in .tex and go through the GODAWFUL OH HOW AWFUL process of converting to semi-legible .doc rather than compose in .doc format from the start: I simply can't think academically via that medium any more. I recently managed to make an exception for a paper that involves no logic whatsoever, the paper on the historicity of names in Game of Thrones that I co-wrote with two people who don't know LaTeX. It was...less hard than I would've thought. I'm now working on another paper for a journal that wants .doc (as much as I'd like to stick to my principles and not submit to journals that don't allow LaTeX, I'm not quite at a point where I can), and I'm trying my best to compose in .doc. It's hard.
All that being said, I was quite surprised that when a new fiction project pounced on me during one of the keynotes, it did so in the guise of writing long-hand. I was even more surprised when I turned around and had something like eight pages completely covered. How did that happen? It just seems right for the initial composition for this; but in order to handle edits, without having to do a lot of physical rewriting, I decided the second pass would be a typed transcription. I converted the first few pages into .doc...and really disliked it. What I like about LaTeX is that it separates composition from output, but the output has a "like published" quality to it. And .doc just doesn't. WYSISYG, and it's ugly.
So I've queued up a .tex file, changed the page size to A5 so that it looks vaguely paperback-booky, and done my first pass transcription that way, because I need to know, even vaguely, how things look. I need to know things like "are the paragraphs the right size?" and "are the chapters of plausible lengths?" These sorts of physical details matter in the construction of the story.
Nevertheless, I have been somewhat surprised to find that the primary mode of composition is (so far) remaining long-hand. Every page or so, I'll type up what I have, and often doing that will give me the next line or so, but once I type that new line out, I then transfer it back to the paper and continue writing that way, until I fill another page or so, type it up, recompile the PDF, and the cycle repeats.
Strange how integral the mode and medium of composition is to what it is that I am composing.
I learned how to type roughly the same age I learned how to write, and from the start, the bulk of my fiction was composed on the computer rather than hand-written. I remember finding, when I was a teenager, that I simply couldn't write by hand fast enough (not without the material degrading into illegibility). Not only could I not get the words to keep up with my thoughts, when I did write by long-hand, the process of doing so was slow enough that my mental perception of how much time was passing in what was being written was distorted; I'd read back my words and find that much less time had actually passed than I thought had during the process of writing it. So everything was all messed up, temporally, and it was clear that my writing style and skills had been developed to the specific mode of typing.
As an undergrad, and as a grad student, I took all my course notes -- very copious course notes -- long-hand. I did this because it was the process of taking the notes that mattered, not the having of them. I very rarely ever went back and consulted what I wrote down (as witnessed by the number of classes where I took my notes in mirror script as a way to fight off boredom; because I knew I'd never need to read these notes, ever, and I was right), because having written them down was what I needed.
All of my essays and term papers, and later academic papers, were all drafted on the computer, and, eventually, in LaTeX. I've been writing papers in LaTeX for more than a decade now, and I find that when I am composing a paper, I think in LaTeX; the composition is both text and code. One consequence of this is that when I'm preparing a paper for a journal that doesn't accept .tex files but requires .doc or .rtf, I will often write in .tex and go through the GODAWFUL OH HOW AWFUL process of converting to semi-legible .doc rather than compose in .doc format from the start: I simply can't think academically via that medium any more. I recently managed to make an exception for a paper that involves no logic whatsoever, the paper on the historicity of names in Game of Thrones that I co-wrote with two people who don't know LaTeX. It was...less hard than I would've thought. I'm now working on another paper for a journal that wants .doc (as much as I'd like to stick to my principles and not submit to journals that don't allow LaTeX, I'm not quite at a point where I can), and I'm trying my best to compose in .doc. It's hard.
All that being said, I was quite surprised that when a new fiction project pounced on me during one of the keynotes, it did so in the guise of writing long-hand. I was even more surprised when I turned around and had something like eight pages completely covered. How did that happen? It just seems right for the initial composition for this; but in order to handle edits, without having to do a lot of physical rewriting, I decided the second pass would be a typed transcription. I converted the first few pages into .doc...and really disliked it. What I like about LaTeX is that it separates composition from output, but the output has a "like published" quality to it. And .doc just doesn't. WYSISYG, and it's ugly.
So I've queued up a .tex file, changed the page size to A5 so that it looks vaguely paperback-booky, and done my first pass transcription that way, because I need to know, even vaguely, how things look. I need to know things like "are the paragraphs the right size?" and "are the chapters of plausible lengths?" These sorts of physical details matter in the construction of the story.
Nevertheless, I have been somewhat surprised to find that the primary mode of composition is (so far) remaining long-hand. Every page or so, I'll type up what I have, and often doing that will give me the next line or so, but once I type that new line out, I then transfer it back to the paper and continue writing that way, until I fill another page or so, type it up, recompile the PDF, and the cycle repeats.
Strange how integral the mode and medium of composition is to what it is that I am composing.