Writing/cloud

From time to time one reads about how word-processors transformed writing, breaking writers from the slow and considered process of writing and re-writing tethered to pen and paper, then typewriter and paper.

This mythic writer of old taps out a manuscript, juggles and annotates a stack of papers, contrives to have the whole thing typed cleanly again, and consequently writes with due respect for the weight of every word. Occasionally, manuscripts are left in shoeboxes or on public transport, but so be it.

Then comes digitization, computers, and the manuscript is instantly editable, always live, and we contemplate the impact of the means of production on output.

But it strikes me that another, more significant change is underway in our writing habits and processes, which has less to do with the mechanics of keyboard and screen than the infrastructure of work itself. This is the effect of the digital cloud for writing.

I have always used a personal computer, from an Apple 512KE to a MacBook Pro, to write and revise, but only in recent years have I had access to cloud services, such as Dropbox and Google Drive, which allow me to save a manuscript remotely, and to access it almost wherever I go, on either my own computer, a tablet, or another device. In other words, the manuscript is no longer tied to the typewriter, the writer's desk, the study, even the personal laptop. The manuscript goes with you. It's almost as accessible as your thoughts.

For a long time, even with word processors, if you had an idea, reimagined a scene, even thought of the name of a character while you were out, or at work (by which I mean the job most writers take for material support) then that idea had to stick long enough for you to get back to "your" computer. Now, there's a way to reach out to your manuscript, to find yourself writing at odd times and in odd locations. Your creative life can follow you in the cloud, but what kind of discipline is now required? Are thoughts refracted, concentrated, or ephemeral, when you can edit at any time? This adjustment is at once, I think, more substantive than a change in tools, and harder to evaluate. Is the process different when you can craft words virtually anywhere?

NaNoWriMo, or discipline and distraction

November is the National Novel Writing Month (although it has now caught the attention of writers in many nations). Being a writer by intention and calling, I'm always writing a novel, but as an exercise in craft, NaNoWriMo raises some thoughts about discipline and distraction.

Committing to any creative work is a fine thing, a worthy undertaking, but for writers, our commitments to the real, lived world create the challenges – time, focus; in other word, distractions – that NaNoWriMo highlights.

Writing is hard; writing enough requires discipline. We are distracted by our technology, our habits, our connection to the Internet. Like many writers, I sustain this blog, a Goodreads profile, a G+ profile, and that's just writing. We look for the tool that will keep us away from online distractions, and there's even this, the Hemingwrite, a 'distraction free writing device', a fantasy gadget that mimics the writer's myth of the typewriter as perfect writing tool. (I've written on a typewriter: slow, noisy, and impossible to edit; the tech we blame for distracting us also speeds our task enough to contemplate writing 50 000 words in a month.)

But the truth is that our tools are ours to choose. That's a matter of craft, and discipline does not make the business of writing easier or harder, any more than the tools. It only creates the path to getting something done.

Years ago, I had the pleasure of seeing Terry Pratchett speaking at the Canterbury Public Library, one drizzly evening in Christchurch, New Zealand. One remark, one figure of his, has always stuck with me: three hundred words a day. That's not much. About a page. It can take ten minutes to write, half an hour, an hour if the scene is complex, the inspiration sluggish. Sometimes, you won't make that, and sometimes you can write twice, three times, much more than that. But three hundred words a day is a discipline, something you can look to and encompass and achieve.

You can learn discipline, but the more important important thing is to exercise it.

Novice and master

I've been writing fiction, serious, publishable (if not actually published) fiction, for over twenty years. I've taught composition and academic writing in the classroom. This semester, I also taught creative writing for the first time. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, not only to address my own passion as a teacher but to see creativity and inspiration develop in the classroom.

I believe that there is no endpoint to writing, only the continuous review and reflection of craft through practice. Writing is holistic and integrated, and so there is no one element of a work that can stand without the others, or be adjusted without affecting the others. We may attain mastery only as long as we think as novices.

But I have noticed that with novice writers I've read over the years there are one or two aspects of craft or 'tells' that show us a beginner's style or voice. This is not a list of pointers on 'how to write' — just a list of writing habits that mark the student.

Show and Tell

I don't wholly follow the workshop cliche 'show, don't tell'. Sometimes, we have to tell, and mostly we choose to show because it is better to let the reader see than force the point. But novice writers often show and tell in the same passage, as if reluctant to trust the details to speak for themselves:
Her hands shook minutely when she took up the scalpel, as her nerves took over her thoughts.

Let speech be speech

Often, dialogue can't be left as dialog. She said, he said, seems too pedestrian. So he commanded. She challenged. He argued. But then the verb drifts away from speech. He chuckled (but that's laughing, not speaking). She keened.
Sometimes it's important to know who is speaking and how, but mostly dialogue should be strong enough to carry its own sense. But then (see show and tell) the novice writer can't let that stand, so:
'Please leave my children, I beg you,' he pleaded.

The stock phrase

Not just the cliche but the familiar phrase, something out of our vast collection of idioms and metaphors that still carry meaning but lack the capacity to surprise, or the precision to make something feel authentic and present. Even when the cliches are deleted, the sense that this has been said the same way before remains.

The same goes for turns of plot and character motivations.

On the other hand, there's also the word, the turn of phrase, that is intended to be poetical and becomes awkward or murky when rendered.

The Auto-correct malapropism

This is a technical point. We all know about Autocorrect, which along with spelling checkers is a fair tool but a terrible master. But the word that Autocorrect introduces unseen is often close but not quite, or unintentionally funny. 

The room was closed up, dusty and dinghy.

I don't trust spelling and grammar correction in any word processor. Machine logic can't produce or apprehend meaning, and so these tools can only apply regular rules to irregular cases.

I won't say anything here about faults in narrative structure or characterisation, although in the end all these things become connected. But all of these tells command attention because, no matter how experienced I become, I will see them or do them again. Seeing them, knowing them, working through them: that's the craft of writing, the path from novice, to master, to novice again.

Word is evil

That is, Microsoft Word.

This is a post about tools of the trade rather than craft. But does a sharper chisel make for finer carving? Does a softer brush make a more supple line?

As a Microsoft Word trainer, among other things, which is to say an advanced Word trainer, who has tried and tested virtually every feature of the tool, I often have to tell users that 'Word is evil.' Not evil in the moral sense, but so badly designed and incoherently implemented that it will inevitably frustrate your intentions and prolong the document development task.

Just explaining why would be the start of a hundred posts or more, but consider the almost universally misunderstood implementation of document styles (and themes, and all that), or the frustrating complexity of page breaks, section breaks, and running headers and footers, not to mention the punishing task of inserting simple images.

And yet, as a writer I've used Word for every short story and every novel I have ever published. Why? Because Word and Microsoft Office are ubiquitous, and all our old files are in the same format. Publishers prefer Word files (or sometimes RTF), and now we use the track changes feature to work through editorial issues, so swapping between applications becomes challenging.

And curiously, about the only kind of document Word is any good for, the long document with minimal formatting, is suitable for manuscripts.

Are there alternatives? Apple's Pages is an excellent word processor with a clean interface and less feature clutter, but its export to .doc format is not seamless. Google Docs is clear and functional, and brilliant for outlines, notes and even drafting short inserts from any location, but I like my core writing to be stored somewhere other than the cloud. On the iPad, I admire the simplicity of IAWriter, but although a distraction-free writing window is wonderful, I also want to be able to choose my favourite fonts (Cochin for drafting, Times New for fair copy).

Tools and processes have a subtle relationship. Because I keep my notes and outlines in notebooks and on paper with pencil, I don't need an outlining and note-taking tool added to my word processor. I do long for a simpler, less complex writing environment (there's a reason why George R. R. Martin clings to an obsolete word processor), but I look forward to the day when my writing can follow me everywhere, from the iPad to the study to work. Let's just not pretend that Word is the solution to this problem.