A few posts back, I mentioned that I was uninspired to write. Since then, the story I was working on has hit the tweaking stage and in a few days I'll be looking for a market.
What amazed me about the comment thread of that post was how every writer who hit a snag in their writing said that they resorted to pen and paper to work through their story. In an age when everyone writes on computers and are reading stories online via their phones or Kindles, I found the falling back to paper and ink comforting.
For me seeing my story printed out on a piece of paper helps me find the errors that aren't apparent or just glossed over on a monitor. Holding a book or newspaper in my hand gives the words more weight. Maybe because when I was younger you found truth in the written word. People could hold a Bible in their hand and know that God's words were written there, making them feel like they could touch God in some way. A dictionary, an encyclopedia, a biography all put knowledge at our fingertips. Words on a page were truths we could see and feel.
As a people, I don't think we'll ever outgrow the idea of seeing words on the page of a book. Those words are forever and a computer crash or a hacker's virus can't erase them. I find comfort in the thought that there will always be books to read and learn from.
And a quote today from Carson McCullers:
"There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book."
7 comments:
I have a story I've been working on off and on for months between other things. I guess that I have so little enthusiasm for it tells me I should ditch it.
I have stories like that. You get a great idea and start writing, then it just fizzles out or you look at and think, 'what a stupid idea this was'.
Those are the stories I set aside and come back to later. Sometimes just letting it set gives you time to mull it over and figure out a way to make it work.
You are on to something because every submission I receive for BTAP I have to print out and read. And every story in my rough draft stage is also printed.
I always print out a copy of my stories, then use the red pen. For some reason it's easier to find the mistakes and see where things don't come together quite right on paper.
Great idea. I'm gonna try that.
My very first drafts of work are always written in pen or pencil on paper before they are entered onto a computer. That way I can tweak as I input, adding in square brackets of something to be inserted later or researched.
Stories that I begin and are unable to complete for whatever reason are placed into a folder in a drawer and left for a time. I will go back to check once in awhile to see if something else comes to mind to add; if not, then back into the folder they go. I move onto the next folder.
I'm the same way with the folders, Barbara. There's not much point working on something that doesn't want to be written.
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