I May Write Month

I know,not the most ingenious title. I'm not at my most creative after nine pm ... or anytime after about four pm to tell the truth. However, the point is I'm here with brand new resolutions for a brand new month. It's already six months since my NanoWriMo experiment. Obviously that didn't turn me into a writer, but it did let me experience some success and boosted my self-confidence. I think it's time for a little more of that positivity.

Over the past few months I've gathered up some blog ideas to work on, and have also gleaned a few new tips on cultivating habits. One, courtesy Gretchen Rubin's "Happiness Project" site, is to do a thing every single day rather than trying to work out some complicated schedule. Another is to set a ridiculously low goal, but to make it an absolutely iron clad, non-negotiable commitment.

So here's mine: every single day this month I will spend ten minutes writing something. Ideally it will be a blog entry (or a portion thereof; my entries tend to run a lot more than ten minutes worth of writing). But notes or an outline for future entries, a chatty email to a friend, a decent book review on Goodreads, or a poem will count too. Even doing some editing/serious rewriting will be acceptable. I'll keep track of actually doing so with my handy dandy Habit Maker app, but that's it. No word count requirements or detailed explanations; a simple and honest yes or no will suffice. And at the end we'll see how and what I've done. Who knows, I could turn "I May Write Month" into "I May Write More Month" come June!

 

The "Write" Tech (part two)

Ok, my turn now. How do I write best, and how do I feel technology impacts my writing and the creative process?

First off, I'm lucky. I've pretty much always been surrounded by technology. My mom always had a typewriter or two in the house, so I've played with a keyboard my whole life. My friend’s dad had one of the first Apple computers ever and I bought my own first computer (a good old Commodore 64) with my babysitting money. So I've never been particularly intimidated by technology and I've been exposed to it far longer than most adults my age.

That being said, I did still go through elementary and high school handwriting virtually everything, so there are sentimental and habitual components to handwriting for me - the sort of things you don't necessarily veer from that easily. My (very sporadically kept) diaries are handwritten - messier, but more personal - and so is most of my poetry. If I am mind mapping or outlining or making notes, a blank paper and pen or pencil are my first choice too. I feel freer on paper, more connected to my words, and I think my poetry is best composed on paper too. (If I'm just transcribing a poem I've already thought out, though, any media will do.) I don't really do any other type of creative writing like stories or plays, but for longer work, I think I'd probably be fine with the computer; it would certainly be more practical.

The assorted essays I wrote for university, my thesis, my work assignments, and my blog are all digital products. Despite my background though, it actually did take me some time to adjust to the computer as a primary writing tool. Yes I love the features of a word processor, although I really don't use them that extensively when you get right down to it. But I still feel just a little ... distanced from my words with a computer. They're a lot easier to read and to edit, which I appreciate, and the end result is probably as good as - quite likely better than - a handwritten piece because of that, but I don't feel quite as close to my writing. There is a bit of a lack of intimacy, and the writing process feels a bit more like a job.

My new best friend when it comes to writing is actually Pandora, my iPad. That's what I'm using now (yesterday I used Word on the computer, but that was unusual; Pandora is definitely my tool of choice for blogging) and I do feel more comfortable. It's a nice combination of the advantages of technology and the intimacy of pen and paper because it's just sitting on my lap like a notebook and I'm tapping away right on the page, feeling a physical connection similar to what I'd feel with a pen on paper. Yes I make a few more typos, and sometimes the spellcheck suggestions are a little odd, but when I started using an iPad I was very pleasantly surprised with the fluency I feel and the speed I can go. I’m really not that much slower than with a regular keyboard - and I do have an external keyboard I can use if speed (or screen real estate) is of the essence. I wouldn't want an eight-hour-a-day job as a writer no matter what the technology, but for my hobby, writing on the iPad is about as perfect as it gets.

The "Write" Tech (part one)

Last week on CBC’s “Spark”, they had a very interesting segment on the switch to digital technology and its effect on the creative process of authors. The guest expert was Matthew Kirschenbaum, an English professor from Maryland, who is currently researching and writing a book titled “Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing”.  It’s due out next year, and I’ll definitely be interested in reading about his discoveries and conclusions.

We’ve long heard stories about authors who feel they can only write with a particular brand of pen, or on a particular type of paper. My guess is that proficient writers can probably produce decent work using a variety of media (although if they can’t type it would be a decided handicap), but likely do create their best work using their preferred tools.

I’ve been interested in this field for years, but from the perspective of students learning to write, rather than that of professional authors. Most kids are striving for basic competency, not a Pulitzer Prize, so it would be interesting to see research on whether or not technology enhances their abilities. After observing kids using technology for twenty years, I would say yes for the majority ... although not to an earth-shattering degree.

For the most part, it takes a little of the pain out of a task that is a real challenge for kids. It takes away a lot of the worry over messy handwriting or crossing out mistakes or stressing over spelling. It’s comforting to know you can easily go back and change a word or rearrange sentences and paragraphs without having to start over, and to have a spellchecker and a thesaurus so immediately available. It’s particularly nice for editing – no more having to rewrite a rough draft entirely. And it’s also fun for them to enhance their work with different fonts and colours and images and to see it come out of the printer looking almost professional. It does inspire a little more effort and generate a little more pride in the finished product.

There are always a few kids, though, for whom being told they have to hand in a printed copy is cruel and unusual punishment.  For a variety of reasons, they just don’t get along too well with technology. Instead of being relieved they will panic if a word or sentence gets underlined (oh no, what did I do wrong?) or they’ll worry if the font or margins or line spacing aren’t just right. And these are always the kids who somehow lose their work – the power goes off, the program crashes, or they swear they saved it but just can’t find where – and now they’re whining they’ve lost the best work they ever did in their entire lives and have to start over and they just wasted the whole period and they HATE COMPUTERS!!!!! If they must, they will painstakingly recopy their handwritten work, but they accomplish most with good old-fashioned pen and paper.

There are also always a few – usually the most distractible ones – who just can’t focus very well using technology. They will hop from app to app to app. Even if you restrict them to just a word processor, they will type one word ... then change the font a hundred times, make it huge, make it tiny, change the colour, try italics, erase it and try another word – anything but continue writing. At the end of the period you’ll be lucky to see a sentence or two. These kids too would be better off with a low tech pen and paper.

So in general I’d conclude yes, keep the tech – but keep an eye on how students are using it and be sensitive to the fact that (as with virtually everything in education) it isn’t a one size fits all solution and some students will do better other ways. And that seems to be especially true the more creative the assignment. In my experience, tech works quite well for essays and research papers, less effectively (at least for the rough drafts) of things like poetry. There seems to be something indefinable about the freedom of pen on paper that prompts the flow of creativity. They might produce the same volume of words on a computer, but the writing sometimes seems to be more mechanical and, especially with weaker writers, there can be too much reliance on the thesaurus. But if basic competency with words is what you’re after – and that’s the goal for the majority – then, for the majority, technology will help achieve it just a little more easily.

Words from Richard Peck

This week I read a wonderfully engrossing article by Richard Peck - one of my all-time most admired authors - on the Horn Book site. It was excerpted from a talk he gave back in October and offered insights for writers, readers, and all those who care about literature for children. 

Peck reminded us that only readers will ever become writers, and that readers are particularly lucky in that they can continue to commune with their inspirations and role models long after they are dead through the gift of their words. 

He stressed that all writing (including fiction) begins with research - we write far beyond what we know to what we can discover (or, I might add, imagine). He spoke a bit about viewpoint too, how the writer's voice is the one that shouldn't be in the book, how the story should be about the person you would like to be far more than the one you already are.

And he had some pretty pointed comments about today's text and tweet generation who live their lives so far removed from adults - and the literary and linguistic examples they once provided. He cited a recent poll in which as many high school seniors (SENIORS!) believed that the U.S. fought Spain during the American Revolution as England (and France was a close third). I was under the impression that one thing Americans prided themselves on - and taught thoroughly - was a good grasp of their noble history. Apparently that grasp is more tenuous than I thought. As Peck pretty aptly stated, the majority seem to "believe that history began with their births and geography is wherever they are".

The best quote of all, however, came at the very end of the article' last paragraph, in which he reminisced fondly about all the amazing places children's literature has taken us to. He said: "if you cannot find yourself on the page very early in life, you will go looking for yourself in all the wrong places". How perfect. How true.