A brand new notebook. It's a thing of such exquisite beauty that I begin to weep. The pen in my hand is nervous, like a first date. Once I begin to write, this notebook will never be the same.
The ideas flow, partly based on the medium chosen to channel them. Any writer knows this.
Growing up before word processors or home computers, in a time when even typewriters were too expensive for families like mine, I came to adore paper. In almost a mystical sense, I feel a growing thrill when faced with completely blank pages. Writing can be so visceral, so physical. I can get lost in it, as if I'm following the folds in my gray matter to places I never knew I had.
The results, whether any publishers like them or not, prove that I am a writer. I have gone some place unexplored and have brought something new to light. It may not survive. No museum may want it. It is, however, now part of the universe.
I suppose that's why I found a recent seminar so disturbing. An expert in XML (the coding used for ebooks) was saying how the goal was to change the way authors do things. They should, the speaker averred, write in XML. Otherwise, publishers can't really get access to what's in their brains.
It may not have been coincidence that I felt ill later that night. Such a misunderstanding of the craft of writing by a technician. A technician for a powerful publisher, no less. Would we have no fear walking into Poe's darkened study and saying, "lighten it up a little, would you?"
"Hey, Herman, wouldn't this story work better if the Pequod were a corporation and Moby Dick were a free-thinker?
"And while you're at it Miss Bronte, ditch the umlaut and brighten up Thornfield a bit."
I'm sure they mean no harm, but our technical advisors will forever change the way we write, if we let them. Even this laptop, at times, feels like a tremendous burden.
Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness.
The ideas flow, partly based on the medium chosen to channel them. Any writer knows this.
Growing up before word processors or home computers, in a time when even typewriters were too expensive for families like mine, I came to adore paper. In almost a mystical sense, I feel a growing thrill when faced with completely blank pages. Writing can be so visceral, so physical. I can get lost in it, as if I'm following the folds in my gray matter to places I never knew I had.
The results, whether any publishers like them or not, prove that I am a writer. I have gone some place unexplored and have brought something new to light. It may not survive. No museum may want it. It is, however, now part of the universe.
I suppose that's why I found a recent seminar so disturbing. An expert in XML (the coding used for ebooks) was saying how the goal was to change the way authors do things. They should, the speaker averred, write in XML. Otherwise, publishers can't really get access to what's in their brains.
It may not have been coincidence that I felt ill later that night. Such a misunderstanding of the craft of writing by a technician. A technician for a powerful publisher, no less. Would we have no fear walking into Poe's darkened study and saying, "lighten it up a little, would you?"
"Hey, Herman, wouldn't this story work better if the Pequod were a corporation and Moby Dick were a free-thinker?
"And while you're at it Miss Bronte, ditch the umlaut and brighten up Thornfield a bit."
I'm sure they mean no harm, but our technical advisors will forever change the way we write, if we let them. Even this laptop, at times, feels like a tremendous burden.
Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness. Sameness.
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