The Lonely Writer’s Companion

by Lisa Lenard-Cook

November 2012

On Writing

Writing n [ME]: the act of inscribing words on a surface

One of the most common questions writers are asked is whether they write longhand or on a keyboard. My own answer is that I used to write longhand, typing my work into my current computer (I was an early adapter—the first, in 1985, was a “portable” Compaq weighing at least thirty pounds) once a week. But during one deadline project about fifteen years ago, I caught myself composing on the computer. Well why not? I thought. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

Except, I’m not. Writing, that is.

Part of the problem is that I have so many other writing-related projects for which I’m paid, that my own writing (which, sadly, seldom does pay) has taken a back seat. But today I realized there’s an entirely different reason I’m not writing, one that goes back to the question with which I began: writing longhand or writing on a keyboard.

I know I’m not alone in that the ordering of my life takes place on my Air, my iPad, or my iPhone. I haven’t had a paper calendar in years, because iCal shares what I enter on one device with all my others (and with my husband). My daughter and I communicate by text. Meetings and lunch dates are arranged by email. I receive daily RSS newsfeeds from the newspapers and magazines to which I subscribe, and click through if there’s a story I want to read. I type this column in MS Word. Page proofs for our literary magazine bosque, created in InDesign, arrive as a PDF. Documents that need to be shared, both business and personal, are posted on Dropbox. Movies are streamed from my iPad to the TV. Et cetera. I’m sure much of your life is similarly carried on electronically.

When I have a few free minutes which I might in the past have used to write (in one of a long series of spiral notebooks), these days I instead answer a few emails, work on a crossword puzzle (on the computer), or edit someone else’s manuscript, using Track Changes in Word. While there are notebooks on my desk, one is where I record each book I’ve read, another is where I scribble notes, and the third is the last one I began (in December 2004) before I switched to writing entirely on the computer, and is not yet full.

Today, at my longtime writing group, Barbara Furr, who’s written two fabulous (unpublished) novels, was lamenting that she could not seem to motivate herself to write. Part of it could be that parenthetical “unpublished” in the previous sentence, but, while she’d love to see one (no: both) of her novels in print, Barbara’s primary motivation for writing is, as it is for most of us who call ourselves writers, the work itself.

That’s when Judy Fitzpatrick suggested that Barbara try writing in a notebook again. Just like that, our writerly imaginations took flight, each sharing stories of how different it was when we wrote longhand—the way the words flowed from mind to pen to paper, the joy of a blank page as opposed to the curse of the blinking cursor.

That’s what I’ve been missing: the writing part of writing.

When I got home this afternoon, I set out notebooks and pens next to all the places I tend to perch. The next time I have a few free minutes, I plan to open whichever notebook is closest, uncap a pen, and just write. Not type. Not worry. Just write.