When I purchased my first laptop so I could write "on the fly," I still drafted my words onto the 8 1/2" X 11" lined paper, first. It took years for me to become comfortable with staring at a blank computer screen and its damned, blinking cursor before I could simply sit down and start typing.
I love this photo of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech on December 9, 1941, two days after Pearl Harbor was attacked by scores of Japanese military aircraft. Mr. Roosevelt undoubtedly had his communications staffer write the initial words, but I appreciate so much his scratches and notes and addendums, probably written in haste before that famous Fireside Chat. It's so unbelievably cool to see a portion of the process, and maybe that's what I miss by writing this book on a computer.
It's laborious it is to think up words, write words, delete and add new words to a manuscript, so the opportunity to witness them, alive, on my paper, might somehow prove satisfying.
What do you think?
When I see a marked up manuscript like that I always think of my dad. He was a Lutheran pastor who wrote a new sermon for every single Sunday of his preaching career. He used a sheet of paper, the exact size of a page in his Bible. He would cut out the space covering the verse or text for the day so it would always be in front of him, then he would write the sermon around the hole in the paper. He wrote in his own special shorthand, just leaving out vowels. I loved trying to decipher his writings! He typed out the whole sermon first, then the abbreviated notes were attached to it, and he filed them in the proper drawers of his file cabinets. My nephew, who is a pastor, has all these treasures!
ReplyDelete