I’m taking a course on Digital Authorship this semester, and we began with a look at print and what authorship practices looked like before the current digital dominance.
In the process, I can’t help but wondering whether this shift in technology has fundamentally changed how authors think about their work.
the speed of thought
I’ve been training my typing speed since I was in the eighth grade, when I first started breaking the 50wpm mark. Today, I’d probably put myself in the 100-120wpm range for most of my typing.
If you asked me my goal, during that time, I’d tell you that it was to “type at the speed of thought.” This concept was a fixation for me: the idea that with enough effort, I could capture my thoughts as fast as they manifested.
And, today, I’m there. My typing speed is faster than the speed at which I can effectively craft ideas in any logical way. I thought I’d won.
Why, then, haven’t I been writing? This was my goal, no? If I can now type fast enough that no ideas can escape, why don’t I write anything down?
Then, as I posted about a few days ago, I tried writing on paper. I’ve always been a painfully slow analog writer, with messy handwriting, mostly because I never put a value in the practice. When I can type over a hundred words per minute, why limp along at twenty or fewer?
In reality, this slower pace seemed to unlock a level of creativity I hadn’t felt in months, if not years.
maybe thoughts are too fast
I’ve spent all this time trying to write as fast as I think, when the truth is that quick thoughts are usually poorly-considered. And, when my brain subconsciously knows that its thoughts aren’t sound, that’s where a lack of motivation seeps in.
Instead, writing on paper forces my thoughts to slow down; the rushing river of my thoughts is allowed to flow through alternate routes, to find solutions that my quick-typing self would never have had time to consider.
I’m a better writer on paper.
back to authorship
So, to return to this hypothesis I’ve formed in class: did authors lose something when we moved to digital technology? Is there some worldview of ours that has fundamentally shifted?
There’s nothing to keep me from writing slowly on a computer, so I don’t think that’s it; the speed of thought isn’t a fundamental enough concept to bring about the change I’m thinking of. After all, Asimov wrote at 90wpm on his typewriter and kept a good 95% of his drafts in his published stories.
So, perhaps, it’s something that technology allows us that it shouldn’t. Distractions, perhaps. Easy ways out. The internet allows us to be performative authors instead of actually producing work.
Really, though, I think it could be even more fundamental: digital systems allow us to edit. We can revise our drafts, even as we compose them. Our brain context switches, going from author to editor and back in a few moments. This can’t be healthy; there’s a reason that the editorial process is traditionally separated from drafting.
Digital technology allows writers to take the editorial role upon themselves when they should be focused on writing.
It’s okay to edit your own work—though there’s always a place for outside feedback. The problem is the mixing of modes. And that’s what I want to prohibit in my own writing. After all, that’s part of the concept behind challenges like NaNoWriMo, which push you to write so quickly that you don’t have time to edit. Those challenges, though, run afoul of the “speed of thought” issue. Sometimes, it’s good to slow down—but we still need to allow our brains to separate writing from editing.
So, as I said in my last post, I will be attempting more writing on paper. I believe that it’s valuable. But, whether or not I pursue that approach long term, I plan to separate the writer and editor that always battle in my conflicted mind. Each has its time, and they should not be set to work at once.
