9-12-2006.
Time Out London features a regular column called "How I Write." The following is the text of my response; it originally appeared in the August 18 issue (I think).
Jesse Kellerman: How I Write.
I write using a computer. That may sound like a snarky truism, but I think it merits emphasis, because the physical act of writing has changed so dramatically in recent years. I’ve never really used a typewriter; and while I occasionally use a pen and paper to jot down ideas on the fly, I gave up longhand sometime back in the 1980s.
Using a computer has profoundly affected my writing. I am impatient, revisiting and revising introductory clauses before I’ve typed their successors. (To wit: I’ve just rewritten the previous sentence nine times.) If I misplace a fact, I am instantly on the Internet. Able to move whole chapters with two mouseclicks, I employ decidedly less forethought than I would if every swap required hours of Liquid Papering.
Does this herky-jerky style of composition improve or degrade the final product? I don’t know. On the plus side, I’m probably less afraid of making mistakes than a hand-writer, and my freedom to err gives the process a delirious, jazzlike spontaneity. When I was primarily writing plays, I found such riffing useful in creating dialogue. Sometimes my fingers would jigger out a non sequitur that would emerge as a new aspect to a character. As one without a mystical bent, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “automatic writing” or “the character speaking;” but most of us can probably agree that the release of preconceived notions is a prerequisite for creativity.
On the other hand, the word processor (does anybody say that anymore?) seems a trifle thoughtless, mechanistic, and sterile compared to the quill of the pensive scribe as he hunches over inkwell and parchment, scratching lines of blank verse by lanternlight. Chewing that feather down to bits in search of the right metaphor. Managing without thesauri and Bartlett’s. Memory alone his goad. I can only aspire.
I once met a writer who said he laid out every word in advance, writing only when he had the fully-formed paragraph in his head, a claim I find both impressive and improbable. But who knows? Maybe my prose would be smoother if I stopped jumping around for a minute. It’s a generational curse: we can’t sit still unless something’s beeping at us.
One computer-induced pitfall I have managed to avoid is the temptation to misspell. I am somewhat of a grammatical and orthographical stickler. It is the same impulse, in fact, that causes me to sit on a sentence—rewriting and rewriting and rewriting, staring at that cursor, its malicious wink—before I’m satisfied enough to move on.
I notice that I have neglected to address the question of where I get my inspiration. Actually, I think I did that on purpose. I couldn’t begin to tell you. It’s different every time, and anyhow why worry about abstractions? Whether hacking at my Mac or chiseling at a tablet, it’s all I can do to contain the rush once it starts.
(I write in the morning while sipping a cup of tea. Ye literalists, stop yer carping.)