How I write. 7QT XX, seriatim.

got the idea for this post from Thomas L. McDon­ald, who wrote a QA with him­self about his work habits. I like to hear how oth­er writ­ers go about it, and thought I would write my own such. You often bump up against the strange­ly famil­iar in that way. Indeed I can remem­ber watch­ing a doc­u­men­tary that takes you the view­er into a bit of John Irv­ing’s writ­ing process, and think­ing: You too, John? I thought I was the only one.

Data

Loca­tion. Way back up in the woods among the ever­greens.

Cur­rent Gig. Blog­ger, free­lancer, starv­ing artist, col­lec­tor of pen­nies.

One word that best describes how you work. Fit­ful­ly. Or maybe fret­ful­ly. Most days I can’t decide.

Cur­rent mobile device. iPad Air.

Cur­rent com­put­er. Decrepit, clunky Vista which does not run Inter­net right now; I use my iPad for all.

What apps / soft­ware / tools can’t you live with­out? Why? Twishort, because I can’t keep myself to 140 char­ac­ters: 140 char­ac­ters are like a one-square-foot cell.

Also my Pre­cise Rolling Ball Ink pen (fine), because I write every­thing with it, every­thing, includ­ing my blog posts, my notes in the mar­gins of books, my gro­cery lists, and my checks to the blood­suck­ing mag­gots love­ly Visa peo­ple. Any oth­er type of pen plays hav­oc with my per­snick­ety, Asperg­er tendencies—which may be more than ten­den­cies.

What’s your workplace setup like?

Very spare and spar­tan, as you can see from the pic above. If I have any kind of tech­nol­o­gy around me at all when I write, I will be dis­tract­ed and nev­er get any­thing done. How can I write when there’s some­one say­ing some­thing dumb on Face­book? So I shut it down and shut it off and write on paper.

Annie Dil­lard once said that she needs “a room with no view, so that imag­i­na­tion can meet mem­o­ry in the dark.” I have mod­eled my own work­space around that prin­ci­ple. It’s why my desk faces a wall rather than a win­dow. (The win­dow is behind me, and the blinds drawn.) I require noth­ing but paper, pens, and words. And, of course, end­less cups of Mys­tic Monk cof­fee.

What is your best timesaving shortcut?

I can’t think of any bet­ter one than what I wrote above: My com­put­er is off when I write. If I need to make notes from some­thing online, I do it ahead of time. That way, when I sit down to write, I am not dis­tract­ed. I can scratch about for words alone.

Also, I leave myself plen­ty of space in the mar­gin so that I can insert added notes or ideas or cor­rec­tions to my rough draft. That saves time lat­er hunt­ing about for the para­graph I want­ed to insert here, which I wrote on a dif­fer­ent sheet of paper, because there was no room left on this one.

(Although, my chal­lenge is less find­ing stuff to add than it is find­ing stuff to cut.)

Besides your phone and computer, what gadget can’t you live without and why?

Well, my phone and com­put­er are the only “gad­gets” I have, unless you count the car, the microwave, and the toast­er. I lit­er­al­ly have not turned on my tele­vi­sion in 30 months, and I am bet­ter off with­out it. (And I am bet­ter off, too, with all that mon­ey back in my bud­get every month. You know, so I can buy more books.)

I sup­pose that being with­out a TV is one more time­sav­ing short­cut. I write more and—even better—I read more and I pray more.

What do you listen to while you work?

A fan best suits my autism, as do those use­ful YouTube videos which are 8 hours of noth­ing but an air­plane engine, or a train, or a vac­u­um clean­er. I am still wait­ing for some­one to make an 8 hour video of a lawn mow­er.

What are you currently reading?

For a Lenten devo­tion­al, I am read­ing No Man is an Island by Thomas Mer­ton. Dur­ing Lent, I also always reread the Gospel of John.

As a kind of Lenten penance, I am reread­ing some Thomas Hardy that I haven’t read in 25 years. I was inter­est­ed to find out whether I would like his nov­els any bet­ter now that I’m in my for­ties. I don’t. His books are still crap. Espe­cial­ly Jude the Obscure.

What has changed over the years since you started and what do you do differently?

When I was in grad­u­ate school (this was in the 1990s), I wrote every­thing long­hand, keyed my rough drafts into an Apple IIGS using Apple­works Word Pro­cess­ing (I know; I’m 45), and revised, by hand, on the hard copy. Then I would repeat over a series of maybe 8–10 more drafts.

Then, along about 2001, with the sud­den abil­i­ty to do a great amount of research direct­ly from the Inter­net, I began to write entire­ly on the com­put­er, in Microsoft Word. That was not a good idea: Inevitably, my com­put­er crashed, and I lost all my work, and my stom­ach got slain, one too many times.

And so I returned to writ­ing every­thing long­hand, except that—to save paper—I now write all my cor­rec­tions in the mar­gin or by the scratch-out method you see here. And it’s not uncom­mon for me to write two or three times as many drafts as I used to.

I find that I am in more direct con­nec­tion with the words that way, and I feel more like I am lost in a text and writ­ing—as opposed to typ­ing, or gad­get­ing, or fid­dling around on Face­book.

Twen­ty years lat­er, not much has changed except my hand­writ­ing is slop­pi­er and get­ting worse; but I can read it, which is the impor­tant thing.

Read more of this week’s quick takes at This Ain’t the Lyceum.