14 iSidelong iSpringlizards Lifted (what were they doing there?!) from my iHot Velveeta
1. That time travel/forum flash you saw once; it hit you like lobbed Pringles. You wondered where it was, something.
At 18:06:59, BigChill wrote:
Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what’s the harm?
3. Yo, fantasy novel pitch: You ford the dawn. You have a ring and/or sword (naturally–all Fantasy is oddly derivative of Tolkien). You put the ring/sword down (finally). I unwrap you an Interesting Sandwich. Here it is: These Iraq photos were taken through Humvee windows and military-issue night vision goggles. Sort of green/glow/combustible clap/badass. Do eyeball:
2. Shopping? Well, think on this: I suggest a Scientific (wow, it’s scientific!) Talking Meat Thermometer. (It only speaks English, Spanish, German, French, and Danish. That’s sketchy.)
4. Largest collection of fish posters I’ve seen since noon-thirty.
5. Wonderful, wonderful essay by Jim Harrison, for those that worship wine.
I have long since publicly admitted that I seek spirituality through food and wine. In France, Italy, and Spain, I seem more drawn to markets and cafés than to churches and museums. Too many portraits of bleeding Jesus and his lachrymose Momma make me thirsty. The Lord himself said on the cross, “I thirst” and since our world itself has become a ubiquitous and prolonged crucifixion it is altogether logical that we are thirsty.
14. Does anyone here write by hand? I’d like to hear you talk about that, why, why it’s necessary to you, why brain to hand to actual felt page is a preferred—and essential—difference than tap, tap, tap, glowing, white pretty pixel monitor fat, white face. Tote me some knowledge.
Tags: Fuck tags like glowing houses, promise not to tell me what they have done
Thanks for that Jim Harrison. As for no. 14: for what it’s worth, I can only write first drafts of poems by hand in my journal, never ever written one on the computer. Don’t have any thought-out reasons why, other than I started that way and did so for 7 years or so before I ever got a computer and so it’s habit. I revise on the computer. The thought of trying to write a first draft of a poem on a computer would feel like trying to pet my cat with my printer.
Writing by hand gets rid of online distractions, and when you write by hand you are forced to look over every single thing you wrote when you transcribe it onto the computer. Which is kind of cool because after you’ve typed it onto the computer you can really say you’ve gone through two drafts of a piece already!
Also, on a more sentimental note, holding onto old notebooks of your scribbles is kind of cool. You get to not only see your handwriting, but how it might get sloppier at more exciting parts, or the angry cross outs of parts you looked over and changed your mind about, the notes in the margin you’d never really make on a .doc. You can also sell these for billions of dollars when you become world-famous!
I write by hand. I write in the worst notebooks possible, so I don’t feel any standards. I just filled up one of those entire blue recycling bins in the alley before i moved last year. I write to practice writing. I have a favorite model of pen. I never write in pencil.
I try out different voices, sentences structures, rhythms, etcetera. I practice telling one story several different ways. These are things that I never spend much time on with a computer. The computer is the processor, for me – the notebook is the incubator.
I started to pepper in some nicer notebooks recently. It slows me down, helps me realize that writing takes effort. Reading takes effort. I don’t want to be a dick with my reader’s time – especially if I’m my only reader. Clarity. Patience.
What the others said about drafts, I agree with.
[As an aside, I could never hold on to all my notebooks. I’d feel too much like Kevin Spacey in Se7en.]
Shout to Natalie Goldberg.
that snap is rad
when i write by hand it comes out feeling done
so it stays right where it is & the thought is purged
no bueno
I write by hand and on PC. Couple of reasons:
There is a necessary buffer. I type 120+ wpm, so I can streamline and really hit something. However, no matter what, there is this essential limit to how fast one can write.
The feel of a page. The feel of something I can twirl in my fingers. Sound of my hand against the paper — I hate that sound, how it rubs and kind of activating those pits where your jawbone interlocks with your skull, and its that cringy feeling. But computers make hot-noises, or bug out and crash. They spontaneously burn. Paper doesn’t spontaneously burn. (I think).
Because I don’t have much other distraction but the world. Of myself. No porn, for one reason, maybe.
Because I can take paper ANYWHERE. My goodness. I can take that damn thing into the bathroom stall and be COMFORTABLE.
Paper is UNISEX>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<
i write by hand to take notes/copy certain sentences while i am reading (into a notebook)
and then i draft by hand as long as i can before i get impatient and want to see what it will actually look like when it’s typed (usually 2-5 drafts)
and then i print that copy and edit it by hand and then type a finial copy
seeing my own handwriting on multiples pieces of paper feels strangely therapeutic in a way that words on a screen don’t feel like they necessarily belong to me anymore
and i’m just OCD