(Found Magazine)

A little while ago I was assigned the seemingly menial task of re-typing a chapter of Hans Fallada’s Wolf Among Wolves since, at the time, there was no digital copy in existence. What seems like it might have been a mind-numbing endeavor was actually one of my favorite chores while I was interning at Melville House. You can learn a tremendous amount about a writer by faking being them for a little while. You get to see the scaffolding of each sentence and you’re really forced to pay attention to every single syllable of every word. After I read something I really admire (or sometimes during) I often open up Word and start typing it in, word by word, sometimes spending hours on it. (And I wonder why I can’t find the time to post here.) I suppose it’s a dangerous habit to get into if you’re not the type to stop a project before it’s finished, but I still love wasting time this way.