Please, to find my motivation and self-confidence and give both a swift kick in the ass?

I have got to quit babbling about favorite movies and get on with writing. Especially since I'd like to have something to submit by September/October.

I have the file open and everything, which is an improvement over yesterday.

I need to add the writers-readers group at Library Thing to my list of "groups not to read less they make me very annoyed."

There's a thread on pen and paper vs. computers for writing, and some people are insisting that "serious" writing can only occur with pen and paper because computers encourage lazy thinking and bad writing and you can't possibly rethink your prose to its inspired perfection unless you rewrite every word and judge its fitness before putting it down.

Typewriters are sort of allowed because you have to consider every word.

There are other obnoxious snobs, too. They annoy me.

But I am a little curious as to whether there is a higher purity/purpose reason to write on paper rather than a screen. I disbelieve, because I'm fully capable of reading text on a screen, frowning, and juggling the words until they work.

For some people, it works better that way. For others, not. I'd advise letting it go (and clicking the handy little red "x" on the LibraryThing thread, which makes the letting go oh so much easier).

I think you're right. I should just read the Holmes group and call it good. And the Buffistas.

I have heard that over and over. I'm taken some writing seminars in which they urged you to use pen and paper because it was more "organic." I have written everything directly onto a keyboard since I was 15 and the keyboard was a portable manual Smith-Corona. My brain runs directly to my touch-typing fingers. Writing by hand, on the other hand, seems hugely labor intensive and it feels like I'm putting more labor into moving the pen than writing.

It does seem to help some people approach their work differently. The rest are right there with the scribes who complained that they did better work stamping cuneiform into wet clay rather than dipping a pen in ink.

For me, it depends on how many words it needs to be. Something only a page or so, I'll do on the computer. For 10-15 page research papers, I always handwrote those. Unless it was 3am in the morning and due at 10am the next day. Then, it all got done on the computer, since I obviously didn't care what grade I got. Part of it, I think, is that I don't have a printer. I like to lay out the pages I have so far so I can scan them all at the same time. For whatever reason, I see the gaps in logic, etc. better that way and I edit better. If I could print out each page as I wrote it, I'd probably do it all on computer.

So, it's actually more my editing process that requires hard copy to perform. The actual writing can be done on the computer. Long story, now short.

There's a thread on pen and paper vs. computers for writing, and some people are insisting that "serious" writing can only occur with pen and paper because computers encourage lazy thinking and bad writing and you can't possibly rethink your prose to its inspired perfection unless you rewrite every word and judge its fitness before putting it down.

BWAH!

::chokes, wheezes, laughs some more::

And how many manuscripts have these folks completed? Or, excuse me... works?

You know, it's what works best for the writer. Period. Nothing else. There have been times I've had a hard time with the screen and I go back to pen and paper (and I have a HUGE stash of journals and pens for this reason) because the physical act of writing frees something up in me and I can get the bare bones of what I want to say without stressing over every single word or turn of phrase.

I know people who adore writing on AlphaSmarts because they can only see three or four lines at a time, therefore the temptation to go back and edit endlessly is curbed. I can't use one of those because I have to see the entire screen/sheet of paper.

Some people dictate, then transcribe.

There are as many "right" ways to approach the craft as there are people who do it.

I usually have to go to paper at least once to edit.

I didn't handwrite my papers in part because the professors had this silly notion that they needed to be able to read the papers. To the horror of my mother, who writes with perfect Palmer script and was a drafter, I have terrible handwriting.

Poetry and lyrics on paper, essays/LJ entries/letters on computer. I don't know why, other than possibly the correlation of poetry going in my journal and essays being typed as a kid. It's really all about whatever works, you know?

I'm thinking the divide is more than a little age-based. Well, not age, but "writing's reputation" based. People from a certain school of thought probably picture writing in terms of being curled up in a nook/garret/cafe with a notebook and a drink of choice. To them, "writer" equals "person with pen/pencil being artistic." I've seen people on the writer-reader board get abusive when others try to define "writer" as anything other than "artist worthy of having their work last through the ages". (That's not all hyperbole, the guy was actively abusing someone for thinking they could call themselves a writer, as if they could dare to place themselves in the company of Shakespeare, Dante, Tolstoy, etc.)

"Writer" seems to be one of those few avocations with an inherent assumption of class. Something you have to be worthy of. People of pretension get downright squirlly if you hint that their august selves may rub metaphorical shoulders with the like of, shudder, Stephen King, drat his successful, award-winning soul. (We won't go into the pervasiveness of successful being the enemy of "art" in the creative world.)

So back to paper versus computer. Writers invested in an image of themslves as Writer don't seem to like associating with something as modern, utilitarian, and egalitarian as computers. They cling to the romance of pen and paper (romance is another word tossed about by Writers and those who comment on them).

I do write differently on paper than on screen. As one might assume, I am much more long-winded on screen. But I don't believe my words are better chosen on paper, just differently chosen. Maybe if we can teach Writers how to touch-type so that their thoughts and their fingers move at the same speed, they'll change their minds.

Though if they type the way my husband does, hunting down each letter at a time, I don't see how that's different from "sketching each letter one at a time, choosing each word with care."