Ink Wells and Digital Realms
A handwritten or typewritten page … is usually to some degree a palimpsest; it contains parts and relics of its own history—erasures, passages crossed out, interlineations—suggesting that there is something to go back to as well as something to go forward to. The light-text on the computer screen, by contrast, is an artifact typical of what can only be called the industrial present, a present absolute. A computer destroys the sense of historical succession, just as do other forms of mechanization - Wendell Berry
With the invention of the word processor, you had the opportunity to sit at home and type correspondence, create a zine or even write a book. Your fingers and wrists would be saved from the heavy work of those typewriter keys. As nostalgic as they may be, typewriters made it difficult to correct mistakes and rework text so you can see why the use of a computer was popular - it made life much easier. Yet, here we are, in the midst of a technological boom packed full of AI “help” and the little notebook on our “phones”. These things are no longer a tool, they are an extension of us. It was in the midst to trying to write one day that I realised how much I was struggling with the use of technology, as a writer. Further to this, I realised that I was writing less than I ever have in over thirty years.
Typing, when writing, is faster but I feel I have lost that “thinking time”, the pause that allows the ideas to come to me. Those random words and sentences that invade that space between the mind and the page. I erase words, I add them – I have thoughts jotted down in the margins waiting to be adopted. I am imbuing myself onto the page, it is becoming a personal document - a part that will live on in the museum of me. Luddite? Maybe. Technologically stunted? Definitely not. How our minds work and how the rest of the world wants us to work are two totally different things. As a poet I like to write with a pen and notebook, if I have ideas for the arts journal – I make physical notes. But don’t you just have to type it all up? I hear you say. Yes, and that in itself can be a useful tool to further the editing process if needed but to get the soul of the writing I need pen and paper.
I stare at the blank page, the blank digital page on my laptop and feel its threatening white glow upon my skin. I sit with my notebook and feel nothing but an invite to fill its pages. I am uninterrupted by AI help, suggestions for corrections and the pinging of emails and new alerts. Even the whirring of my laptop annoys me. But, if it is just me and my notebook, we are enveloped in this romance of words yet when it comes to my editorial role – the digital realm suits the nature of the beast. I deal with images, emails, interview requests from people around the world, an online shop – that is when it becomes a brilliant and useful tool for work.
For the poet or the prose writer, the written word is a commitment, a permanent marker that you have had an idea and you are ready to be its keeper and weave it into the world.