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kateelliott's fault... Damn her talented soul!
In a blog post on writing process, she mentioned that she will sometimes deliberately write a scene 'wrong' with the knowledge that she can go back and fix it later -- this with the intention of continuing the forward momentum of the novel. I responded, mentioning that that was something I'll do now myself, though in the past I didn't. I blamed it on Scrivener, the program I use for writing novels. She asked that I elucidate on that.
So I will.
Back in the days of typewriters, I drafted my novels in longhand first, because the typewriter seemed a clumsy instrument for creating new work. Drafting on a typewriter was to me like using a butter knife for a screwdriver: it usuallyworked, but it didn't do the butter knife or the screw any good, and there were times just wouldn't work at all. I generally make several changes to each sentence or paragraph as I go along; writing with pen (always black ink, by the way -- no other color was allowed) on paper, I could cross out the words that weren't quite right and replace them with better ones, or draw a line indicating that I wanted this sentence to move over here before that one, or that these two paragraphs needed to be transposed. My first drafts could probably only be deciphered by me, and it was a slow process, but that was fine. I'd use the typewriter for second drafts, and it worked okay for that since typing was faster and the result far cleaner to read, but it still wasn't a perfect alliance.
'Cause y'know what, even at the revision draft level, the typewriter wasn't that good. The tool shaped the writing. If I typed something and wasn't entirely pleased with the change I'd made, especially well down on the page where it would be a lot of work to re-type the whole damn page, I might see if I could 'write around' the change, or if I could be satisfied with 'close enough' rather than tearing the page out, throwing it away, and starting over. Yeah, there were times when I couldn't do either, where I couldn't stand it and had to start the page over, but there were also points where (frankly) I accepted 'close enough' or where I thought "Well, I'll go back and make a hand correction on that page" and forgot to do so.
The shape and design of the tool also shaped the writing and the way I approached writing.
Then came computers, and I was ecstatic. Here was a tool that allowed me to do all those things I could previously do only in longhand, and do them as I was typing. I could change stuff on the fly, delete words, insert words, cut them out and past them elsewhere. Not only that, but what was on the screen was always perfect. No cross-outs, no lines, no scrawls, no illegibility, no notes scribbled in the margins. Any mistakes were my own typos, misspellings, or dropped words. And it was fast, too.
The word processor was My Perfect Writing Tool, and I loved it. Like most writers, I used that tool to draft all my novels --- first MS Word, though I came to hate that program as it became a bloated monstrosity and tried to be All Things To All People. I abandoned MS Word for Nisus Writer Pro, which I found had a far more comfortable (and customizable) interface.
And a word processor is still a wonderful tool, except... As a tool, it also shaped my writing process. A word processor is a linear tool. In a short story, that's not an issue, but as a fictional work becomes longer and more complex, the linearity began to affect how I approached the novel. I could either break each chapter into a separate file so that I could see the scene(s) clearly, or I could keep the novel together in one huge, long file so I could read it easily. I couldn't do both. The "every chapter in its own file" method drove me insane -- I never had a feel for the overarching structure, and I was also opening and closing files (or having dozens of them open at a time, which made navigation a terror). I ended up compromising: most of my novels would consist of three or four separate files, the novel broken into parts of several chapters.
That made it difficult (for me, both mentally and physically) to 'skip' anything in a chapter. I tended to wrap that concept into my process: because it the tool made it difficult to write in any other way than "straight forward"; because the tool didn't make it easy and convenient to wander back and forth through the structure of my novel. If I came to a scene that I wasn't ready to write -- because I didn't know what needed to happen yet, or I wasn't sure it was in the right place, or because I didn't have a clue what needed to be there -- well, I didn't write it. I waited. I waited until I had a decent idea what needed to be there. I waited even if I knew exactly what needed to happen two scenes ahead of this one. The tool wanted me to wait. The tool rewarded me for waiting and punished me for moving ahead. so I waited.
The shape and design of the tool also shaped the writing and the way I approached writing. Again.
About a year and a half ago, the tool changed once more. If you want the sordid details of that, you can go here. I started using Scrivener, which is not a word processor, but a software program specifically designed for the task of writing long works. It's a different tool. It doesn't force linearity on the writer; in fact, the way it's designed almost encourages you to jot down ideas as they occur, to make notes regarding sections and scenes, to write what you're ready to write when you're ready to write it without the worry of finding the 'missing' or ignored scenes that are somewhere behind. You can keep all your research and your notes in one place and access them with a mouse click. You can click and drag an entire scene from one place to another if it makes more sense. You can set up the structure of a section by using a 'corkboard-and-card' concept. Or you can block out everything except what you're working on with a full screen mode.
I fell in immediate love with the program once I actually started using it -- I'd tried it a year or so before, but hadn't done more than poke at it desultorily. But I took A MAGIC OF NIGHTFALL, my then-work in progress, and moved from Nisus to Scrivener.
And once again, the tool altered the process.
Not in any huge, earth-shattering way. It was more subtle, more hidden. I didn't even really notice it myself at first. Yeah, I found that I enjoyed writing in Scrivener in a way I never really enjoyed writing in any word processor, even Nisus. I noticed that my draft was moving along faster than it had before, significantly. And I noticed that when I hit a scene that I just wasn't ready to write, I could drop in some of the necessary movements of the scene and/or some of the dialogue I knew had to be there, writing almost in a 'note-like' fashion, and move on, knowing I could easily find and come back to the skeletonized scene. I found that I could even entirely skip a scene and write the next one. I could mark where I was in the drafting process by color coding the scenes and have a visual cue as to what I needed to do.
This tool was far more versatile (for me) than the word processor. It fit me, fit the way I thought while drafting out a novel. And, because it was a tool with different qualities and capabilities, yes, it also subtly changed the process I used.
Having the right 'tool' makes a difference. It does. I know that from playing guitar and bass as well: the quality of the instrument you're using makes a difference in your performance. The width of the neck, the set-up of the strings, the tone and projection of the instrument, the types of strings you're using, the reproduction equipment into which it's plugged -- they all affect, to some greater or lesser degree, the way you play. On my acoustic fretless bass, I can't play 'slap' bass, as I can on my Roscoe, and because the neck is wider and the set-up is a little higher on the fretless, I can't be quite as precise and quick with the fingering.. But I can't do those nice slides and glides from one note to another on the fretted Roscoe, and it can't 'growl' the way the fretless can. I'm still the same person playing either instrument, with the same skills and same thoughts, but I sound a little different on each.
It's the same way with writing and the instruments you use there. It's the same story in your head, but the tool you choose to use will consciously or unconsciously make small (or even large) changes in your approach to the process, and will -- I suspect -- also result in a slightly different end product.
How about you? Have you noticed that the 'tool' you use changes the way you work?
kateelliott's fault... Damn her talented soul!In a blog post on writing process, she mentioned that she will sometimes deliberately write a scene 'wrong' with the knowledge that she can go back and fix it later -- this with the intention of continuing the forward momentum of the novel. I responded, mentioning that that was something I'll do now myself, though in the past I didn't. I blamed it on Scrivener, the program I use for writing novels. She asked that I elucidate on that.
So I will.
Back in the days of typewriters, I drafted my novels in longhand first, because the typewriter seemed a clumsy instrument for creating new work. Drafting on a typewriter was to me like using a butter knife for a screwdriver: it usuallyworked, but it didn't do the butter knife or the screw any good, and there were times just wouldn't work at all. I generally make several changes to each sentence or paragraph as I go along; writing with pen (always black ink, by the way -- no other color was allowed) on paper, I could cross out the words that weren't quite right and replace them with better ones, or draw a line indicating that I wanted this sentence to move over here before that one, or that these two paragraphs needed to be transposed. My first drafts could probably only be deciphered by me, and it was a slow process, but that was fine. I'd use the typewriter for second drafts, and it worked okay for that since typing was faster and the result far cleaner to read, but it still wasn't a perfect alliance.
'Cause y'know what, even at the revision draft level, the typewriter wasn't that good. The tool shaped the writing. If I typed something and wasn't entirely pleased with the change I'd made, especially well down on the page where it would be a lot of work to re-type the whole damn page, I might see if I could 'write around' the change, or if I could be satisfied with 'close enough' rather than tearing the page out, throwing it away, and starting over. Yeah, there were times when I couldn't do either, where I couldn't stand it and had to start the page over, but there were also points where (frankly) I accepted 'close enough' or where I thought "Well, I'll go back and make a hand correction on that page" and forgot to do so.
The shape and design of the tool also shaped the writing and the way I approached writing.
Then came computers, and I was ecstatic. Here was a tool that allowed me to do all those things I could previously do only in longhand, and do them as I was typing. I could change stuff on the fly, delete words, insert words, cut them out and past them elsewhere. Not only that, but what was on the screen was always perfect. No cross-outs, no lines, no scrawls, no illegibility, no notes scribbled in the margins. Any mistakes were my own typos, misspellings, or dropped words. And it was fast, too.
The word processor was My Perfect Writing Tool, and I loved it. Like most writers, I used that tool to draft all my novels --- first MS Word, though I came to hate that program as it became a bloated monstrosity and tried to be All Things To All People. I abandoned MS Word for Nisus Writer Pro, which I found had a far more comfortable (and customizable) interface.
And a word processor is still a wonderful tool, except... As a tool, it also shaped my writing process. A word processor is a linear tool. In a short story, that's not an issue, but as a fictional work becomes longer and more complex, the linearity began to affect how I approached the novel. I could either break each chapter into a separate file so that I could see the scene(s) clearly, or I could keep the novel together in one huge, long file so I could read it easily. I couldn't do both. The "every chapter in its own file" method drove me insane -- I never had a feel for the overarching structure, and I was also opening and closing files (or having dozens of them open at a time, which made navigation a terror). I ended up compromising: most of my novels would consist of three or four separate files, the novel broken into parts of several chapters.
That made it difficult (for me, both mentally and physically) to 'skip' anything in a chapter. I tended to wrap that concept into my process: because it the tool made it difficult to write in any other way than "straight forward"; because the tool didn't make it easy and convenient to wander back and forth through the structure of my novel. If I came to a scene that I wasn't ready to write -- because I didn't know what needed to happen yet, or I wasn't sure it was in the right place, or because I didn't have a clue what needed to be there -- well, I didn't write it. I waited. I waited until I had a decent idea what needed to be there. I waited even if I knew exactly what needed to happen two scenes ahead of this one. The tool wanted me to wait. The tool rewarded me for waiting and punished me for moving ahead. so I waited.
The shape and design of the tool also shaped the writing and the way I approached writing. Again.
About a year and a half ago, the tool changed once more. If you want the sordid details of that, you can go here. I started using Scrivener, which is not a word processor, but a software program specifically designed for the task of writing long works. It's a different tool. It doesn't force linearity on the writer; in fact, the way it's designed almost encourages you to jot down ideas as they occur, to make notes regarding sections and scenes, to write what you're ready to write when you're ready to write it without the worry of finding the 'missing' or ignored scenes that are somewhere behind. You can keep all your research and your notes in one place and access them with a mouse click. You can click and drag an entire scene from one place to another if it makes more sense. You can set up the structure of a section by using a 'corkboard-and-card' concept. Or you can block out everything except what you're working on with a full screen mode.
I fell in immediate love with the program once I actually started using it -- I'd tried it a year or so before, but hadn't done more than poke at it desultorily. But I took A MAGIC OF NIGHTFALL, my then-work in progress, and moved from Nisus to Scrivener.
And once again, the tool altered the process.
Not in any huge, earth-shattering way. It was more subtle, more hidden. I didn't even really notice it myself at first. Yeah, I found that I enjoyed writing in Scrivener in a way I never really enjoyed writing in any word processor, even Nisus. I noticed that my draft was moving along faster than it had before, significantly. And I noticed that when I hit a scene that I just wasn't ready to write, I could drop in some of the necessary movements of the scene and/or some of the dialogue I knew had to be there, writing almost in a 'note-like' fashion, and move on, knowing I could easily find and come back to the skeletonized scene. I found that I could even entirely skip a scene and write the next one. I could mark where I was in the drafting process by color coding the scenes and have a visual cue as to what I needed to do.
This tool was far more versatile (for me) than the word processor. It fit me, fit the way I thought while drafting out a novel. And, because it was a tool with different qualities and capabilities, yes, it also subtly changed the process I used.
Having the right 'tool' makes a difference. It does. I know that from playing guitar and bass as well: the quality of the instrument you're using makes a difference in your performance. The width of the neck, the set-up of the strings, the tone and projection of the instrument, the types of strings you're using, the reproduction equipment into which it's plugged -- they all affect, to some greater or lesser degree, the way you play. On my acoustic fretless bass, I can't play 'slap' bass, as I can on my Roscoe, and because the neck is wider and the set-up is a little higher on the fretless, I can't be quite as precise and quick with the fingering.. But I can't do those nice slides and glides from one note to another on the fretted Roscoe, and it can't 'growl' the way the fretless can. I'm still the same person playing either instrument, with the same skills and same thoughts, but I sound a little different on each.
It's the same way with writing and the instruments you use there. It's the same story in your head, but the tool you choose to use will consciously or unconsciously make small (or even large) changes in your approach to the process, and will -- I suspect -- also result in a slightly different end product.
How about you? Have you noticed that the 'tool' you use changes the way you work?
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