was saying in his journal that he’s been experimenting/dealing with the difference between assembling and writing a poem in LiveJournal vs. composing it in a word processor, vs. writing it out longhand. I want to expand on this idea later, so this entry is mostly a bookmark for me to think about this further; it’s a comment I left on his entry:
John Updike once noted that he kept a manual typewriter in his study, a legal pad in the living room, a composition book by the door into the back yard, and (later) a computer at his desk. He would write essays in the study, fiction in the living room, and poetry in the garden. When he got stuck in one place and mode, he would switch rooms and write using different materials and media.
I found his pattern to be a valuable insight. I mostly keep my journal in LiveJournal now, recording events and dates and difficulties. Short stories belong to the computer. The epic goes in one kind of notebook, and that one kind of notebook alone; it’s always longhand. Other poetry goes in other notebooks, usually in block print; sonnets go in a specific size-and-shape book with a wraparound leather cover, sometimes in shorthand, sometimes in block print, and occasionally in backwards Leonardo DaVinci style writing.
I think that what you write with and what you write on has a serious effect on how you write and what you write.
In other news, I just finished and sent in the first draft of my piece for White Wolf. woohoo! Now to finish my chai and head back to place so we can have dinner and a nice evening together.
