Be sure to wear some flour in your hair
You've heard of live blogging ; this is dead blogging, where I scrawl my ruminations longhand and transpose them into my computer later with only minor editing. I left the laptop at home on our trip to San Francisco, feeling vaguely virtuous about it, wondering if maybe the organic process of putting pen to paper might somehow awaken some inner muse. So far, mostly it's awakened a dull pain in my writing hand and forearm -- a reminder of years of disuse. The modern ease of putting words on a screen and rearranging them at will -- does that make you a better communicator, or a lazier one? You still hear of writers who prefer longhand, who claim it makes one more careful with composition, the way shooting film requires more thought than shooting digital. I don't know. It's hard to imagine writing a full novel this way. But then, I haven't quite written one the new way, either. I'm sitting close to a gas fireplace which is operated by remote control. This beautifu...
