I’m having one of those brutal reminders of the importance of little things. I’ve taken a break from my manuscript in order to work on an editing job. I decided to do it on my PDA, not my desktop, partly to hone my PDA skills, but mostly to give myself the option of working somewhere other than at my desk.
While I’m enjoying the comfort of working from the plush recliner in my bedroom and while I’m looking forward to spending part of my day working on the patio, I’m feeling frustrated about the general slowness of the work. The work itself is not challenging. It’s a combination of basic research, a little imagination, and a lot of attention to detail. In and of itself, it’s coming along just fine. But after an hour or so of work, I check the time and am surprised to notice I’ve made so little progress.
I’ve used the PDA often enough and have become proficient enough that I can do most things without going to the help menu. I manage most features smoothly, but I still haven’t quite gotten some of the navigational things that make moving around the text a breeze. I have improved over even these last three days, but the work isn’t second nature, like it is on the desktop machine.
Part of me thinks that I would get more done if I were at the computer. Typing is so second nature to me that it feels like thinking, and using both Word and my screen reader is so comfortable that I’m hardly aware of either.
Like most people, I started by writing by hand. Since most things had to be typed eventually, I’d write a draft by hand, roll a sheet of paper to the platen, and revise as I went along. An avid note taker, I could write at a pace that matched my thinking for those days when I just had to get it out, but most of the time, I wrote at a slow to moderate pace, which gave me time to work out exactly what I needed to say. I rarely do that any more, but every now and then I find myself in a position where I have to reach for plain old paper. I wrote a couple of the poems in my manuscript that way. One even got published with minimal revision.
Then I wrote on the typewriter. As my typing speed and accuracy increased, I could focus less on the physical act of writing and concentrate more on the creative act of composing. While I was able to do that for certain relatively short, formulaic types of writing, it wasn’t something I could sustain for very long, though, thinking back on it now, it’s amazing that I could sustain it for as long as I did.
For a while, during one of my seriously blocked eras, I composed by speaking into a tape recorder. Then I typed or wrote it out by hand, in either case revising as I went along. That was great for certain things, and I was able to sustain the energy of a piece for much longer.
Eventually, I moved on to electronic devices. First it was the self-contained word processor, then WordPerfect in DOS, and now Word in XP. As I write this, I remember that the word processor printed on narrow cash register tape, so I had to type out the finished product those first few years. Even so, being able to delete, add, and move text around was such a wonderful, freeing experience (finally to say exactly what I wanted to say) that I first became unblocked, then became more blocked than ever.
With each new technology, I had to learn to write in a new way, not only to become competent at the mechanics but also to adjust the way I conceived and revised a piece of work. Lacking that second-nature fluency with the mechanics, as I am now with the PDA, is oddly disorienting even when competence is good.
For now, I’m going to keep plugging along with the PDA. Working in the comfy chair has been fabulous, something I don’t want to give up. I’ve have to run the file through Word when I’m done, partly to give it the last once-over, but partly to do a few things that my PDA may not be able to do. I’ll break the manual out next time I’m feeling patient and eager to learn.
Puntitas reads _Leonardo’s Swans_ by K. Essex.
