Sunday 10 March 2002

Pic of the day: An infinite number of monkeys, typing on an infinite number of word processors ...

Brain extension

I have forgotten who originally said that paper is an extension of the brain's cortex. This was in the time when we regarded the neocortex as a rather unspecified area for combining information, except for a few reserved areas. I think the view today is that there is more specialized cortex and less general-purpose, but you get the point. Writing is extending your brain into paperspace. Or, these days, into cyberspace.

***

Yes, I've been writing on chapter 3. This chapter I am writing on Cassie the Pocket PC. I wrote the previous chapter in Wordpad on the home PC. And I notice once again that the size of the screen does subtly influence my writing. The difference is not so dramatic with a screen like this; there was a time when I used to write on a one-line display. Somehow, even though I don't consciously read the text I have already written, it seems I get more continuity the more text I have visible at any one time. Weird.

When I walk about I may tell myself the story in my head. Often I will repeat parts of it, more or less unchanged, several times; because there is only so much I can hold in my memory at the same time. Writing is different. Once written, it is much more finished; I can move on. Even now that I can cut and paste, delete and rewrite, it is still far less fluid than in my head.

Sometimes the story changes a bit when I write it. Some small detail is included or omitted, and it changes the whole story. Sometimes things that happened in my head do not unfold in writing because of such details.

I remember once I lost several chapters of another story because of a stupid DOS mistake. I wrote A> instead of A: and the file was gone. When I wrote those chapters again, they unfolded differently, even though I remembered what I wrote the first time. But so did my characters, and they had learned from their experiences. Now that they got a chance to live their life over, they chose differently ...

***

When I was younger, I had typewriters. I liked typewriters. I never got into writing by hand, which is probably a good thing. But computers are simply so much more friendly. I love being able to correct mistakes easily, because I make mistakes easily. So computers it is.

I know some writers claim that computers make for inherently poor writing. The claims vary from the wild ("rays from the monitor influence the brain") to the practical ("it is hard to resist changing what you write so you don't get one line alone on a new page"). The most common claim is probably that the sheer speed and ease of writing makes for less thought per word, and thus inferior writing. The same case was made for the pencil in the past. I'm not even sure people have stopped begrudging the typewriter before it was overtaken by the word processor.

Well, it sure is easy to be verbose with a word processor. Just look at this entry. :) But as for the claim that "no great literature is written on a word processor", my reply is: No literature is great until some time has passed. Preferably until the author is dead or has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, whichever first ends the career.