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12:20:2002 Entry: "Stan : iBook"
iBook
My first iBook means for me a new period of creative transformation. For the last six years I've produced an eighteen inch stack of notebooks containing outlines and dialogues for six different novels. None of these note collections are even close to being called a first draft which I could show to another person for any kind of input. Since childhood my habit of writing has been to produce everything in long hand and rewrite a final draft in long hand too. The end of the process was to then use the hand written final draft to produce a legible copy on a typewriter of computer. Before the dawn of computers I was not the kind of person to use a typewriter as a writing tool, and until now I've never had the right conditions to use a computer according to my own creativity schedule.
I feel a little like one of the writers in the movie Naked Lunch. The writing instrument itself had control in the writer's lives like an addiction, and moving from a typewriter to a computer was like changing one's drug habit to a stronger drug. Moving from the pen, in my case, to an iBook causes me to feel that I've become more addicted to writing than ever before, and I've become even more helpless against my desire to write.
I also feel like my creative life has come in contact with a monolith of transformation by using my iBook as a writing tool sort of like the movie 2001. The ape men and the astronauts both came in contact with an advanced technology that changed them and everything they had assumed about their worlds. Before I bought my computer I assumed that using a computer would be a simple matter of transferring what I've written by hand into an iBook as a process of copying. Now that I'm using my iBook I see that everything I've written is becoming transformed to a degree I could not have foreseen. Copying what I've previously written is impossible because my entire creative world has been transformed by this new technology, and my writings are changing as I switch from the pen to the iBook.
All of my notes perish before my eyes like some antiquated paradigm in the process of rewriting everything from the last six years.
The most beautiful movie about writing I've ever seen was a gift from my sister Jamie. Anyone who loves reading and writing must see Il Postino (The Postman).
5 Comments
Hey Ms. Lady :) I really liked your about page! Great Vermin Peeves!
Posted by Kimberly @ 08:31:2002:07:17 AM CST
It's easier and gives you much more possibillities to write on a computer, first of all you get a much better overview, and you can go back and make changes, delete and add, move the text around. Good luck with the writing :)
And yes, The Postman is one of the more beautiful movies.
Posted by Nico @ 08:31:2002:12:49 PM CST
Hi, Stan!
I'm slowly putting all my poems and prose and short stories into my iBook and I find that I'm fighting the urge to edit, revise and just discard the work altogether. I've decided to do the original, and create a revised file as well, and to not delete.
I think I may relieve myself of over 50 pounds of notes and paper, but the only problem is my journals. Hand written, I cannot bear to convert them to digital formats. The physicalness of them and the smell of the ink on the paper take me back to when I wrote them, and for now, I am willing to lug them around.
I'm looking forward to reading more!
:) Suzanne
Posted by Suzanne @ 08:31:2002:02:01 PM CST
Hey Stan, has it asked you to rub drugs on its lips yet?
And has our house become like the Interzone yet?
Posted by Ann @ 08:31:2002:05:10 PM CST
Hi Suzanne,
Thank you for the note (and everyone else too) , and I agree with you about journals. It wouldn't be right to go back and edit time capsules of our inner lives.
Posted by Stan @ 08:31:2002:09:04 PM CST