artistic practice, writer's life, writing

It’s Physical

What do you enjoy most about writing?

I like pretty much everything about writing. I like the way you start with a nugget of an idea that expands as you keep at it. You know how you can see someone in the street, say, or in a cafe, and they’re all alone and you get to wondering why. Why is that woman with the interesting coat alone?

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Where did she get such an interesting coat? Did she make it, did she inherit it from a distant aunt who she only met once, when she was thirteen but really liked her? Does she wish she saw that aunt more, but her mother didn’t like her? Was she her dad’s sister, cousin, but her dad died and her mother cut off contact with all his relatives and she was too young to protest?

And your mind fills up with this stuff, so you jot it down and, before you know it, you have invented a whole history about a total stranger and you just have to type it up.

But the best thing about writing is the way it feels when the graphite meets the paper. How it’s both faintly scratchy and flowy. Not flowy like water but flowy like melting tar on day so hot you’d jump in the river if you weren’t wearing your favourite shirt. I love that feeling. I really ought to buy a notebook.

These days I write on my iPad with an Apple Pencil. I’ve got a fancy glass screen protector that is meant to mimic the sensation of writing on paper, and it isn’t bad, but it’s not quite as sensual. It is, however, practical. I no longer have to find places to keep all those full notebooks. I have years worth of notebooks, and I have nowhere to store new ones. I struggle to store the ones I have. So it’s the iPad from now on. I still have a stash of my favourite pencils, though, just in case electricity becomes a distant memory, like that aunt with the interesting coat.

Header image: Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash

4 thoughts on “It’s Physical”

  1. My writing experience is very limited. I once had to deliver articles, little nothings in fact, on a regular basis. The best part was to find a topic, and a direction for description. Sounds silly, but I have a tendency to meander around, so I need to find a path, and follow it. This direction-finding included research, sometimes on remote topics – may this was what I enjoyed the most. When it came together.
    The writing itself always was digital (since the late eighties : BAckup is your friend !). I only write letters & postcards with pen and pencil. I prefer ink and (soft) lead pencil over biro, in fact I do not like anything with a kind of paste.

    At another occasion I had to prepare biographical sketches of learned people (a kind of genealogy of my own field). Students should give a bio-bibliographical overview over one person’s life etc., so I had to prepare this for my own to be able to complete their portrayals.
    The best thing was the moment when I realised that I “had it”, that I (kind of) looked at this life seeing “an” / “the” arc, especially in respect to the person’s scientific work, reception – what was before / took he in, what made he from this, and what was the impact. Family tree of the Gelehrtenrepublik.
    So again, it is more the preparation than the actual work of writing, I enjoy. Find materials / sources, organise them, find the (Ariadne’s) threat that keeps it together. Then sit down and hammer it into the machine, allow no distractions, and keep that deadline – thank GOd for deadlines, so I had to finish : No text, no pay.

    Maybe I should use that gifted, orange notebook …

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    1. I understand the meandering very well, I get lost in research, so I’m rubbish at non-fiction. And for fiction I have to have a first draft before researching. I keep thinking I’d like to write essays, but I always flounder and drown in research. Working out a path, like you do, could be the answer.

      Yes, time to use the orange notebook!

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  2. I like the physical aspect of writing – hence why I also like calligraphy!
    I have the Apple pen for writing, but I don’t like how it skids over the screen – so you’re saying you can buy something to put on the screen to prevent this? I must have a search for it.
    Sx

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    1. I tried to find my order, which I’d have sworn was from Amazon, so I could share the link, but I can’t find it. It’s matt glass and makes a huge difference. You can also get silicone tips for the pencil which help, but I kept losing them! X

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