Frankenstein's monster

Writers have a great disadvantage in this modern era. I can see the problem clearly when I open the pages of the two most expensive books I own: full-sized reproductions of the original manuscripts for John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.

The two manuscripts are quite different. Steinbeck wrote in a minuscule hand on a giant accounting ledger. The ledger helped him keep the lines spaced out for the sake of his typist. Except for a few red marks on each page, the manuscript is clean and closely matches the final published work. Shelly’s handwriting is larger, and she leaves ample room in the margins for edits, many by Percy Shelly.

I love to think how different writing was when paper was precious and ink permanent. The original manuscript for Anne of Green Gables was partly written on salvaged paper.

Before the computer age, authors did not edit much as they wrote. They may have thought carefully about their sentences before laying them down, but they didn’t have the power of cutting, copying, and pasting unless they used scissors, a pen, and paste. This power modern writers have can be a huge impediment to good writing habits in this modern era.

We can be a bit heedless as we write, knowing how easily the text can be rewritten.

And, the habit of editing while writing interferes with the writing at every level. Even at the most basic level, the act of moving a hand to the mouse moves the fingers from the keyboard.

This doesn’t mean I need to write with a quill, but it’s worthwhile to remember how computers influence how we write.

I’ve had to work hard to break my habit of editing while writing a draft. I still fight against the urge to hop around the manuscript, reread what I wrote, and insert a word or a sentence.

I wrote that way for most of my adult life and this practice contributed a lot to my decades long writer’s block. I would spend two hours trying to hone the first page of an essay, and by time I abandoned the attempt, my essay resembled a half-finished Frankenstein’s monster, and like Victor Frankenstein, I would abandon my creation.