Technologies of writing impact my composition process in very specific ways. The word processor program “Microsoft Word” can be uploaded onto laptops. Because laptops are portable, my own composition process can take place in just about any environment that I can bring my laptop to and I often write in a variety of places. Keyboard design is also standardized. Any person who spends enough time typing will soon develop muscle memory regarding the placement of letters, numbers, and other symbols, and this has greatly sped up my own composition process. This is obviously different than manually writing something with a pencil or pen, which takes me a much longer time.

            Another plus of using a word processor is the “Copy and Paste” function, which was discussed in our readings.  This has the benefit of saving time and energy by transporting large amounts of text like a quote, or passage to be revised into the word document in an instant, similar to what Seth Grahame-Smith did when writing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Using a word processor also helps the writer save paper, as corrections can be made in the document, and do not have to be done on countless sheets of paper, which in turn helps me and many others save some money.

            On the flipside, when composing something on a word processor like Microsoft Word, which is itself, not a tangible item like a notepad or piece of paper, but a software program, physical copies of a composition are not being gathered. They are also not being physically revised. In order to save a composition, the writer must continually “save” the piece, which poses the risk of losing some if not all of what the writer has written, if there is no automatic “save” function. This has made me a bit of a “manic” saver due to past misfortune.

Millennials and the generation now coming to be known as “gen z” are sometimes referred to as “digital natives.” The usefulness of the term is arguable, as there are many factors other than age that play into whether one grows up with access to computers/devices and thus the online world we are supposedly the natives of, but there are still marked differences in the way many young adults today interact with technology compared to members of previous generations. Generally rhetoric around this concept centers on phones or social media, but today’s readings made me consider it in terms of a foundational aspect of home computing (even typing the phrase sounds so quaint) that I and maybe many of my generation take for granted: word-processing.

“It was like having a chronic pain, a debilitating brain disease, or insufferable stress banished forever. I could begin with what interested me, have fun with it, and continue to have fun until I was finished.” The way Barry B. Longyear describes the advent of word-processing into a life restricted to type-writing resonated with me. The second half of this quote is exactly how I write everything, from academic work to personal essays to fiction—even writing this reading response, I began by transcribing the quote itself, then considered where I wanted to start in framing it, moved slightly up in my Google doc, and began. Doubtless I will pause, rework things, delete others, before I am done. (And here I am, adding and changing even after cutting/pasting from Google docs to WordPress.)

But even though I didn’t have much access to computers or word processors for most of my middle school and high school education (I attended a Waldorf school, whose philosophical underpinnings recommend restricting access to technology, and anyway I am right on the cusp of the age when high school students began regularly submitting their work printed rather than handwritten), I have never felt the crushing weight that Longyear describes in the first half of the above quote. The use of word processing feels second-nature, the idea that you can begin wherever you find the joy and fascination in a written piece obvious. The words on the page appear in straight lines, one after another, yet the idea that composition must be actually linear feels deeply alien to me. When I do write by hand, the pages are always a mess of arrows pointing to blocks at the side of the page, sentences or phrases written sideways to be inserted before other sentences and phrases, stars and symbols leading to the backs of the previous page, whole paragraphs circled and marked so I know to move them later in the piece when I do, inevitably, type it up. I always believed this would be true of me no matter the era, and I’m sure that the linearity of type-writing did not mean that every writer thought linearly—if they had, type-writing would not have been such a terrible burden, as they would have lined their sentences up neatly as they occurred to them and never had to produce more than one draft. However, I wonder to what degree the knowledge that nothing is ever set in stone (on the side of a sphinx, for example, to touch on Robinson) has affected the way ideas occur, the way my brain—and the brains of my contemporaries—sorts through them.

One must imagine what Dr. Jerry Pournelle, widely acknowledged as the first working writer to utilize a word processor, thought about the process of writing at the end of his life, in 2017. In the late-1970s, Pournelle noted that his computer was “saving him whole ‘months’ of typing and retyping, and that it let him produce prose at ‘double’ the rate” (p. 99). Yet, to the youngish citizen of 2020, some of the limitations Pournelle encountered during his pioneering endeavors seem comedic: the Apple II computer (released in 1977) could not produce lower-case letters, The Electric Pencil, the system Pournelle used, didn’t have the capabilities needed to boldface, underline, or italicize, and was prone to errors, which meant the danger of losing a document was always present (seeing as how autosave was a resident of the distant future).

In regard to my composition process, I disagree with science-fiction writer Frank Herbert claim that computers “amplify creative imagination.” Outside of academia, I am a working film critic and part-time poet. In crafting a film review, I utilize pen and paper to craft notes both at movie theatres and in the comfort of my bed. At times, films elicit reactions from me which result in notes more akin to pictograms than actual letters—I could never utilize a computer for this in the same way I do the notebook I keep in my back pocket. My drafting process also includes a lot of marginal work, such as arrows, variations of underlining (i.e., how many lines an underline contains to signify importance of content), highlighting, and dialogue bubbles (to keep the mood light). However, all that being said, I couldn’t envision a world in which the chaos of my notebook isn’t transposed onto a laptop running the latest version of Microsoft Word. The speed with which I am able to type what I’ve written equates to high-levels of productivity, and the countless features provided by the program, including numerous add-ons such as Grammerly, which functions as a “writing assistant,” make it seem as though we’re creative aristocrats compared to science-fictions writers in the 1970s.

May I never lose my notebook, for without it, I am nothing, and may I never lose my computer, the electric mirror without which my notebook remains an article of obscurity.

Reading the excerpt from Track Changes about how the composition process changed from using a typewriter to using a word processor, and how computers changed literary writing in particular, I thought it was interesting that most of the authors cited by Kirschbaum emphasized that these new technologies were not only tremendously time-saving but were also considered “an extension of the mind”. Reflecting on how technologies of writing impact my composition process, I realize how natural as well as beneficial all aspects of digital writing are for me. A foundational part of my composition process is writing down and shifting my thoughts around. The ability to change the structure of my text and highlight certain parts that need revision or additional content helps me to move forward with my thinking process as well as to construct an argument. Also, I have never given much thought to it before but being able to see the virtual page of my document makes it easier to organize my writing. In the final stage of my composition process I often share my work with friends for additional revision. With writing platforms such as Google Docs (which I have been favoring since the beginning of my graduate program and wished I could have used already in my undergraduate years) I can instantly share my research papers, and they can comment on my work and give me immediate feedback. This collaborative process is an important aspect of how I develop my writing. Moreover, as an international student, writing technology tools such as grammar- and spell-checking help my writing process to be more efficient, reducing the amount of time I have to spend reviewing my language. Although it would help me to become more proficient in English to write out the words instead of having them immediately replaced by the program’s editing function, I find it to be a more effective way of writing.

It was interesting to read about Longyear’s experience of transitioning from his typewriter to his Wang and how that served to remove the “work” element of writing. I say interesting because what he deems to be work is what I covet as being integral to my creative process. There’s something about writing on my computer that feels formal and final. On it I compose business emails, serious essays and final drafts. It’s where the ‘real’ editing and refining happens. But the word processor often reflects the very last stage in the journey of writing for me.

The process of creation is often divided across multiple mediums. I carry around two notebooks – one notebook is a journal, but also a space where I can spew ideas free from even my own judgement. I’ve vowed to myself that I will never read the writing in those pages, and that promise frees me to write whatever I want, however I want. The second notebook is where I start fleshing out ideas. It’s the notebook I use to respond to writing prompts, jot down quick notes, and capture quotes. I use this notebook as guidance to inform a more complete piece. Recently I’ve also started relying on my phone as another writing medium. Oftentimes I’ll think of a great way to phrase something while walking down the street or on the train and the quickest way for me to capture that before forgetting is via the ‘Notes’ app.

Eventually I’ll be ready to start composing whatever piece of writing it is that I’m working on. True composition happens on my word processor. I’ve been favoring Google Docs because they synchronize across every machine, and I can easily invite collaborators and editors to read my work when I’m ready for a second opinion. On this virtual sheet I’ll start retyping the notes from my phone and notebook, I’ll start cutting, pasting and exploring the right words. In my document I can move text around, create parallel documents and create multiple versions of the same text. Typing on a  laptop is basically second nature – whilst I leverage other mediums to inform my writing process, the real bulk of the work takes place through the looking glass of my computer screen.