The digital age and technologies, while eliminating issues of the past, present their own shortcomings. When I write, it is me against the threshold of anxieties that come from the daunting blank canvas. Contrary to Barry B. Longyear, “the word processor as an extension of the mind” seems exaggerated; instead, the pressures of error and revision intrinsic in development and the creative process become somewhat invisible through the word processor (Track Changes, 109).
The seamless appearance of the first draft cannot account for the revisions I go through mentally, rather merely translate the end result of my inner turmoils. Error and mistakes (messy markings and imperfections) then that exemplified labor and parts of the composition process became less prevalent as a place to work from. So much as the personal computer now offers convenience and infinite possibility to type (a translation of writing), so too does it merit apprehension and conformity. It is when I compose that I find myself becoming a self-editor: my process as a reflection of the logistic and modulated ways that I type. A similar question is raised by Tony Bennett’s The Exhibitionary Complex through his theory on the museum as a space for visions of dominant power: a site, where you are seeing while being seen which perpetuates self-regulation. It is then that I find myself daunted equally by institutions and the space their works inhabit, the place where I publish encasing all of this anxiety as well.
But is this purely negative? My writing and composition process has undergone processes itself. The rapid transitions in technology for the past two decades have challenged my ability to adapt and integrate a vast multitude of methods in my writing. Though I wage battles with what I find true to my interests, idealization can pervade my organization of thoughts on paper and prevents me from tackling them head on– erasing rather than improving. In the same way, disciplines and institutions can immobilize us through restriction and specificity in its formatting and expectations. Whether I and others choose to adhere to them then is an entirely different matter and veers into the territory of responsibility.
What enables and disables me then is my connection to process and the product and what that entails. Just as Kathleen Fitzpatrick previously alluded to in her chapter Authorship, perfectionism is an illusion that can have individuals lose focus on development and the way identity intervenes in the creative process in all its iterations. As Track Changes also posits, I sometimes separate from my labor so much that I struggle to find my identity and presence in the spaces I occupy academically, mainly by working off products of writing rather than their more informative processes. But through this awareness, I can begin to work at self-improvement by seeing how error is intrinsic tied to process; how the word processor may mask these and appear complete, but is also only a step in the multitude of processes that writing must undergo.
