I started college before everyone was using word processors to write their papers. I
remember writing everything out by hand, finishing a ten page paper by about nine at night, and
then staying up all night with a very kind friend who could type so I could turn in a perfect final
draft the next morning. By the time I left school I wrote everything on a computer. WordPerfect
was up to version 4.1 by then.
I should have never learned WordPerfect. Writing takes me forever now. When I used
paper and pencil I could scribble out 1,000 words in an hour or less. I type at least 40 words per
minute, and I write maybe thirty, but with a computer 1,000 words can take up to a day.
Editing is the problem. Don't get me wrong, I can edit very quickly, but I edit too much.
With a paper and pencil I was content to just write and then slog through four or five rewrites
before I was happy.
With word processing software I edit as I go along. It's too easy to get everything perfect
in the "first draft". For instance, I've already changed the title three times, and I haven't even
saved the document yet.
Now I have, you know, "save early and often". Sometimes I'll save just as I'm getting up
for a drink of water, then before I get up I see a stray comma or dirnk of water, then I fix it and
have to save again. Then all of a sudden a half hour passes before I get that drink.
I've already massaged the previous four paragraphs for two hours, and now dinner is
waiting.
I love "cut and paste". It's my favorite computer game. My wife has forbidden anything
like Solitaire or Doom on the computer, so I get to play with the word processor. If everything
currently seems to be in the right place I just do a word count to stay amused. 332 so far. If I get
bored with the mouse I can do everything with keystrokes. In my software the keystrokes to see a
"Word Count" are ALT then F then R then Ctrl+Tab. 366.
I'm lucky my keyboard has the "Home" and "End" keys, otherwise I'd spend two hours
just moving my cursor around. Now if I just had the discipline to use them more often. If I go up
to "Home" to change the title I end up reading all the way back to where I left off, instead of
using the "End" key. Of course on the way back I find a mass of punctuation mistakes and mixed
up sentences that need to be fixed, and I spend hours fixing them.
If I can fix them. I'll sit and stew over one sentence for an hour or more, and every time I
read over it, I change it again.
Sometimes I wonder if I should save some revisions as separate documents, in case I
make a bad edit, but then I would probably end up with about 500 "drafts" of everything I write.
I'd fill up a floppy in a couple hours. 527.
I read somewhere that even good writers never really finish a story. I think they just get
tired of revising it. When I get tired I run a spell check. Before I start a story, I turn off those
annoying little wavy lines that mark a spelling or grammar mistake, so I can correct all the errors
at once. Then after two or three errors I see something else I want to change and the spell check
box disappears while I work on that paragraph that's all passive voice.
If my self discipline is really lagging I can adjust the margins so I can fit more, or less text on a page.
Then I align the document for two sided printing. I'm saving paper, right? Oh, and I can make the font smaller
and a different style to fit even more text on the paper. If that's a little too hard to read, I'll try another. Maybe
columns...
Then there's graphics; I can put in a watermark, add some clip art, create a border, and bullets would
set off each paragraph nicely.
I'm tired of revising. Maybe I should go back to the typewriter.722
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