Khoi Vinh, another Designer Who Writes (sort of like Ladies Who Lunch, though the latter are far less likely to put me out of a job), has a piece in the Guardian today about Blockwriter, the typewriter emulation application he helped develop. The idea is simple: Blockwriter shuts off all other applications and turns your computer into a manual typewriter — no delete key, no copy/paste, no spellcheck. The result? You can no longer revise yourself into oblivion.
“What if it were not possible to make revisions too easily, and what if the only way to delete a word or sentence, as with a typewriter, was to move the cursor backwards and actually strike out that text, character by character? With these limitations, you’d be more inclined to continue writing forward than you would to going back and revising.”
That makes sense, if you don’t consider the act of inline revision part of writing forward, as I do. I realize that makes me a poor contender for National Novel Writing Month, but it’s helpful when you need to deliver copy that will warrant as little editing from outside forces as possible. Inline revision, for me, is the measure twice, cut once approach to writing.
On the other hand, I think there is something profoundly beneficial, creatively, to forcing oneself to “continue writing forward.” Self-editing is the enemy of inspiration. I’ve watched countless stories and essays die on the table, waiting for me to find just the right adjective. So I might give Blockwriter a try.
Then again, I already have a Moleskine notebook and one of those pen thingies. You remember them. They’re pointy.
You can find more of the interesting word usements I structure on Apple.com.
Read my article, Better Writing Through Design, on No. 242 of A List Apart.