Falling behind with any tedious task can be disheartening to the point of walking away as if it should self engage and complete itself without you. Even though it might feel liberating, that strategy is doomed from the start. My writing has been a key part of how I process experience (the cards life has dealt me and the way I have played them). Nearly all of my (writer) writing since the early 1970’s has been filed away where they can be retrieved and revisited. More than half a century’s worth of journal and creative writing has been homogenized and stored in a computer file. I know how computerized documents can disappear or crash and never be seen again. My stuff gets backed up in the cloud now but old dogs (like me) are creatures of habit. It would be foolhardy choosing hard copy over the cloud but, call it another layer of security. I have eight, 2” and 3”, three ring binders full of my writing that date back to 1972. At the time, the IBM Selectric Typewriter was high tech and I felt privileged having access to one. Instead of all those old fashioned arms with two characters on each one, the Selectric had a single, type-ball with all the letters and characters on it. You still had to use correction tape to strike over errors but that was great, it didn’t get any better. Some of my earliest works have survived as Selectric originals.
Some of my original typewritten work had worn thin, frayed, smudged and I retyped what I thought was worth keeping, only this time on the computer. It was floppy discs and folded print paper that fed the printer, not unlike toilet paper scrolling off a roll. What hasn’t changed is that computers still crash and documents still get lost. In the late 80’s and early 90’s I started backing up the computer with hard copy. If I couldn’t take the computer home with me at least notebooks travel well. I still back up everything with hardcopy and the pages accumulate fast while I move slow.
If I get caught up by the end of the month every month I could stay caught up. If I forget or fall behind it is easier to keep letting it accumulate like dust under the bed. When you realize how far behind you are, procrastination becomes even easier and the task compounds. I can’t blame Pandemic, I had fallen far behind before that. I had a little over three years of journaling on the bubble just waiting for a crash. Having such a backlog felt overwhelming. Still, I am the only person who could do it. If it were just printing, anyone could do that, just hit Select All and Print. If I still have it in the file I consider every written piece to still be in progress. Nothing is ever finished, like me; you can leave me in the basement for as long as you like but when I come out I will need a shave and a haircut.
When I notice something that needs revision, I revise. That is the rule for any and every article, all the way back. Before I print the page it needs to be reread, overlooked spelling & punctuation errors need correcting, word selection may need tweaking, reframe sentence structure as needed, delete whole paragraphs that, in retrospect, serve no purpose. Editing is the real work of writing. Reassuring myself with the old axiom, “Every journey begins with a single step.” I figured; do a few copies at a time and keep the three ring binder on top of my desk where it would be a nagging reminder.
It has been over a month, maybe two since I started the 2019-2020 binder. Now all I have left to catch up on is this year. Funny, reading your old, fermented writing with New Eyes it changes things. With New Eyes, I am much more auto-critical than the creative, storytelling writer (me) was at the time. When writing is still fresh you can feel good about shaky syntax. I get little or no feedback so the critic has to be me. I don’t want to make public anything that rings of me that felt good in the moment but failed the test of time. When I was active with my writers guild I got plenty of important, necessary, critical peer review. Writers like to show off now and then with a wide and deep vocabulary or using complicated but correct, compound sentences; stuff only other writers appreciate. New Eyes are nearly as keen as Other Eyes, they notice every stroke and what felt clever or righteous at the time might not age very well.
A long time ago I stumbled across several song lyrics that my teenage daughter and I wrote, traveling in the car between Michigan and Missouri. She wrote everything down as we drove. Years later I found the clipboard and yellow legal pad with the lyrics in her hand writing. I typed a copy but misplaced the page in a box on a top shelf in the basement. Rediscovering it I shared it with her we were delighted, a snapshot reboot of a benchmark place in time. Leave it to her as an adult, latching onto the lyrics again and to serve me notice. “Put this in a notebook. Keep it in a safe place and don’t lose it again.”
Maybe a decade later the song, Chicken Skin from that collaboration found its way into our conversation and she amended her earlier ‘Notice’. She told me she wanted all of my writing in print, hard copy. Certainly there would come a day when either the computer or I would crash and the half-century journal would be lost. “I will want all of it.” she said.
They say, for as long as someone remembers your face and your story, your legacy lives. The same could be true about your words, the ones you put to the page. For as long as they are pressed between the pages, on a shelf or in a box, even if they go unread your story survives with a life of its own. It just has to be intact and available. I like that. It comes as close to an afterlife as anything I would ever imagine.
Some of my original typewritten work had worn thin, frayed, smudged and I retyped what I thought was worth keeping, only this time on the computer. It was floppy discs and folded print paper that fed the printer, not unlike toilet paper scrolling off a roll. What hasn’t changed is that computers still crash and documents still get lost. In the late 80’s and early 90’s I started backing up the computer with hard copy. If I couldn’t take the computer home with me at least notebooks travel well. I still back up everything with hardcopy and the pages accumulate fast while I move slow.
If I get caught up by the end of the month every month I could stay caught up. If I forget or fall behind it is easier to keep letting it accumulate like dust under the bed. When you realize how far behind you are, procrastination becomes even easier and the task compounds. I can’t blame Pandemic, I had fallen far behind before that. I had a little over three years of journaling on the bubble just waiting for a crash. Having such a backlog felt overwhelming. Still, I am the only person who could do it. If it were just printing, anyone could do that, just hit Select All and Print. If I still have it in the file I consider every written piece to still be in progress. Nothing is ever finished, like me; you can leave me in the basement for as long as you like but when I come out I will need a shave and a haircut.
When I notice something that needs revision, I revise. That is the rule for any and every article, all the way back. Before I print the page it needs to be reread, overlooked spelling & punctuation errors need correcting, word selection may need tweaking, reframe sentence structure as needed, delete whole paragraphs that, in retrospect, serve no purpose. Editing is the real work of writing. Reassuring myself with the old axiom, “Every journey begins with a single step.” I figured; do a few copies at a time and keep the three ring binder on top of my desk where it would be a nagging reminder.
It has been over a month, maybe two since I started the 2019-2020 binder. Now all I have left to catch up on is this year. Funny, reading your old, fermented writing with New Eyes it changes things. With New Eyes, I am much more auto-critical than the creative, storytelling writer (me) was at the time. When writing is still fresh you can feel good about shaky syntax. I get little or no feedback so the critic has to be me. I don’t want to make public anything that rings of me that felt good in the moment but failed the test of time. When I was active with my writers guild I got plenty of important, necessary, critical peer review. Writers like to show off now and then with a wide and deep vocabulary or using complicated but correct, compound sentences; stuff only other writers appreciate. New Eyes are nearly as keen as Other Eyes, they notice every stroke and what felt clever or righteous at the time might not age very well.
A long time ago I stumbled across several song lyrics that my teenage daughter and I wrote, traveling in the car between Michigan and Missouri. She wrote everything down as we drove. Years later I found the clipboard and yellow legal pad with the lyrics in her hand writing. I typed a copy but misplaced the page in a box on a top shelf in the basement. Rediscovering it I shared it with her we were delighted, a snapshot reboot of a benchmark place in time. Leave it to her as an adult, latching onto the lyrics again and to serve me notice. “Put this in a notebook. Keep it in a safe place and don’t lose it again.”
Maybe a decade later the song, Chicken Skin from that collaboration found its way into our conversation and she amended her earlier ‘Notice’. She told me she wanted all of my writing in print, hard copy. Certainly there would come a day when either the computer or I would crash and the half-century journal would be lost. “I will want all of it.” she said.
They say, for as long as someone remembers your face and your story, your legacy lives. The same could be true about your words, the ones you put to the page. For as long as they are pressed between the pages, on a shelf or in a box, even if they go unread your story survives with a life of its own. It just has to be intact and available. I like that. It comes as close to an afterlife as anything I would ever imagine.
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