Chekhov’s Mistess

August 08, 2007

Writing in (computer) Isolation

 

Whither the poor typewriter whose few remaining acolytes hoard ribbons and spare parts. Frankly, there’s no way my wife would let me clang away at a typewriter anyway – solitude is hard enough to come by without the click-click-clacking to wake the kid.

I do a lot of writing on a cheap (paper!) notebook and a soft pencil, but at some point every story begs for the spit and polish of type. That presents some problems for me because I make my living working on the computer, read the paper on the computer, read blogs, and so on and all those things are just a click away, and each of those clicks has many more clicks. You know of what I speak?

I once wrote about Macs being the new typewriter. That’s when I had a Powerbook, which has the smoothest keyboard of any computer known to man. Now I use a MacBook, which is more comfy because it’s smaller and cheaper. The keyboard takes a bit more heft than its double-the-price sibling, but I’ve grown use to it.

But what’s the good of a keyboard if it’s forever leading you away from the glorious path of writing? None, I tell you. I know! So this is what I’ve done:

Macs allow you to set up users. Each user has their own log-in and profile – it’s really very much like being on a separate computer. I set up my alter-ego writer guy profile with parental controls so that I can only access a couple of applications:

1) Copywrite
Copywrite is billed as “project management for writers,” which it is, but I can’t say that I use it so elaborately. I primarily use it because it just gives you a blank page with few formatting options, full screen writing, and “versioning,” an invaluable feature because I like to freeze one version (without having to save a new file) before making substantial edits. It does have a lot of other features, like categories, etc. but I don’t use those. I just write with it. I do like having all my documents in front of me if I want to switch what I’m working on, which is an obvious difference between a program like this and, say, that devil’s child, MS Word.

2) Safari Web browser, also with parental controls set so that I can only access one Web site: Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary

That’s it. I can write. I can look things up in the dictionary, and I can print. I am my own parent and I’ve put myself on restriction. It may seem a little silly, but I even write in a Courier font, which in a way is a reminder that I’m supposed to be writing as though on a typewriter; that means write forward – not writing over what I’ve just written.

While I’m mentioning writing programs, I should mention that I use MacJournal for day-to-day writing, such as blog posts or anything else relatively short when I just need to be one second away from creating a new document. Again, the biggest feature here is that there’s no formatting and all your documents are in front of you instead of opening new ones. Ulysses is another I’ve used, but seems to have too many features for my purposes.

• posted by Bud Parr
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