Originally Posted by
A Robot Bit Me
But with a laptop, the writer would get bogged down revising during the session. This not only presented all kinds of ethical issues for me in their constantly asking for my input or at least approval, it prevented us from working on more pressing stuff. Revising a sentence only to find that the revision necessitates a change in the next sentence is a great way to not get any actual writing done.
I realized a couple weeks ago that this is exactly what I do when I write. With a laptop, I labor over sentences, deleting and inserting until I get it just right before starting the next sentence...which often forces me to go back and change the first. My new method is to treat my laptop like a typewriter. Once a sentence is done, it's done. Next sentence. Then, once a paper--or at least a paragraph or argument--is "done," I go back and revise. I then try to explain what I wrote. If the explanation is not already contained in the writing, I add it on the next revision.
This is how writers used to roll. They produced drafts of entire works, not drafts of sentences and half sentences, before revising. Those guys were really smart.
At the risk of going full douche, I might even get myself a typewriter this summer.
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