Re: Of Text Editors and Writing Posts

This post is a response to "Of Text Editors and Writing Posts" by eapl at text.eaple.mx

gemini://text.eapl.mx/of-text-editors-and-writing-posts

In order to embrace the "write now, edit later" ethos, I have gotten out my little e-ink electronic typewriter to compose this post.

But first, a quick preface to address the first part of eapl's post. I do a lot of writing in the terminal, and I do it all in vim. There are a number of plugins you can use to create a more minimal and distraction-free writing environment. Pencil, goyo, and limelight, for example, all complement each other and go really well together. I've used them quite a bit in the past. But often times anymore I just use regular old vim.

https://github.com/preservim/vim-pencil

https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim

https://github.com/junegunn/limelight.vim

What they don't do, however, is prevent the author from merging the write and review cycles. It remains far too easy and thus far too tempting to endlessly edit and revise as you go.

Note that this is necessarily a bad thing. It is in fact perfectly reasonable to revise and edit and rewrite as you go as long as that works for you. This works great for some writers. But some writers find this distracting unto being paralyzing. Depends on how you're wired, what you're comfortable with, and what you have experience with.

There is a quote attributed to Kurt Vonnegut about "bashers and swoopers." Swoopers start writing and then don't stop until they're done, banging out the whole text all at once. In one fell swoop as it were. And then they go back and revise and edit. Bashers, on the other hand, plod painstakingly forward, editing and revising as they go, getting each word and each sentence just right. And once they finish, they are done.

Both approaches are fine. It just depends on what works best for you.

But I will say that modern text editors and word processors push us toward bashing by default. It is just far too easy to edit as you go given these tools.

If you've never tried it, swooping can feel kind of scary and kind of exhilarating. To just write and recklessly pour your words out. Editing isn't your problem. That's a problem for Future You.

Anyway, I've had four significant experiences with the "write first, edit later" workflow that I will share here.

Firstly, this little typewriter that I mentioned at the beginning. It is the Freewrite Traveler by Astrohaus. I have a love+hate relationship with it. A cute little machine that is kind of quirky. Mostly pleasant to use. And which has nearly zero editing capabilities. You basically have backspace and arrow keys. This makes revision so difficult and painful, that in practice, you learn to ignore mistakes and typos, and just carry on and on and every onward. Mistakes can be corrected later in the editing phase. This makes writing a very different process for me. And a process that often gives my writing a different voice. Editing for clarity and correctness after the fact isn't the same thing as what I usually do when I write, which is to pull some sentences apart and join other ones together to maintain a certain cadence and rhythm. I enjoy the premise of this device enough, but dislike its keyboard so, that I am tempted to go backwards through time and try out something like an old Alphasmart 3000 if I can get my hands on one.

Secondly, I have spent a fair amount of time over the last year learning and getting to know ed(1), the standard text editor. I find ed(1) to be good for entering text, and not very good for editing and revising it. Or rather, it's not that great at editing as you write. Its actually pretty great at line editing and changing the structure of your document. It definitely encourages me to treat writing and revising as distinct and separate activities.

Thirdly, I have also spent a lot of time over the last year getting to know groff, the typesetting and document layout program. Consequently, I am currently reading "UNIX Text Processing" (1987) which is all about using nroff, troff, and other tools for typesetting. Which was a reasonably new application for computers at the time.

https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/utp/

In the introduction, it talks about how computers are superior to typewriters for writers for two reasons: they remember what you wrote, and allow incremental revisions. Prior to these advances, one would have to write their manuscript all over again when beginning a new revision.

This blew my mind! I had never stopped to think about pre-computer writing workflows. But writing and revision/editing were necessarily separate activities at that time. Word processors must have been an absolute dream for writers used to writing on a typewriter.

Fourth, lastly, my morning journaling practice is a sort of "write now, edit later" kind of experience. I journal very freeform, stream of consciousness, with no regard for form, making sense, or even completing sentences. The only goal in this writing is to get the words out. Whatever they may be. Later, I go back and read the writing and make margin notes and page summaries to clarify and to draw connections and note recurring patterns of thought. So this is a unique exercise in that that I don't edit or revise the actual text, but augment it with supplementary notes.

And I think that's it! Given my natural inclinations and the allure of modern text editors, I tend to be a Vonnegutan Basher. I edit as I go, and I go very slowly because of it. And I find a great deal of value in periodically switching sides and doing some Swooping. Separating the act of writing from the act of editing. It is liberating.