De Composition! De Composition!

As a card-carrying poet, people might think I prefer writing by longhand, versus writing by computer. They're half right. I consider myself a reformed Luddite; once I may have clung to the idea that purer composition, more artistic writing, was done solely with a pad and paper, or in a stretch, on the keys of my old portable reporter's Corona typewriter. But once I abandoned my stubborn reliance on such an antiquated notion, I began to see that there was a time, place, and argument both for and against each mode. However, I said those people who imagine I embody the Byronic ideal of the poet, scribbling frantically by flickering candlelight, were half correct, because my preferred procedure for composition still involves paper and a pen. I'll tell you why.

When you write with paper and pen, you have defined boundaries—literally. You are limited to the borders of each side of your paper, the top and the bottom. Of course, when you get to the end of the page you flip it over and continue on the back, or start on a new sheet. Nonetheless, having a set space in which to compose your thoughts forces the mind to contemplate borders, to engage in rigorous and sometimes drastic pre-editing of work that, on a computer screen, may go through various electronic permutations, sometimes altered by as little as a word or even letter, over and over, before a first draft sees the light of day. A pad of paper is also a three-dimensional world unto itself, a physical reality onto which a pen or pencil scrawls down ideas by literally engraving. I find this method reassuring; it also provides me with an immediate and kinetic connection to the history of writing and writers from the pre-computer past whose work I've admired and learned from. It also leaves me, from draft to draft, with a chronicle of my thinking process laid out in words, phrases, cross outs, add ins, and so on. Many times I've longed to have that record of my work when the current draft in hand was something that barely resembled my first inkling, something perhaps far removed from my original intention in a bad way, and now I have no road map back to where I started.

Composing on paper is cheap: you can buy a pad or notebook at a nearby chain pharmacy or grocery, even your corner mini mart if need be, walk with it into the parking lot, plop down on the pavement and begin writing. With a laptop, you need electricity, or batteries; and if your batteries begin dying out on you before inspiration has run its course, you are going to be in trouble. A computer that can't turn on isn't going to do you any good, unless you sell it and use the quick cash to buy yourself a ream of legal sized pads and a dozen boxes of Bics. Computers too, with all their bells-and-whistles, entice writers away from their craft with the allure of easy distractions, convincing them to take a break when they should keep writing, or to check email between brainstorms; I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to this. If it's something important you're drafting, sometimes taking the hard (copy) route will force you to remain on task. That screen, reflecting like a mirror, seems to bring out the narcissist in us all, and often at the worst possible time.

I do see how computers have enabled us to get rid of paper waste and eased burdensome storage; hard drives and flash drives take up less space and are as portable as, in the latter example, a tube of lipstick. Thousands upon thousands of pages of brilliant writing, right in your pocket! But if my mind is already attuned to its chosen environment—in this instance, a blank piece of paper—it's also already finding strategies with which to make the physical part of my job the least strenuous, since my mind has plenty of heavy lifting to do in composition mode. The result will be far less drafts, far less actual paper use and accrual, than if I am privy to the benefits of relentless on-screen editing.

The final irony? I'm composing this brief essay right on my laptop. As I said in the beginning, those know-it-alls who believe they've got me pegged are partially on the money. I want this draft to be rough and speedy and what better way to knock it out quickly than on my MacBook? Once it's done—in exactly another minute or two—I can get back to more important work—namely, a new poem, written in longhand earlier this afternoon.