My Ideal Writing Space

When I think about what my ideal writing space would be, I’m tempted to take the easy way out and say Microsoft Word (or OpenOffice, which is what I currently have on my laptop and is simply a free version of Word). I could go on about familiarity and how long I’ve been using it. But when I really think about it, that’s not really my ultimate IDEAL writing space.

I like the ridiculous number of customizable options for text that Word has, but I also liked ZenPen because it offered an inverted color scheme, which was different from anything that I had seen before. In short, I want plenty of options regarding the text itself. I don’t enjoy having too much black and white in my life, and some kind of combination of Word and ZenPen, with the inverted color scheme option with custom font colors (other than black or white) would definitely pique my interest. That probably sounds like a strange preference to have, but with all of the writing that I’ve been doing this semester with plain, black, 12 pt. Times New Roman font, I want to be able to do more with the words on the screen.

In terms of accessing and saving my work, I would like some kind of combination of the iPad app Pages and GoogleDocs. By that, I mean that I would want to be able to easily transfer documents from the computer I’m using to the web, while also having them automatically update whenever I made changes to either the web version or the version saved to the hard drive. (I’m not entirely sure if that’s possible, but if it is, it would be wonderful.)

I would like my ideal writing space to be able to have different kinds of content, other than just text. Sometimes, incorporating media such as image, video, or audio can really help enhance the writing on the page, by giving the eye more than just words on a page to read.

Ultimately, my ideal writing space would be catered to my needs at any given time, while still giving me plenty of options about how to use that space.

Typewriters: Not What I Expected

I will be the first to admit that I have a very romantic view of typewriters. Since I decided that I wanted to be a writer as a child, I dreamed of writing my novels on a typewriter. It seems kind of like a hipster thing to do now, but I was still excited to use a typewriter for the first time nonetheless. (My dad actually gave me his old one, but I have to go buy ribbons for it, and I haven’t gotten around to that yet.)

Once I sat down, however, I didn’t realize how much effort it would take to type out a long post. After a bit of fighting with Animal (Yes, that was the name of my typewriter. No, I didn’t choose it.), I settled on red ink instead of the virtually nonexistent black and started typing. Within the first line or two, I was already making typos and felt frustrated that I couldn’t do anything to fix them. The perfectionist in me wanted to get a new blank piece of paper and start over, but I knew that if I kept doing that, I would use all of the paper on the table.

What really irritated me was the fact that I couldn’t place my fingers on the keys, like I would with a normal keyboard. I’m a fairly fast typer on a computer, and that’s the speed that I’m used to typing. But with the typewriter, I had to slow down and hit one key at a time to limit my mistakes and to make sure that the key was hit hard enough to print the letter on the page.

This isn’t to say that I’m no longer fond of typewriters. I actually still have a romantic view of them and associate them with some of my favorite writers from the past. However, I would definitely think twice before attempting to write a novel on one. That dream is going to have to wait until I somehow get more patience or someone finds a way to allow you to backspace on a typewriter.

My typewriter was named Animal. The typewriters in the room were each named after a different member of the Muppet band.

My Diary of Technological Activities

For this assignment, I had to carry around a little notebook for two days (including one weekday) and record any time that I used my phone for social interactivity, textual interactivity, or both. This became irritating quickly, to say the least. I didn’t realize just how much I was on my phone until I had to write it down each time.

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After analyzing my data I came up with this quantitative information:

• I used my phone 102 times.
• I used the phone for a total of 94.8 minutes, or 1.58 hours.
• Over the 48 hours, I used my phone 3.3% of the time.
• I had 2 Social Interactivity instances (talking on the phone).
• I had 11 Textual Interactivity instances (checking time, setting phone alarm, checking for text messages, checking Facebook notifications but not responding to them, and reading text messages).
• I had 89 instances where both types occurred (reading/replying to text messages and Tweeting).
• The activities that were happening while I was using my phone were either: watching tv, eating, doing homework, walking to class, sitting in class, or nothing.

While this was an interesting experiment, I wouldn’t want to have to do it again. I found myself modifying my normal habits to try to cut down on how much I was looking at my phone. (For example, I checked Facebook less so I wouldn’t have to write it down. Instead, I looked at it on my laptop.) Even though I attempted to modify my phone habits, I couldn’t do anything about the amount of time that I spent reading and replying to text messages. That’s a large part of how I keep in touch with friends and family, and I wasn’t entirely willing to give that up just because my hand was tired of writing.

It strikes me now just how odd it was to be doing a technological thing (using the phone) while simultaneously doing a non-technological thing (writing down information in the notebook). For me, it seemed like a crossing of two different parts of my life. I do all writing for school using technology (ie: my laptop), and any kind of personal creative writing tends to be done by hand.  It seemed like the left and right sides of my brain were working together, rather than separately. Just that concept alone is incredibly interesting to think about.

I’ve learned a lot about my technology habits from this experiment.  Even though it only went on for two days, I still filled up at least part of 6 pages in the book. When we discussed this in class, I actually had the most instances of using my phone. But because most of those instances were reading and replying to text messages, I actually had one of the smaller times spent on the phone.  I was previously aware that I am overly attached to my phone, but writing it all down really helped give me actual proof that I am.

Along those lines, I think that I probably would have used my phone more if I owned a smartphone. Because I don’t own one, I don’t have any apps that I could have been using for more instances of social or textual interactivity. I was focused on text messages and the small bit of internet access that my phone lets me have before informing me that the webpage has too much data for it to load correctly (which is an incredibly infuriating thing, in case you were wondering). My phone may have actually limited the instances of social or textual interactivity. I can only imagine what the data would have looked like if I had a smartphone.