My Relationship with Words

This post examines my preference for writing by hand, transcription, reading paperbacks, reading on Kindle, listening to audio books and podcasts, and scrolling articles. It ends with a few thoughts on the informal spoken word.

I offer a personal exploration of format, not a statement. Each topic deserves consideration on its own, but my goal is to see them all in one place, a portrait of my relationship with words.

I like to write by hand. My best drafts are things I once gripped in five tight digits, letter morphing into word morphing into line with dedicated intent. Sometimes, because of work*, I forget the physiology of writing. Here is the essence:

Transcription elevates the initial art to something powerful: words altered, order rearranged, late-blooming epiphanies brought to the top. My fingers skip easily across the keyboard, an alchemy of screen, mind, and hands. Transcription paves the way for revision, which is wonderful fun.

One of my favorite positions away from my desk, when I’m lucky enough to find an excellent book, is to be seated in an armchair with a paperback. Hard covers are ok, paperbacks divine, especially if the words and lines are properly spaced. Reclining in bed or on the sofa also works for reading. I like soft, aged pages, something velvety or felt-like between my fingertips. Some books have a nice aroma.

Kindle is ok. In some cases, I prefer it to the paperback. The highlight function has filled my storage with memorable lines, newly-discovered words, and reflective notes. The Kindle reads almost like a paperback, the main downside being the inability to skim forward or back, revisit a dog-ear or post-it note. The visuals are also bad: how big is this work? Without a cover image, Kindle might as well be a tombstone. Sometimes I forget the title of what I’m reading, or who wrote it. My sons have no idea if I’m reading about outer space or the life of a surfer, gritty true crime or a book about swine, like Charlotte’s Web. It’s hard to inspire reading in others when the gateway is a flat black slab.

Audiobooks (and podcasts) rank right up there with reading, but in lesser form. My retention of words and passages is significantly reduced in audio. I exclude music in this exploration because there’s so much going on beyond lyrics.

Scrolling is reading, I guess, a form of bored information gathering. On the phone, on the computer, this feckless act is the digital equivalent of drooling. I’m looking at you, CNN, and yes I get caught up in the act.

Finally there is the informal spoken word. Talk is violence. The hard work of producing words by mouth in response to what has come out in the form of words, by mouth, leaves me wondering if the mind is involved in the process at all.

If you want to reach me, send a letter, comment in digital form online or by text, or write a great book. If you want to reach me, probably best not to call.

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*It’s easy to get caught up in the bad habits of professional life, the daily press of business demanding efficiency. All formal writing in the office begins on a machine – I don’t draft emails by hand, nor do I write speeches on paper beyond a rough outline sketched on a steno book. All the facts and data that support the arguments of a speech or report pretty much live online or in a database. With obvious exceptions, work products seem doomed to be replicas of information that already exists in some other form, copy-paste Frankensteins cobbled by machine.