Royal Writing

Moving to the remote shores of New Zealand has sharpened my senses in terms of what the Internet can offer. It all became clear in my Dubai hotel room while flicking through the Guardian Weekly (stockpiled from the past month) and reading article after article that threw up words and phrases like 'blog', 'media multi-tasking', 'transmigration' and discussed 'YouTube' and Military Videos.net These were articles riddled with web reviews, URLs, email addresses and podcast discussions. I began to channel all this competing information through my brain while listening to the Times Online's 'The Game' football podcast on my iPod.

In a strange synchronous manner my wife and I recently got hold of an old Royal Typewriter and I wrote this blog entry in a new notebook. Technology has somehow forced me to write once again by hand, to ink-stain my fingers with newspaper print and to erase the mistakes from a stream-of-consciousness rant with the use of tippex - something I haven't done since school it seems.

When on my laptop and connected to the Internet the possibilities seem to freeze any creativity. I barely write emails like I used to and all my time is sucked into the vortex of information consumption, Short Circuit-style - "More input". I read a host of blogs, trawl the torrent sites for music and film and watch endless videos on YouTube.

To create I've had to step back from the keyboard. The blog has certainly allowed me to link ideas and open up doors but I've found it has been mostly other people's work and thoughts: quotations, links and reportage. Cut and paste. Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V.

This is where the typewriter and notebook come in. Thoughts congregate and spill out unmediated and unchecked. There is no possibility of just instant cutting and pasting. 'Did that paragraph work? No.' Start again from the beginning.

With a computer that initial block of text is like a lump of badly-formed clay. It resembles what you intended to only a small degree but hints at possibility through manipulation. So that's what you do. Prodding, cutting, pushing, pricking and pulling, all in the hope of making something better. But it becomes dirty, dry and formless. Better to start fresh with that initial form still sitting as it was, a reminder of your first failed attempt.

For me the simple act of physically writing has restored to my ever-increasing dependence on technology a more natural and healthy balance.