Writing takes place in time, and the medium you use affects the feedback (reward, reinforcement) you get as you write. Computer keyboards give terrible feedback. You can’t hear the key strokes very well–the Selectric is like a church organ in terms of rich and concise aural feedback. Another terrible distraction on computers is the flashing cursor, which keeps on telling you, “Forget what you were saying and look at little flashing me.”

What is written on the computer never sounds like anyone talking. Word processing produces processed prose. Even that sentence displays the disease.

Here’s a fact appropos to this discussion. Henry James had arthritis,and it got worse as time 0went by. Eventually he could not write or even correct proofs by hand. He had to dictate everything. The famously wooly and wandering incomprehensible Henry James style comes from the era when he had to write by dictation without any ability to correct his proofs by hand. That’s what I hear.

I learned typing young, so I grew up thinking with typing. Since I could do thinking faster with typing than with writing, I did MORE thinking while typing than writing. That changed my abilities later on.

If your thoughts get too far ahead of your hand, whether typing or writing, you find that you will make mistakes and then have to spend precious time going over those mistakes.

I try very hard not to use spell checkers. I’ve trained myself to check as I read and then to automatically correct mistakes when they occur.

My natural tendencies are like Art’s. When you are writing and you mind makes an intuitive jump to a new subject, you have to stop yourself and figure out how to mesh that with the rest of your composition in a fashion that will be understandable and readable, yet also follow grammar laws and English composition laws.

The solution to typing as fast as you write, not giving yourself time to consider your wording and what not, is to revise. Make yourself an expert at revision so that .5 seconds after you have finished reading a phrase, you have already revised it into something better in your mind.

This allows you to set a time slot cushion as you think and creates a double filter. It filters once as the phrase runs through your mind, giving you a sense of whether it sounds right or not. Then it filters again as you type it, because it gives you a feel for how the words are being typed and if the feel is wrong, then the word or phrase is wrong. The tertiary filter is, of course, reading as you type.

All of this slows down your pacing to a balanced, not slow or fast, pace.

What writing long hand does to you is to force you to use your imagination and attempt to abstractedly visualize what you are going to write in any number of categories and forms. In order to prevent yourself from making mistakes, you will naturally give more time for your abstract mind to figure things out.

I was able to write a much better descriptive essay by thinking really hard and writing two drafts by hand and then typing it up. When I typed it up, I revised it, since the drafts were timed but my revision was not.

The end result was much better in terms of flow, pacing, grammar, spelling, visualization, and what not. This is because the better your abstract and logical thinking processes are, the faster you must be able to write so that the easier it would be to revise what you have written. It is incredibly hard to attempt to revise what you have not yet put down unto paper, for you don’t see it, you can only imagine it as it could have been.

The speed of typing allows one to put into words on screen what one is thinking in imagination and abstract tones. This allows a writer a far more concretized format unto which he may display his revision skills.

A painter and sculptor puts a lot of time into imagination, and little into revision. They don’t “revise” their works so much as rip what they don’t like apart and start anew. To them, getting it right on the first time is the only way to good works.

Writers now a days don’t have to throw everything away. The same applies to painters and sculptors. They have computer aided drawing now, they have memory data banks that can hold millions of drafts easily accessible from now unto the Singularity of Technological Progress.

This means that the process becomes far more intellectual and solidified in the form of fast and clever thinking. No more do you have to hold everything in your head, write it down, and still have to chunk, erase, or ball up drafts of your thoughts. Now you can apply your intellect, your intelligence and fast thinking, to the process without being hampered by physical limitations such as speed or endurance.

The capacitors in the keyboard do all that work for you. You just have to move your finger and push down with a small amount of weight.

Once a person masters typing and can recognize words simply by the feel of the keys and the sequence in which one’s fingers have pressed them, then this produces the same effect as the artistry of calligraphy.

Almost always, I recognize mistakes by sensing when I have hit the wrong keys, rather than reading my words and finding a mistake there first.

If you don’t pay very close attention to feel, to tactile touch, then you will miss so many many mistakes. Mistakes such as “not” as opposed to now. Known as opposed to unknown or is as opposed to isn’t.

And the more you type in any one sitting, the more urgency you feel in putting thoughts on electronic screen, the more likely your errors statistically.

This is far superior, however, to making mistakes with cursive writing because one’s hand has cramped up. For a person that needs 10 drafts before finalizing on end result, that person will take up most of his time rewriting, not revising. He will have more time to revise, but that is because he has wasted much time on rewriting and he thus he had nothing better to do than to revise while he re-wrote what he had already written 10 times before.

Typing is no magic, of course, it still takes practice and efficiency. Once applied and acquired, however, it is just as good, so long as you hadn’t adopted a different habit while growing up. For example, some people prefer to speak with their hands as well as their mouth. Remove their hands, and they may have problems speaking. Same is true for long hand writing in poetry and what not. The habit is there, you cannot change it anymore.

All of us (or, at least those of us who were there) recall the transformation in the way we re-learned to write during the mid-70′s to early 80s,as we switched over to word processors and early PCs.

I have always held in awe the “first time, every time” writing talent that some possess.

I recall a television interview on Book Notes that Brian Lamb did with Shelby Foote, during which the latter described his writing process — long hand, pen and ink. One draft.

Hell, I don’t even dare try a NYT crossword on Tuesday with a pen!

By the way, he was one of two authors, perhaps ever, whose contracts with their publishers specified that there could be no editing of what they submitted. What they sent in was printed.

The other writer, as related by Shelby Foote during the interview, was William Faulkner!

I find that I compose business letters, email, and blog posts just fine on a word processing program, but when I need to sit down and write a money piece, one that really matters, I always have to do it the old-fashioned way, with legal pad and pen. And many, many crossouts and balled-up pages tossed in the waste basket, before I get it where I want it to be.

depending on what you value you can change the framework and often cast things in a way to get a differetn way out of it that sometimes can be what you favor in other things.

this same mechanism when abused becvomes ideology.

the qwerty keyboard was designed so that keys would not jam in the mechanical typewriters like my old royal.

once they were mechanized to somethign like the ibm selectrix ball, this mechanical solution was no longer needed.

however, arbitrary improvements that dont really give the results in practice never unseat things that are only moderately lesser.

humans type on average from 30wpm, up to 120 wpm… higher is competition level… and rare.

part of this speed also ahs to do with how fast you think. after all, we are not talking about blind retyping a memo that another person wrote.

we are talking abouit composition, something that dvorack really wouldnt improve, as the blind typist.

the blind typists work hard not to read waht they type, this allows them to disconnect their minds from the task adn go faster.

by the way, women do this a lot better than men. this is why women dominate factory work. they can sit there and do mindless tasks and not have a problem… (think about the genetic advantage this does to the home front, and dealing with children, while having other thigns to do).

men on the other hand have to think out each step, they cant get to this empty headed functionalty. (in this case, this is not an insult, its a plus if what you have to do is boring, repetitive, and needs to be done. like food preparation in the wild. ever pluck feathers, shuck corn, shell nuts, etc?)

i worked for a factory, and for that summer i made aligator clips. a boring, repetitive, and potentially dangerous task. my job was to take a bottom half, put in a spring, put in a top half, force them to come toteher so that i can put it on a pin, then hit a button which owudl bring a rivet machine down. one guy put a rivette through his finger. 5000lb sqyar inch his phalanx never had a chance.
you were not allowed to talk and you just did this as fast as you could.

the men never or rarely could match the women. their smaller fingers, and their mental accuity for doing dull things, would win out every time.. after 8 hours it would be evident… (but do do hiring and discrimination laws they had to keep a bunch of us underperforming men onthe line for the same salaries!)

so the truth of faster would depend on what you were doing. if your task required thoight and you hd to stop and go back ad edit, the dvorak wont mean much at all.

but if your a blind typist who has to do data entry, or retyping memos an things, and you type near 80 plus words a minute, and you make your money piece work, then dvorak is probably a way to get a few more words out per minute, and thereby make a difference in a days or weeks work.

other than the cache that comes from being a leftist that says… look i changed arbitrarily, it doesnt mean much.

i will say though that a good split keyboard in which the keys are not so linear, and its a bit more like typing on a large ball rather than a flat board does make a qualitative difference in the pleasure and time you can type.

which is a wholly different area of metrics that is ignored.

its much like the difference between a pro level camera and a lesser model in similar class…

the cameras themselves will not improve your picture taking, one just makes it a bit easier, and so it gets less in the way.

ultimately, better than the WPM rate is the ability for the interface to be invisable and not interupt you with its form or quirkies.

so a keyboard that is kinder on the position of your wrists, and angles would allow you to type longer and easier and so be more comfortable. in this way, the interface between the tool and what your doing makes the tool more a natural extension, and so you stop thinking about the tool and more about what your doing.

piano players practice scales so as to create this same situation through muscle memory… as it isnt really practical to change the layout of the 88s. so they work really hard like blind typists so taht they knwo where the keys are, and so do not think as to the tool they use to produce sound.

in fact, they then can atain the thing that the wiser find more pleasurable.

the sublime.

the concept that your “in” the situation, that your no longer thinking about the mechanics, but are doing the actions.

this happens int he arts, and i think is the major reason artists create (beside shameless desire for approval or the opposite, or just plain affecting people as a reflection of proof of existence).

i have been quoted as saying my favorite thing about me being an artist.

and that art is a socially acceptable obsessive compulsive disorder.

[which may be why its hard to medicace them]

the search for the sublime is a kind of pleasure that one can constantly achieve. unlike the more basal and rude forms of pleasure one does not attain mroe of it through bashing through it. one obtains more of it through separateion of qualities and the controlled reflection and appreciation.

while kids jump and scream to music, and such, few of them are trained enough or naturally hold still enough to get the sublime and orgasmic pleasure that music can induce! (i believe its called frisson, but i am not sure. i can call it up at will, and i also notice that we get it when we are depressed and in despair!! something i have NEVER read in the research as to depression. that its a plain pleasuer thing when frisson is with it. it makes it very easy to sink into it and not want to get out)

well, those that love to write, draw, or express (thats most of us in some way), are actually inducing the sublime and other reward centers.

such things are the origins of our social ability and our desire to do for others, as well as capitalisms transactions.

of course i can abstract like crazy and i think divergent so for me its very hard to not digress on such a cool subject (thanks neo).

so i would dare to say what is more important than speed, is invisablity of the tool and comfort for the longer more perseverous tasks.

there are two ways to think about it and you can see that in cars.

you can buy a lamborghini, take the autobahn and get to where you are going faster, then you are free to do somethign you enjoy more (like maybe reading the completed piece, or posting it to see the reaction).

or you can buy a rolls royce, or a winnabago, and enjoy the trip all the way.

it depends on what you really want to get out of it. the nice thing in freedom is that neither trip is better outside of context.

hope i helped…

However, this doesn’t work for me when trying to compose “comments” – probably because I’m trying to thought-mate with the thoughts of others, who often present things I haven’t thought of, or at least different angles on topics. It’s great, and thanks!