Fast draft, they say, a warm-up challenge, 40 minutes. It's late; it's 10:57 on the 25th of April, ANZAC Day.
StoryADay, well, they're just starting out, ten hours behind me, so midday there maybe. Here it's crickets and distant car noises, hotted-up cars and other noise.
It's quite noisy, actually, the dog getting comfortable in its beanbag, my daughter watching a video on her projector in her room. I'll need to go ask her to turn it down. If I can hear that out here, my wife, who is trying to sleep, will surely be frustrated.
Does that count as part of the forty? Had to go ask to get it turned down; it didn't make sense to yell across the house. I'll count it. So what am I writing? I'm writing for forty minutes; it's a warm-up.
So, here I sit at a temporary desk, established days ago when I ducked home from work so my partner and I could make a call together. It's stayed, and I've started doing other stuff, like preparing for the Story a Day in May writing challenge.
I've done it before, several times. I think I first did it back in 2017 and have since done it at least five times with varying degrees of success. In the majority, though, I've managed to hit the 31 days, and even gone beyond that. The missed years were most probably because of work. I'm not a professional writer in the sense that I don't write fiction for a living. I do do non-fiction business writing, though again, only part of my job; the rest is meetings and talking for a living.
So, that's seven minutes. I imagine I should try to turn this into something other than simply a writing exercise, with 32:40 to go.
So, what is writing to me? In some ways, it's a distraction; it stops me from being a workaholic. I do have a novel in the works; I've had it in the works for eight years now. By that maths, I started it back in 2018, though I suspect it was earlier than that. I completed a writing course with the Australian Journalism School. It was good; I wrote a short story there. That short story would go on to be the opener for the novel, which is now sitting at around 47,000 words. My guesstimate is there's another 30-odd thousand in that.
That's not why I am doing Story a Day, though. Why Story a Day then? I enjoy the challenge, and it is a challenge. I think when I first tried it, I did some of the lead-up and preparation, but was not quite as prepared as I could have been. Now I have a backlog of 68-plus story ideas and growing, so I'm not stuck for a spark this year. The challenge, though, is getting the words out of my head and onto the page.
Some days, that will be super easy; it will flow out. Other days are much harder, an effort, a chore. What works for me is writing in the evening and posting it, sometimes, more often than not, to be honest, posting just before midnight, making the mad dash for the finish line of the day.
Even when you do that, it's not the end. Story posted, comments lodged, then a quick look maybe for tomorrow's idea. Is it the leverage of the StoryADay prompt, something from the ideas backlog, or something else entirely based on a random inspiration? Who knows. It's key, though, as it starts the process for the next day.
Sleeping on it is good, having it in my mind through the working day, into the evening, over dinner, and then the writing begins: a mad sprint to the end. I do think it has changed over the years, though, the approach has, or how I capture ideas at least.
Walking now, walking the dog gives an opportunity to start a form of writing through dictation and transcription. That gets me some of the way. What's interesting though, is I find the act of writing, no, typing, is key. I'm typing this now; the physicality of it, the flow of words from my brain to my fingertips, is part of it.
Thank heavens I can touch type.
So, twenty minutes to go. What I can tell you is I type considerably slower than when I was a kid, learning to type on a teletype of all things. Yes, a teletype, a machine straight out of the black-and-white movies covering World War 2. It even had hole-punched tape.
Back then, I could type 100 wpm at 98% accuracy. That would mean 10 minutes, 1,000 words. Now I'm 21 minutes in and only 803 words done. Is it that I am slower, or that back then I was reading a script, signal or message straight from the page to teletype keys via my eyes and fingertips? I actually think the art then was to not think and simply be a conduit.
I remember learning, keyboard covered: "A now. B now. C now." That's how they started you. Then your accuracy increased the speed, then you eventually out-typed old "A now" and graduated onto standing at a teletype and thumping on the keys. Anyway, I'd say I'm well under 100 wpm these days. I suppose we'll know at the end of this.
And accuracy, the page is riddled with yellow and red underlines just now. Back then, I didn't have that luxury; I couldn't even see the words I typed. There were holes on the ticker tape, and I typed so fast the tape punch ran on for 30 seconds to a minute after I'd finished. Such a fun thing.
Now, though, the timer will go off at 40 minutes and I'll Grammarly all the red and yellow away. Such a luxury. The reality that I can see the words, the underlines and all, as I type is really incredible, and it gets me to the technology curve that has been my career.
I joined the Royal Australian Navy at the age of sixteen, fifteen actually; I was successful in the recruitment process, yet they wouldn't take me until I was sixteen, a few months later. I joined the electronic warfare in submarines. Funny, when I went to sea on a sub for the first time, a year and a bit after joining, there were only two computers on the submarine: mine and the captain's. God rest his soul, he was a good bloke.
There's a funny story there. Anyway, the technology curve, at 16, subs, electronic warfare; now 39 years later, I am the Chief Technology Officer at a university, a place that consumes laptops at the same rate as I eat a packet of Smiths with an ice-cold beer. That technology is assumed now. It's artificial intelligence that is my current consideration, and this is within a lifetime, from Beta, then VHS, to being part of the AI divide, working in an environment where it's at my fingertips, literally.
This also gets me back to how writing changes, and doesn't. The trick is, we will still call it writing for a long time yet. Purists, old-school curmudgeons I imagine, would say it's not writing if you don't labour over the grammar, the spelling, the repairs. To me, that is not the case. I have no problem with Grammarly or even Claude tidying up my writing. Dare I say, though, I do care if I lose my voice to the machine, to the AI. That is what you need to be careful of.
This also takes me back to why I write, and more importantly, why I do Story a Day. In Story a Day I can play with all my voices, all my prose and genres. I'm a gamer, as you can imagine, I'm a D&D kid. I grew up in the days of the Satanic Panic, and I went into computers. I'm a nerd, a geek, and yes, I write fantasy. Story a Day, though, I'll try fantasy, poetry, spoken word. I'll read a book to see if I can emulate the writing and powers of description of the classics and even the pulp.
For me, it's about the thinking, the creativity, the perspective and the prose.
So, with a little over three minutes to go, what have I written? I'm not even sure I'd know what to call this. Is it a diary entry, an observation, or otherwise? I don't know. Maybe I'll ask Claude. It doesn't matter; it's the ramblings of a slowing typist.
It's quieter now. Even in those 38 minutes, the soundscape has shifted. Now I've got the hum of the dishwasher, possums fighting in the distance, the dog scratching at one of the room doors to get in, and the cat's bell jingling about the place. My wife is awake now. "What are you doing?" What timing, 14 seconds to go. Going, going, gone. 38 wpm.
No comments:
Post a Comment