Drafting, Beyond MS Word

There is no good way to write an essay.

But there are several bad ways.

Too common, I think, is the impulse to open up a fresh document in Microsoft Word — or Google Docs, or LibreOffice¹ — and begin banging away at whatever process has worked in the past.

That process — whether it be freewriting, or transcribing, or listing, or outlining — might be effective, or it might not.

But the forum in which that process takes place all-too-often — the blank white simulated piece of paper — is certainly not doing you any favors.

I once saw the great Ted Nelson² give a talk (screed) in a library, in which he denounced (railed against) the usage of the term “desktop” in personal computing.

How many desktops, he asked (shouted), are positioned vertically in front of you?

Similarly: do you really need to type out your essay’s fledgling stages on something that looks like a piece of paper³ just because that’s the particular physicality that your essay will take on later?

Let’s be honest, though — your essay will never take on the physicality of a piece of paper.

Because you’re not going to print your essay out on paper.

You’re just going to email it to someone, who is also not going to print it out on paper.

Do me a favor:⁴

1. Open TextEdit (on MacOS) or Notepad (on Windows).

2. Start your essay-writing process, whatever that might entail.

3. Reflect.

How does it feel to be writing in a space ungoverned by the arbitrary geometries of the US Letter or A4 sheet?⁵

Do you feel liberated? No? Well, give it a minute.

If you’ve enabled “Word Wrap” (Notepad) or “Wrap to Page” (TextEdit) try resizing the window so you can only see the few sentences you’re working on. How does that feel?

Liberating? No? Then try something else.

The point here is not to prescribe a way of writing but rather to prompt the shaking loose of the notion of prescription.

There is no straight line through the production of an essay and, accordingly, no good reason why a process as messy and full of switchbacks as writing tends to be should take place on the image of a facsimile of a white piece paper.

In any case, you can always paste your draft into Word later.