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July 11, 2005
hand writing
I want to trip inside your head
Spend the day there…
To hear the things you haven’t said
And see what you might see
--U2, Miracle Drug
I like seeing the process of thought formation, whether it be in conversation or letter writing. Letter writing is in many ways an unpolished stream of consciousness. Throughout the previous blog post I've deleted, re-wrote, and re-organized a number of times. But you wouldn't know it. These are more polished thoughts (though not comprehensive). My scratch marks and messy handwriting from an idea that came too quickly doesn't come across here. Is there value to that? Here it seems that the process of thought formation is lost to a final product. In a letter, the reader sees the process. I suppose I could just choose not to use the delete button and instead use the strikethrough font, but somehow I don't think it would have the same affect. I don't begrudge the final product, but like seeing the process of getting there.
processing | By charity | 08:59 AM
Comments
I agree. When in polished form my writing is definitely more coherent and therefore more fit for the eyes of others, but it loses something, a strange life that was more distinctly mine in the first draft. Perhaps that's why I prefer conversations to writing much of the time. It allows me to make statements and then clarify if necessary or backtrack if it doesn't feel right.
Posted by: Joel at July 13, 2005 12:35 AM
To extract another quote from the song, I think conversation allows us to "see your thoughts take shape and walk right out"
Posted by: Joel at July 13, 2005 12:37 AM
I'm more of a "final product" girl myself... Sometimes the meandering thought process, whether in conversation or in letters, makes me lose my patience with the speaker or author. Personally, I like being able to type journal entries or blog posts where I can easily delete spelling errors, make better word choices using a thesaurus, and add or subtract phrases to make a sentence more succinct.
Posted by: RT at July 13, 2005 11:43 AM