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Comment by daemonk | Hacker News Reader

I am not a writer/novelist by any means, so please forgive my ignorance. Does the act of creative writing tend to lead to mental drift? So much so that minor distractions are so detrimental to the process?

I’ve always wondered if the hollywood stereotype of the reclusive writer typing away on a low tech typewriter is based in reality.

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Not a professional, n=1, but I've successfully NaNoWriMo'd a few times and do regular amounts of creative writing for both D&D campaigns and for fun.

Absolutely freaking yes. Lots of mental drift. Swapping over to a new window on my MacBook happens enough that I have an app for shutting down that ability while working on writing. Ditto having a specialized app (Ulysses, then Obsidian) for writing with minimal buttons.

I can do without, but having the ability to close and lock those doors increases my writing speed by a decent chunk. As an engineer, if I can make myself more productive and writing more enjoyable with better tools, I'd rather do that.

That said, I absolutely have a friend who does his writing in Microsoft Word. He's already a bit of an odd duck, though, and is not an engineer.

It does for me, to the point where I made myself a tool to write without any ability to edit: just a stream of text I use for generating ideas in a stream of consciousness fashion. You can check it out for here: https://write.sonnet.io (It’s private and it works offline too)

Wonderful. Makes me want to write a book just so I can use it :D

Thanks, I know a few writers who use it in fact! In a couple of hours I have a Say Hi call (https://sonnet.io/posts/hi) with one who messaged me to say that they used it to get out of writer’s block. :)

I think I'm a bit too attached to it (emotionally, if that makes any sense) so I procrastinate on sharing testimonials/different ways in which people use it.

Neal Stephenson who is quite handy with computers and programming, famously uses pen and paper. Only late in the process does he convert the manuscript to digital. I think he might be using Emacs for that. I think in his case, a big part might be to remove the temptation of procrastination and getting sucked into browsing the internet, tinkering with software, etc.

I think the Hollywood cliche is simply based on the fact that type writers were all there was until about 40-50 years ago. And of course not many writers would have immediately adopted word processors when they came into fashion in the eighties and nineties. I remember an elderly math professor in university who still handed in hand written papers to the department secretary. Apparently she was quite handy with latex. That was in the early 2000s.

But there is some truth to the notion that reaching flow state is hard work.

There's some amusing notes on flow state in Stephenson's REAMDE where he has a character by the nick name of Skeletor who is an extremely prolific fantasy writer. This character is a bit of a jerk because he lets his guests wait until he comes out of flow state, which he conveniently gets into just before they arrive. The reason for his nick name is that he discovered thread mills and transformed from being mortally obese to having a carefully monitored ridiculously low fat percentage. Basically reaching flow state for him means he writes while running at full speed on a thread mill using a keyboard and screen setup that is floating in front of him on some sort of high tech contraption with fans cooling him.

s/thread mills/tread mills/g

I do a lot of writing. The best recipe for me when I really need to focus is to not use my macbook at all, but a dedicated laptop with no wifi or anything. (Bought a cheap lenovo X1 second hand for this purpose). Pen and paper is also wonderful.

Not for me. I've authored a few books, and have another one underway. Once I get going on my writing I can easily do a few hours without a break. Anecdotally, I seem to enjoy the process of writing much more than the average, so maybe that's the difference.

It's not my place to tell others how to manage their mental state to get stuff done. I have enough issues of my own to understand that we all face challenges. But distraction free is certainly not a universal requirement. I wrote most of my PhD dissertation in a the University library cafe, and I get a lot done on trains and planes. A bit of distraction actually works better for me.

Another n=1, but it depends. Outside interruptions when I'm on a tear are horrible. I don't often distract myself with a full-featured computer. In fact I often spin off into "research" or fiddling with fonts as a way to let my background brain do its work. I do a fair amount of editing on my phone (!) when on transit or generally goofing off.

What does the parse “on a tear” mean I’ve never heard it before

From "tearing paper", a continuous ripping action, giving rise to the english idiom "he went on a tear" .. as in "started partying and didn't stop" or "started coding and didn't stop".

It's quite interesting looking in to it. The verb "tear" has had a meaning of vigorous haste/rushing since the 16th century so the "on a tear" idiom from the 19th century likely comes from the notion of haste rather than pulling apart material.

I believe "on a tear" was mostly used to communicate a sudden violent action rather than continuity e.g. "stock goes on a tear" not because of a steady continuous rise but because it undergoes a sudden violent change of state from flat-lining to vertical. You might be a "tearabout" or a "tearaway" if impetuous, reckless or hard to control.

I can imagine idioms like "tearing up the track" are pleasing in two meanings of the word e.g. that a horse might "tear down the track" in both haste but also in how torn up the track is from their hooves. Same with a speeding car in the days of dirt roads.

However, in modern use, especially about "productive" behaviours, I think it has lost some of the violence and gained more of the continuity sense supported by the pleasing visual imagery of e.g. scissors gliding through wrapping paper.

You're correct.

As a native English speaker I was aware of the older meaning, however as someone that often "quickly explains english" to ESL folk and|or non-Commonwealth English backgrounds I went with "tearing paper" as a starting point as it felt more likely to be familiar.

This is consistent with your last paragraph re: modern usage.

I've got a much thumbed multi volume OED edition on my shelves .. it's boggling how many words have half page or more entries with multiple meanings and historical backstory.

Yeah, I look up etymology because I love how there are millennia of human culture condensed in a word as it migrates and evolves across classes, cultures and languages. Will it be Norse, Germanic, Latin or maybe Dravidic? Will it have been loaned from x to y to z and then back to x with new meanings?

I had hoped it might have come from reading rapidly in the days of uncut pages where you have to eagerly tear each new page to read it. But no, lol.

I've written five or six novels. Unpublished .

I write on paper first. Then I type on Apple Pages on my iPad using an external keyboard. Then I edit using the Pencil annotating the pdf with double line spacing. Then edit again on ipad.

I recently discovered obsidian, which I plan to use for my next novel

According to Jan Guillou, one of the best selling authors in Sweden - yes. He still types on an old-fashioned typewriter. Granted he is about 80 and grew up with them, but I can see that the constraints you have to live with are just to accept, and that can give focus.

I believe GRRM uses WordStar, which is getting pretty close to "low tech typewriter".

The question was about writers, though.

I've messed around with Bibisco, and that's a way more advanced writing tool. I think the purpose of this is simply "I want to write", vs being worried about structure and development at a higher-level detail.

see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41542788

Watch the film Barton Fink.

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