These 48 hours with a 2006-model phone are going to make for a GREAT personal essay. 

Can someone please help me bring back the toolbar that allowed me to fiddle with the font and the zoom and the etc., because I am LOSING MY MIND trying to do so. And yes, I clicked “show formatting toolbar” and it’s checked but it’s NOT THERE. Should I trash my preferences? HELPPPPPP

Writing by hand for a limited amount of time seems to work much better than writing for an unlimited amount of time on a computer. The delete button and no limitation are the two things can stop experience and give it too much drag-weight to move though time gracefully. These two things allow you to ‘fix’ something that doesn’t even exist yet. We’re editing the experience before we even have the experience. It’s madness but it’s something most of us now do without question. We believe it’s the way to write. Even as I type these words I find myself going back and editing sentences before they are even finished. The delete button is irresistible. And also the speed of typing is irresistible as is the ‘finished’ look of typewritten words. Who wants to give up the ability to take every action back? It’s a recent kind of super power we don’t have anywhere else in our lives.

— 

Lynda Barry in 2008.

This is a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot lately (especially w/r/t my recent forays into teaching writing); I feel like I can get a lot more unfiltered stuff down on the page when I’m writing in longhand, although the atrophying of my writing muscles (because really when do I practice, unless I’m writing out a deposit slip?) makes it hard to do so for too lengthy of a period. At Lynda’s class each free-writing exercise was limited to eight minutes. (She talks about how she structures those eight minutes right before this bit — basically she lets people know that time is ticking at the five-minute and seven-minute marks, which often results in the story being structured with a midpoint and an ending because the “ok, wrap it up” light in students’ heads goes on.)  

Anyway, as expected, this whole interview is amazing and heartbreaking and I hope she is giving another class sometime soon because I think going would be good for my soul.

lol

you all would CRACK UP if you saw the ballet i am performing with my laptop right now; apparently my computer’s wireless connection has decided to not work when i sit at my desk, although it works when i’m on my bed. i am currently in my desk chair swiveling around to see if web sites work when i am pointed at different angles.

i just put my laptop on my desk and my internet connection crapped out. i turned 45 degrees, with laptop on lap? and it works again. ay yi yi

Today in underrated Backstreet Boys songs.