“The notes from one to the next frequently had little in common. They jumped from topic to topic, and only in places were sequentially narrative. So I always rolled the platen and left blank space after each item to accommodate the scissors that were fundamental to my advanced methodology. After reading and rereading the typed notes and then developing the structure and then coding the notes accordingly in the margins and then photocopying the whole of it, I would go at the copied set with the scissors, cutting each sheet into slivers of varying size.”
– John McPhee, Draft No.4
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“The details that I hoped would make you, a reader, feel as if you’d been in the room. Then I typed my notes up, used scissors and Scotch tape, took the notes apart, and rearranged them in chronological order so they told the story you just read. And so they focused on the passion points, the imprinting moments.”
– Howard Bloom, Einstein, Michael Jackson and Me
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There is romance in longing for the pre digital methods of literary construction.
A typewriter.
Notecards.
Scissors.
Scotch tape.
But analog is not better.
It’s a method.
Today I have more tools to hand.
I can cut and paste in my iPhone.
What I like about John and Howard’s method is the idea of rearranging.
That once words are committed to the page they can be moved around.
Our ideas are not fixed in the chronology of their creation.
We create the order
Like gods with scissors, ruling over a kingdom of words.
Conversations With Quotations 