Dreaming and Doing

One of my character flaws is that I've always been more of a dreamer than a doer. I'm that guy that talks a lot about what we ought to do ... one of these days ... real soon. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I should do and not enough time actually doing it.

From the time I was in fourth grade, I wanted to be a writer. I even started working on a book with paper and pencil about a guy who was half vampire and half werewolf. Apparently some movie producers found my fourth grade notebook and made a movie called "Underworld." Bastards. I want my royalty checks.

I have entire novels written inside my head that I could never get out on paper. "On paper." That phrase is practically outdated. Books nowadays are rarely written on paper. They're printed on paper, but they are usually written on a screen. Saying that I got something on screen sounds like I'm a film maker rather than a writer (or like I'm Captain Picard answering a hail from a Romulan warship).

The typewriter seems to be the talisman that bridges the gap between the world of dreaming and the world of doing. Typing on the computer feels like work. Typing on a typewriter is fun. I don't quite know why that is, but I think it is due to the fact that I actually feel like a writer when I'm at the typewriter.

Unlike the personal computer, the typewriter never became a household item. The average person didn't have a typewriter just sitting around. They were expensive. People who had them were people who actually needed them. Typing was a specialized skill. It wasn't taught in elementary school like it is today.

Now I find myself writing everyday, and I'm always getting something on paper. Something I plan on doing soon (See, there I go again.) is to go through my computer files and type them out on paper. I have a feeling that in revisiting these old ideas, some new ones will emerge and maybe some of my abandoned projects will actually see completion.