What I've Learned

I never saw the movie, Lolita, nor have I read the book, nor do I intend to. Lolita is considered a great novel, but there are plenty of great novels, and I don't think my literary keenness will suffer if I never read this one, thank you very much.

That said, Lolita's author, Vladimir Nabokov, had an unusual method of writing, a method that interests me.

Nabokov was born in 1899 in St. Petersberg, Russia, into a wealthy family of minor nobility. Russian, French, and English were spoken in his home, and he grew up tri-lingual. In fact, young Vladimir could read and write in English before he could in Russian.

His family emigrated to Europe in 1919. He moved to the United States in 1940, living here until his death in 1977.

Nabokov's literary output is impressive. He wrote 10 novels in Russian and nine in English, as well as numerous short stories and poems in both languages.

He lived before the age of word processors or personal computers, but was a step behind even the technology of his day. Instead of using a typewriter – even a manual, to say nothing of an electric – he wrote his novels on index cards using a pencil.

When I learned this, my reaction was, "That's bizarre. Why would anyone do that?"

Why he did it, it turns out, makes perfect sense.

Whether it's a full-length novel or a 500-word weekly column, things change dramatically from the first draft to the finished work.

When I write a What I've Learned column, I usually chop off the first hundred or so words and move several paragraphs around before submitting it to my editor.

With a computer this is easy. I highlight the weak opening text and hit delete. I highlight paragraphs I want to move, hit Ctrl-x to cut them, reposition the cursor, and hit Ctrl-v to paste them in their new location. It's easy as proverbial pie.

In Nabokov's day, cutting and pasting involved scissors and an actual jar of paste. If you cut and pasted then changed your mind, things could get messy. Messy, that is, unless, as Nabokov wisely figured out, you wrote on index cards. Moving paragraphs or even whole chapters was a simple matter of reordering the cards. Need to cut several paragraphs? Drop them in the trash.

When Nabokov donated the handwritten text of one of his novels to a university, the IRS assessed the gift at a low amount. The donation was in the form of index cards, so the IRS assumed he had given just the outline for the work.

My methods are quite different than Vladimir Nabokov's. I have an arsenal of writing tools, including a desktop computer, a netbook computer, and an Alphasmart Neo word processor, which is the love of my writing life. Sometimes, I draft by hand using a Uni-ball Signo pen and a green steno pad.

Whether I use a steno pad or a machine, I'm comfortable with my methods and not looking to make a change. However, should an anomaly in the space-time continuum throw me back to an earlier era, I'd definitely write on index cards. It would give me the convenience of using a word processor without actually having one.