Friction Writing

I haven’t misspelled “fiction.” You can read the title as “friction while writing.”

It’s tempting to go directly for the physics concept, i.e., the actual force of friction, which certainly plays a role in writing— yet I don’t mean that either.

I also don’t mean what Steven Pressfield calls “resistance,” although this “friction” may certainly be a part of what stands between you and fulfilling your mission (aka the Pressfieldian “resistance”).

I only abuse the fact that “fiction” and “friction” are paronyms, and attempt to exploit the inherent possibilities for metaphor in order to prove a point.

I’m talking (writing, rather) about the friction you encounter during the concrete process of expressing your thoughts as written words.

When you’re an illiterate toddler, this friction is so great, that it prevents any transfer of your thoughts into writing, because the friction happens inside your very head: You’re simply not physically and mentally equipped to write anything. The process isn’t only supremely difficult. Indeed, there’s no process at all.

Then you get to preschool age, and you can scribble simple sentences with a pencil: “I love mom.” It still takes much effort. The friction while transcribing your luminous, childish thoughts into a written declaration is still significant, and you’re underdevelopment is still its primary cause.

Time goes by and you’re now a graduate, and have not only mastered handwriting, but using a keyboard and touchscreen as well. There’s still that barrier between your thoughts and how they translate on paper. Some of it is that nagging filter between thinking and expression, which you now realize may get thinner, but won’t ever go away completely, and you have to make peace with that. However, equally nagging is the feeling that there’s more to it.

This brings me to my point: The remaining friction, now due to your environment, your tools, your mindset.

You can write, maybe you’re even good at it. Yet you don’t, not as much as you’d like, anyway. As for your digital tools, you’ve long suffered from “tool fatigue,” having tried almost all writing tools under the Internet sun, without much change in the quantity and quality of your output.

So much so that you’ve perhaps returned to pen and paper at some point. You then had to transcribe that work into an editor, and save a file for the specific purpose of forgetting all about it, as it will forever gather digital dust.

Ideally, you’d just think your thoughts of fictional universes, and some marvelous instrument would commit them to paper automagically. A sublime device like that doesn’t exist, and likely never will. You’re stuck to writing and typing, and maybe dictating, if you’re brave enough, or really wanted to write “rest in peas.”

In reality, there’s a rather long and steep road that ideas endeavor to travel between their breeding ground inside your head, and their final resting place as text. They make this treacherous journey on a high-friction roadway, and instead of a smooth glide, you get a jerky progression with halts and backtracks at every step.

For instance, assume a jolt of inspiration has just hit, and your thoughts string together haphazardly into a semblance of words and sentences, racing to get out into the world. They demand to be expressed outwardly and saved as textual information. What are your options?

Use pen and paper

Grab the pen and paper you presumably have about you at all times, and quickly jot down the stream of words flowing from your consciousness, before it decides to recede or evaporate.

That’s a rather frictionless process—assuming you do carry pen & paper. Now, your idea has been transformed into intelligible words, but that’s not yet a book.

You must transcribe that into the digital domain, and merge it with your other structured work. Hello again, friction.

Even if you write your entire book by hand, at some point it needs to be dumped inside a computer. You either hire a typist, or you end up in front of a screen, hands on the keyboard, wondering how it has come to this and whether it’s all worth it anyway.

Use a typewriter

Don’t.

Use generic software

Uh-oh, here comes the friction.

Like most, you’ll reach for something like Microsoft Word™ or Google Docs™ and crack on.

As you’ve already discovered (or soon will), Word and relatives have been created for documents in general, not books in particular. They are perfect for writing a generic document, but are significantly lacking when it comes to book writing.

The document is monolithic, and you can’t put inside it stuff that belongs to your book, but not in your book, stuff not meant to be published, but meant to be kept at hand while writing. There is no concept of story elements, and there aren’t any serious organizing and planning tools. When you’re done, you either print it, or find another tool to convert it into a publishable e-book. Friction.

Use dedicated book-writing software

Choose to write your book within a veritable virtual writer’s studio that you have with you everywhere you go; your own personal writing sanctuary which you can enter anytime, through any device, like going through a portal. A place where you write like a writer of books, not mere documents, within your own universe designed to keep you writing. Then, when you’re done, just click a button, bake your fresh e-book, and smell the e-ink. Frictionless.

That’s where Novelitist storms in, slams the door behind it, points an accusatory finger at your pathetic writer “tools,” and utters in soothing, yet unequivocal, tone, “Come, your plight ends here. Enter these plains of plenty, and finally be who you were meant. I’ll hold your books, and keep them safe and tidy. I’ll fend off distraction. I’ll spoil you with the colors you like. I’ll keep a log for you, so that you always know where you stand. I’ll be there wherever you may go. You just write, I’ll do the counting. You just write, I’ll be your printing press. There is no friction here. Just write, at last.”

The walls around you disappear, the breaks are lifted, friction subsides, and you finally, finally write that novel.