As much as I try to sound like one cohesive person across various communication mediums, I know that’s not always the case.

Thinking about the process helps to uncover part of the reason.

When we talk, we don’t have time to edit. We think in real time and we respond naturally based on input from several senses.

Personally, and imagine others are similar, my writing process is very different.

I don’t just write (or type) something and then immediately send it. I edit.

So much, that my first draft of a given message rarely makes sense. I know I’m going to massage things later, so my first effort is just to throw my thoughts on paper.

Then I come back and move things around, reword phrases, consider the logical flow of an argument, proofread, etc.

These two processes necessarily produce different results.

But this isn’t new.

A more interesting revelation came when I recently heard Neil Gaiman talking about writing processes.

Neil’s theory is that the change in writing style over time has, at least partly, been due to the change in the tools used for writing.

Fountain pens need to be dipped when you stop writing, meaning that it used to be more convenient to keep the flow going once it started. Thus, it made more sense to write longer sentences, which fed into longer paragraphs.

Knowing what they were committing to, writers were almost forced to pre-think their thoughts. They knew they couldn’t stop once they started, so they had to think out chunks of writing before they put pen to paper.

This is almost the exact opposite of the process I just described for my own writing.

I rarely know what the next word will be until I type it. And then I might come back and change it several times before I have a “final product.”

I don’t come up with the same elegant, flowing prose that was common centuries ago. I write short, disjointed paragraphs that ideally come together to form a somewhat cohesive whole.

One style isn’t necessarily better or worse. They’re just different.

And the interesting thing is that a little detail like the design of a pen just might have had the power to, at least partially, determine writing styles for generations.

-Brandon