I’ve often wondered what separated the writers of yesterday from the current batch today. Their work ethic, especially the pulp writers, puts any modern keyboard jockey to shame.

The fact that Max Brand, aka Frederick Faust, typed 13-14 pages a day… every day… for over 30 years makes my head spin. Him, along with many others, also did their work in one draft on a typewriter. Whether a reader considered it good was simply a matter of taste.

While we can point to the era and surmise it must have something to do with a greater focus, this is not the case as evidenced in this quote in Writer’s Digest:

“No one in this, the present year of our Lord, 1920, has any spare time.”

The author spends the next paragraph espousing the distractions and vices that keep people from finding time to focus on writing. I guess that’s always been a problem. Consider the book, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, which was written in 1910, to teach people about this issue as well.

Technology could be the next culprit, but it’s far too general of an accusation. Me going out and getting a typewriter isn’t going to magically turn me into a 1930s pulp writer or pound out prose like Hemingway on the merit of using the same tools they did. That’s nonsense.

Our modern computers with their writing programs are nothing more than typewriters on steroids, perfectly developed to make the writing easier. No need to feed paper into the machine, replace the ribbon or fix jammed keys – although spilling coffee on your keyboard results in a much worse headache.

However, I do notice one small detail that has made all the difference: the backspace (or delete) key.

Our writing programs have trained us it’s okay to make mistakes because we can immediately self-edit. Fixing an error on a typewriter is a giant pain in the ass, which is why you paid particular attention to each sentence. Going back and deleting swaths of paragraphs, or even lines here and there, would bring anyone to their knees.

Today, it’s a few keystrokes and you’re off again.

Unfortunately, it’s also trained us to only think a few words at a time. If you consider how your brain works when you’re writing something (even a text), the idea forms in your brain and your fingers go to work without the thought being complete. Then you get mid-sentence and you have to stop and think how the sentence will end.

How often do you hit that backspace key when you’re writing a text longer than a few words to someone?

We self-edit like crazy because the consequence is minimal.

In essence, the backspace key has become our crutch in the same way the written word became our crutch for memory. There was no need to train your brain to memorize encyclopedias worth of information when the same information could be accessed at any time.

Sure, this freed up the brain to handle other tasks and we’re better off for it (mostly), but we did lose something in the process.

Perhaps our ability to focus again should come from a resurgence of our ability to think thoroughly before committing words to the screen. If you’re taking the time to consider what you’re trying to say, your temptation to interrupt that task by checking email/social media/cat videos will diminish.

Also, it’s not a bad idea to take a few seconds to think before we do.