When I write--text or hypertext, fiction or theory--I must set aside a certain space in which to work. I use the word "space" here to group several kinds of space: physical, temporal, and cognitive. The writing space is not merely a desk or office where I keep my manuscripts and disks and pens and computer. It is also a space of time set aside from day to day life: from my job, from my wife, from all people and activities other than the work, the writing. But all the time and (physical) space in the world would be to no avail if I could not set aside one further space, a kind of internal solitude--a meditation perhaps--to which I turn to recapture the vision I had when last I wrote, or to see what lies ahead. This space is a little hard to describe, but it is there that writing, as I have quoted Walter Ong elsewhere, transforms human consciousness. Past daydream but this side of dream, it is part vision, part sound; part memory, part foresight. That is not to imply that this internal space is some esoteric or exotic state of mind. It's assuredly not mystical, nor is it, in my experience, spiritual. It is rather a span of intense focus, a period of willful concentration on words and notes, on the contours of narratives, on my readings of texts and events, and on the sensations and ideas beyond words.
I use the term "writing space" not just because I find it apt, but on purpose to augment the ways in which Jay David Bolter uses it in Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Bolter uses the term in at least three ways, all developed out of his initial concentration, the literal writing space,"the physical and visual field defined by a particular technology of writing": the papyrus, the page, the computer screen (Bolter 1991, 11). At a deeper level, however, he refers to the "conceptual" and "metaphoric" dimensions of the physical writing space. By conceptual space he means how the physical character of text
fosters a particular understanding both of the act of writing and of the product, the written text . . . The conceptual space of a printed book is one in which writing is stable, monumental, and controlled exclusively by the author. It is the space defined by perfect printed volumes that exist in thousands of identical copies. The conceptual space of electronic writing, on the other hand, is characterized by fluidity and an interactive relationship between writer and reader (Bolter 1991, 11).Finally, when the technology of a particular writing space has been acculturated and internalized by a culture, the writing space tends to become a metaphor for the mind itself:
In the act of writing, the writer externalizes his or her thoughts. The writer enters into a reflective and reflexive relationship with the written page, a relationship in which thoughts are bodied forth. It becomes difficult to day where thinking ends and writing begins, where the mind ends and the writing space begins. With any technique of writing--on stone or clay, papyrus or paper, and particularly on the computer screen--the writer comes to regard the mind itself as a writing space. The writing space becomes a metaphor, in fact literate cultures's root metaphor, for the human mind (Bolter 1991, 11).
To clarify our different uses of the term, it is perhaps useful to keep in mind that my use is always related to the phrase in my title, "writing lives." If Bolter's focus is on writing, mine is more on the writer. To fully explore the implications of hypertext--and the electronic technologies by which it is currently instantiated--for writing it is necessary to explore both kinds of writing space. Bolter does an admirable job of locating the electronic writing space in the context of the history of writing technologies. Yet the issue of how this (or any previous) technology fits into the context of the writer's life is left largely unexplored. As I emphasize in my discussion of the art world of hypertext fiction, writing does not occur in a vacuum. At some point it has to be fitted into a place, a time, a mind--into the life of the person doing the writing.
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Initial release: June 10, 1996
Last update: August 4, 1996