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I\u2019d like to share some thoughts about index cards.<\/p>\n
My new writ\u00ading, with the excep\u00adtion of blog entries of course, is hap\u00adpen\u00ading on index cards. The fact that this is how my hero, Vladimir Nabokov, wrote all of his first drafts is pure\u00adly coin\u00adci\u00adden\u00adtal.<\/p>\n
Over the years, I\u2019ve used index cards as ways of encap\u00adsu\u00adlat\u00ading scenes in sto\u00adries or nov\u00adels by writ\u00ading a sim\u00adple \u201cslug\u201d on each one, like this one from my first Dako\u00adta Stevens nov\u00adel: \u201cEXT. \u2014 Walk to W. Vil\u00adlage din\u00ader in bliz\u00adzard \u2014 NIGHT.\u201d The pur\u00adpose of this was to allow myself to shuf\u00adfle the cards and get dif\u00adfer\u00adent views of poten\u00adtial scene orders, and to be able to see at a glance how many inte\u00adri\u00ador and exte\u00adri\u00ador scenes there were. I hap\u00adpen to like a lot of vari\u00adety of scene loca\u00adtions in my work, and this non-lin\u00adear approach was one way to achieve scene vari\u00adety.<\/p>\n
How\u00adev\u00ader a few days ago I went to my sal\u00advaged library card cat\u00ada\u00adlog (in which I store my pen\u00adcils by brand, along with oth\u00ader sup\u00adplies) to get a sharp\u00aden\u00ader and I saw a hefty stack of index cards just sit\u00adting there.<\/p>\n
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For the past cou\u00adple of months, when I\u2019ve sat down to write and faced the infi\u00adnite\u00adly blank screen, the unnerv\u00ading\u00adly white typ\u00ading paper, or the false\u00adly hum\u00adble page of loose\u00adleaf, I\u2019ve been over\u00adwhelmed by the sense of futil\u00adi\u00adty and huge\u00adness of writ\u00ading yet anoth\u00ader (poten\u00adtial\u00adly) big work. So when I saw the index cards, and I thought about how well they\u2019d worked for Nabokov<\/a>, I decid\u00aded this time to give them a try for my own first draft.<\/p>\n Index cards have many advan\u00adtages over the oth\u00ader writ\u00ading meth\u00adods I men\u00adtioned, but let me share a few of my own obser\u00adva\u00adtions about them:<\/p>\n \u2022 When you put one in front of you, its small size (3\u201cx5\u201d) gives you the feel\u00ading, \u201cI can take this lit\u00adtle bas\u00adtard.\u201d<\/em> It\u2019s small, so you can fill it eas\u00adi\u00adly, and the faster you fill them, the faster you devel\u00adop momen\u00adtum. Very quick\u00adly you can have a pile of 25, 50, 100 cards, which feels great and encour\u00adages you to keep going.<\/p>\n \u2022 You can write whole scenes, snatch\u00ades of dia\u00adlogue, smells, inter\u00adnal mono\u00adlogues, descrip\u00adtions of places\u2014anything you want\u2014on each card, and you can do it all out of order. Work\u00ading non\u00adlin\u00adear\u00adly, I\u2019ve noticed, frees up so much more mate\u00adr\u00adi\u00adal in you because you don\u2019t feel like you have to have the next scene, and the next, and the next all lined up ahead of time. You just start writ\u00ading about what you\u2019ve got, shuf\u00adfle up the cards, and when you sit down again, write what you\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n