On 11 Nov 2012, Chris Lott wrote: > On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 12:52 AM, Anthony Campbell <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > > > Sorry if it is uncharitable, but I still find it difficult to understand > > how it is possible to write extended prose from scratch without making > > numerous corrections, > > The question is *when* (or *if*) those corrections and changes are > being made. Whether writing by hand or with the keyboard, the drafting > stage (or the "at speed" stage, as you put it), doesn't necessarily > involve much in the way of correction or the need to go out of insert > mode in significant ways. If the whole process *stops* at the drafting > stage, then there's a real problem. > > I know I'm not the only writer who finds it makes my work weaker if I > don't allow myself this free drafting stage. If I let myself get > caught up in editing at that most creative and fertile point, my > writing is weaker. > > The odd thing about Vim in this respect is that editors featuring a > "typewriter mode" for drafting have become commonplace...but this is > essentially what Vim is for beginners...once they get into Insert mode > and aren't sure how to get out. >
In spite of what I said previously, I agree with much of this, so I'm prepared to contradict myself to some extent. It is generally best to write first drafts at speed and revise later. The late F.L. Lucas said this in his book _Style_ (still, in my opinion, one of the best discussions of how to write, even though it apppeared 60 years ago), and I'm sure he was right. (But he also cautioned against writing _too_ fast.) I find that I can do this efficiently in Vim in spite of its being modal, and I prefer this to trying to remember complicated key presses as in Emacs. I usually write my first drafts _each day_ with few changes apart from correcting typos, which I'm constitutionally unable to leave untouched. Next day I read what I wrote previously and sometimes make quite large changes. Sometimes I make notes for possible alternatives, distinguishing them from the main text by enclosing them in asterisks. After this process has gone on for some days or weeks I often save this version as a reserve in case I want to go back to it later and then continue adding text and making changes to the current version. What all this amounts to is that Vim is quite usable for quick first drafts, at least for me, without the need to make it fully non-modal. (In fact, I think that might actually slow things down.) But it is useful to have short cuts for actions one does quickly, such as formatting paragraphs and saving files, and this discussion has prompted me to think of further ways of achieving this. -- Anthony Campbell - [email protected] http://www.acampbell.org.uk http://www.reviewbooks.org.uk http://www.skepticviews.org.uk http://www.acupuncturecourse.org.uk http://www.smashwords.com/profile.view/acampbell i -- You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php
