Writing and the Duende (or, the pen is mightier than the keyboard)

Another point of contention I have with many authors of the technological age is their reliance on computers as a tool for writing. Personally I prefer writing by hand, as one can not stop to edit, even with all the scratch marks one is forced to forge ahead, to find a flow that doesn't cease, doesn't break, a voice that seems to well up unstoppable from the depths of the soul or the soil under your feet. As opposed to this I hear many computer writers fret over revising and revising one line for hours as they write, and I suppose one could do the same thing on paper (that is the classic and comic example of the writer's process after all), but the non-linear nature of the word-processing medium is not what I'd call conducive to a constant flow of words.

There is a difference in writing that is created in either of these ways. One can tell words that welled up, strung themselves together, the fast, unstoppable train of consciousness unbound by grammatical rules, the desire to be precise when sometimes the emotional torrent has the greater effect. This is comparable to Garcia Lorca's Theory and Play of the Duende:

"So, then, the duende is a force not a labour, a struggle not a thought. I heard an old maestro of the guitar say: ‘The duende is not in the throat: the duende surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet.’ Meaning, it’s not a question of skill, but of a style that’s truly alive: meaning, it’s in the veins: meaning, it’s of the most ancient culture of immediate creation."

While Lorca's excellent (and much recommended) essay focuses primarily on folk music, its premise is applicable to any art: that there is a force behind creation that has to be fought with, channeled, and ultimately allowed to burst forth from the throat, pen, or paintbrush regardless of one's artistic intentions and formal techniques. One struggles to find the right word, the correct phrase to get across a certain meaning, but at times, often, those meanings are not something that can be rationalized into precise thoughts. Instead there is the emotional and almost daemonic chaos of our souls demanding expression in whatever way it can get out, and the use of a medium that does not stand in the way of this process, as computer keyboards do in being discrete and removed from the direct creative process, is imperative in stepping out of one's own way to actually create.