Robert Pinsky | CTRL+Shift: Writing practice at the dawn of the digital era

What are your physical archiving conventions?

The papers—every so often, I'll accumulate enough and shoot them off to Palo Alto. Electronically, I mean...

What role does correspondence play in your revision practice?

Yeah, I have friends. Louise sees what I write. Alan sees what I write. And maybe Gail Mazur. Different times of my life there have been different friends—always somebody around. Jim Olson. Sometimes I email things to Jim.

All answers to this question

How do you back up your files?

I have a Dropbox account and I have a 2 TB amazingly small little white brick— ... that backs up automatically.

All answers to this question

What physical tools do you use for composition?

My favorite kind of paper is very hard to get. I'm forced to use this because it's very hard to get this. I don't like the lines. I get that somehow society doesn't take this very seriously anymore. You can get it white, I don't want it white...I want it yellow.

All answers to this question

What genres do you work in?

Poetry and prose.

All answers to this question

How do you name your files?

I number my drafts DR1, sometimes DR0 if I know it's not going to last long. I've gone up to DR87. I think in some things I've gone up to DR104 in the file menu. ... I have a Dropbox account and I have a 2 TB amazingly small little white brick external hard drive that backs up automatically.

All answers to this question

How did the advent of personal computing and the internet influence your writing practices?

I don't think it changed what I produced, but I think that it was the beginning of a different kind of archival anxiety. There is the archival anxiety about paperwork being preserved.

All answers to this question

How do you 'feel' about your digital files? Do they feel dear to you?

I look at it and I sometimes feel the way I told you I feel about the family photographs. Nobody wants all this. Bishop has a poem about the umbrella that was so hard to make and the leather trousers, how they gave them to the local museum. How can anybody want such things? I'm sure she's thinking about drafts and memorabilia and so forth. It's just another anxiety. I can't say I think about it a lot, but I'm ambivalent when I think about all those megabytes of drafts. And two separate questions are: do I want anyone to look at them, and who could possibly want to look at them? But I don't destroy them and I do, somewhat mechanically, shoot the drafts into drafts. I guess part of the theory is I might want to look. And I suppose every once in many, many months, I do look.

All answers to this question

What role, if any, do other people play in your writing?

I used to write a lot of letters. They used to be a way I would warm up. But I remember when I was working on The Situation of Poetry, I would warm up with a routine where first I'd write a letter or two, maybe three, and that would somehow make me feel I was working. Then, to glide into working on a poem or in that prose project—it was somehow made easier. And, I used to get a lot of letters, and I used to send a lot of letters. I still do once in awhile, but electronic has taken over.

All answers to this question