Cutting and pasties

The primary reason I began this blog last summer was to get into the writing mode so that I wouldn't get writer's block during my dissertation. The minute I stopped writing the blog when school started, I got writer's block. I am not into easy explanations, but there seems to be a correlation there. So maybe if I write here I will be able to finish this terrible chapter that I am cutting and pasting together.

As for cutting and pasting: some call it the greatest benefit of the word processor. I call it the greatest curse of the word processor. I write much better from beginning to end, and cutting and pasting is too tempting for my lazy bones. As a result, my papers often look brilliant for four pages until I have an abrupt transition into an unrelated subject. The subject is actually related, but only to the mind formed by the cut-and-paste mentality. So forget about Google making us dumber--I think the cut-and-paste made us dumb back in the late 80s.

Cut and paste has also made new historicism popular, principally because it requires you to read a random bit of historical minutaeuaie (sic) and apply it to a beautifully-wrought coherent piece of art. Sometimes the transitions work, sometimes they don't. And now my dissertation has to include new historicism, which makes the temptation to cut and paste that much greater. And since I don't give in to temptation in other aspects of my life, all of my sinful energy is directed towards the word processor.

Some people call this the "shuffle mode" of living, but they are still not going back far enough (and I still prefer the album anyway) to the roots of our scattered brains. Should I write a new historicist book about cutting and pasting and apply it to the Jean Toomer cut and pasted novel Cane? Cane is great, by the way.