Copypaper

 One of the first things I learned about newspapers was that there was such a thing as copypaper. It was the cheapest paper imaginable: newsprint cut to letter size. You threaded the stuff into a manual typewriter and blazed away.

If you saw that you were writing something that couldn’t possibly be edited, you ripped it out and tossed it. You started again. It was only copypaper.

I was 14 and had been hired to take scores from high school football games over the phone. I was to write three-paragraph stories — three grafs — by formula. I might write 25 a night. The paper tried to include items on all the games in the region. I was to understand that the value of the work was in its accuracy and completeness— the more games I could take before deadline the better. People wanted to know that the lowly Tigers in a small town 100 miles to the south had beaten a top-rated team. That’s why people were reading. They were not interested in my immortal prose.

So I learned to get something down on paper quickly. My copy went to the copydesk. The work of the editors made it more valuable, and the work of the compositors and printers made it more valuable still. Proof came back to the newsroom on a higher grade of paper.

Somewhere in there is a lesson about first drafts. The first job is to get it down and then let the editing process, whatever it is, work. You can’t edit a plank page.

I’ve heard of people who work on fine paper in leatherbound notebooks, and if that works for them that’s a fine way to work. I still use cheap stuff — the closest thing to copypaper I can find.