Today my writing buddy, Melissa Lenhardt, was editing her novel on hard copy. That’s right, she was using real sheets of paper.
I had almost forgotten what that stuff looked like.
We got to talking and she said it was very helpful to see her story on hard copy rather than a computer screen. It was like seeing in a different light, or venue, and she could find things wrong with the story
she hadn’t seen before.
I have noticed this, too. I don’t know what it is about our brains, but when we read something online compared to a printed sheet, we read it differently. Or perceive it differently, or something.
I don’t know what’s at work here. but I have noticed when I am editing my own story it helps to look at it in these different ways. When I first started writing everything was on paper. We wrote, edited, and read the stories on paper. That has changed. But going Old School to edit your stories somehow gives you a different perspective.
I’m not arguing it’s a better perspective. I often find things cropping up on the computer screen I don’t find on hard copy, and vice versa. But I think, for me at any rate, having that tactile sensation and handling hard copy when editing a story fires up different neurons in the brain. Or whatever it is that gets fired up in the brain. At the very least, because it is a different, we connect, react, and interpret things about it that are themselves different.
It really is like seeing your story in a new light.
I hope this isn’t coming across as one of those “Things were better in the Olden Days” posts. That’s not how I feel. But I have noticed when I look at something written on the computer screen and then hard copy, I perceive it differently. And it’s almost as if the information I glean from both media is itself different in some way and I integrate that into a whole.
Anyway, one thing I have also noticed, and this part never changes, which I think is a good sign. When I do see one of my published stories either in print or online, I always have the same reaction: Satisfaction.
And when you get down to it I guess that’s what we are working toward to begin with. 🙂
Hoover's Corner 
I edit my writing — fiction and non-fiction both — in printed-out form, just like you and Melissa. It does provide a change in perspective, but for me it’s also a hold-over from my pre-computer days — I need a text in my hand to really read it! Maybe you’re too young to have had this experience, but in high school and college I hand printed all my papers in pencil– scribbles, cut and paste, erasures, arrows here and there–and then typed them up later. I wonder if the upcoming generation will feel the need to print out their papers in order to edit them; perhaps they will be totally screen comfortable and not find it helpful.
I think they are used to seeing everything online and working that way, too. That is the direction everything is moving, it seems.