Would you like paper or plastic?
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Strugglingwriter recently mentioned his writing muse was out clubbing and didn’t take her cell phone with her. After leaving her umpteen voice mail messages, he eventually wrangled that chick back into line by writing the old fashioned way — with pen and paper.
Wow. Remember those days? I’m pretty sure those days lasted throughout college for me. I know we had a computer lab on campus but no one had a laptop computer. And I was much, much too lazy to haul it over to the lab to write on a computer.
That’s what my electric typewriter — complete with built-in correction tape, thank you very much — was for. And I gave that typewriter a good workout while I was in college. I had a sideline business of transcribing handwritten term papers to glorious type. Funny, I don’t even remember what I charged. It couldn’t have been that much, right? What college student has much disposable income? Maybe it was $5 per paper.
Regardless, the only computer I worked on in college was housed at The State News. I was a cub reporter (nods head and smiles with pride.) I still had to take notes while interviewing people, but that was the first time I actually composed a story solely on a computer.
Hands down I prefer writing via keyboard. It’s so much easier. It’s like driving on the autobahn. You can fly through as fast as you want unobstructed by Sunday drivers and orange construction cones. (Hey all you non-US residents: What color are the construction cones on your highways and byways? Ours are always orange and white. Is that worldwide?)
On the computer my missives are so orderly, so clean and clear. It’s an anal retentive’s dream. And I just love cutting and pasting. Love that feature!
Unfortunately, I do not own a laptop computer. Man if I came into a windfall of money I’d buy a laptop. And I think I’d get a hot pink one, like bluesleepy. Just got back from Dell’s website, I’d definitely go passion purple. (Hope preciousss is treating you well, blue.)
But back to reality. My portable computer is a notebook and pen coupled with the stuff stored in my brain. I really wish I could download Wikipedia into my noggin. That would be cool.
Speaking of misspelled words, I have a dictionary in the bookcase near the computer. I never open it. When I see a word underlined in red I right-click and choose the correct spelling. In the event that the word is not in Microsoft Word’s dictionary, I google it and use the online dictionary. And even then I just copy and paste it.
My mind is too full of valuable information to maintain something so mundane as correctly spelled words. However I do make a cursory effort to figure out where I went wrong with the spelling. But much as I prefer computer time, it’s not always available. And that is when I have to turn to the many notebooks scattered about this house.
Once in a while, I do enjoy filling a page and working on making my handwriting legible, but my passion lies with the computer. How about you — are you a fan of the moleskine or is it Microsoft Word all the way?
I’m first? Woo hoo!
I’ve got notebooks full of notes on all sorts of things all over. I keep one on my night table for those things that keep running through my head that I need to do the next day that are keeping me up. Sometimes I’ll even get a blog post idea and jot down the gist of it, sometimes I’ll practically write the whole thing, it depends.
Yes you are!
I keep meaning to store a notebook on the nightstand but haven’t done it. I have so many crazy dreams that I always remember each morning and it would be fun to note them so I can get back to it later.
But I haven’t done that. I guess I need to get on that.
If I am writing out a post for my blog, I always type it (though, I may write up a few ideas or dialogue I’m afraid I’ll forget). But last night, I decided to attempt a poem prompt from another blog. Without even thinking, I grabbed my notebook and left the computer. If I am composing something like that, or working on a story/novel, I find it difficult to work at the computer. For some reason, that just flows from my brain better when I am looking down at paper and pen.
As a side-note, I must say thanks Cardiogirl, for providing me with the opportunity for writing pen and paper letters. I have enjoyed the foray back into snail mail immensely. There’s nothing that beats returning from the mailbox with a CG letter in hand. Sadly, I left my pile of mail (from my absence) sitting on the porch table for quite a few days before I tackled it, but I would have jumped in quicker if I had remembered that you promised me a letter on my return.
Wow, Wendy, I’m really surprised to hear you prefer composing on paper. I just feel like I can’t edit and hone like I want to. When I type I constantly re-read what I wrote and tweak different things.
To do that on paper makes for a messy sheet.
It is a lot of fun sending actual letters back and forth. It’s so rare to get real mail, that’s what I call it, instead of bills and junk mail. I actually ask my husband each weekend, “Did we get any real mail?”
Usually the answer is no.
Yes (pumps fist in the air) I was able to make good on my promise!
It’s kind of a combo for me. When I’m feeling all dramatic and prose-worthy, I’m all about the leather bound journal. If I’ve got an idea for a post, I quick grab the post-its and stick that bad boy by the computer.
If I have a choice–I’ll take the computer, but not the laptop. I don’t get the same gratification from the laptop’s key sounds–they’re just sort of muffled. I like the little click-clicky sounds from my desktop–it’s sort of like the old typewriter and I feel all “writery”. Does that make sense? It’s a whole 6-sense thing with writing (I know there’s only 5, bear with me): Seeing the story, touching the keyboard, smelling my inspiration coffee, taste–uh, I’m not licking the computer, I’ll go with the coffee again, hearing the little clicks from my keyboard, and #6 the artist side of expressing myself.
And yes, I use a real honest-to-goodness dictionary every single day. Mine is dog-eared and “writery”. I love that new word–I’m gonna use it all day.
Leather bound for you, eh Lin? You’ve experienced life on a laptop? I haven’t, ever actually, and would take muffled clicking any day of the week.
I like the idea of being writery. I’m going to try to use it today as well.
It depends for me as well. These days, I seem to be more chained to a computer at work than ever before, so my recreational computer time has shrunken teeny tiny. My fingers don’t seem to want to do the typing thing when I am finally home and off the clock, so if I write at all, it is in my little black notebook. Sometimes, I can dash off a post or a half on the keyboard without lapsing into finger paralysis, so my blog gets an occasional update and my blogging friends get a comment or two.
I imagine if I had a job — and one that required computer work all day — I would feel the same way. It just gets old staring at a monitor after a while. I do feel that way when my kids are at school. That’s when I have large chunks of time to indulge my computer use.
And surprisingly I don’t use it as much when I have full access. That’s weird, but it’s how it is.
Of course I don’t use that time writing on paper either.
I’ve tried over and over again to keep notes about the books I read in a journal. I do it for awhile, then go back to my old ways…which is winging it when I go to write my reviews. I love that online thesaurus and dictionary! Makes me sound writery!
I too am in love with the online information available. I’m quite certain I never use a book at the computer with one exception. I do use the Book of Questions on Fridays. But if that were online I’d copy and paste that as well.
Cool pic of your handwriting. I like it! Other people’s handwriting, especially female, always looks so much more artistic to me than my own. Mine is like the scribblings of a 5 year old. My problem is my brain works faster than my writing hand.
Anyhow, I prefer to write fiction on the computer, but I have such poor self control when it comes to the computer that I have to do it by hand. So sad.
Thanks sw! I feel the same way, I usually enjoy other people’s handwriting more than my own. But I am surprised at how mine has changed over the years. Maybe one day I’ll post handwriting from my freshman year of high school compared to today.
Oh! That would be fun to post the old one and then to rewrite it today to get a fair comparison. You can look for the post in the future!
Laptop all the way – I love the freedom of it. My hand hurts if I have to write too long. And I can’t write fast enough before I forget what my next thought was. Thank God I taught myself to type in high school. What a nerd. That’s what I did one summer – all on my own. Didn’t want to waste the class time on learning how to type in school – wanted to use it for another English class or some such thing. We had this tiny little Apple at home which had the lamest Word Processor which is what I taught myself on. When I went off to college I had one of those electric typewriters too! I loved that thing. Correction tape always ran out on me though. Shows that I didn’t teach myself to type quite as well as I thought!
My hand hurts as well after I write for a while. I swear I don’t remember my hand hurting back in college when I was taking notes all day.
Hmm, I don’t remember how I learned to type. I think I had a class in junior high. Did you type “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” over and over?”
As you probably know, that’s the sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet. If I were more motivated I would try to come up with a different sentence that uses every letter.
I should challenge poopiebitch with that. She’s awesome with anagrams.
Handwritten.
Handwritten.
You mean like what I do with checks? Occasionally? The last time I wrote a check was for the sprinkler repair, and before that…. I dunno.
I used to write, write, write. But now I try to do it and my hand cramps and my brain is frustrated. Though when I’m writing a story it does come out better because there’s less pressure from the blank electronic page, and I plan it out better. But I get tired of writing long before I get to the end of my imagination.
I used to have beautiful handwriting, too, but since college it looks like sanscrit. After having to be so fast for so long, I never have had any use for pretty again.
Although I did find that trying to type notes is too annoying to contemplate. If you’re typing you can’t draw arrows & graphs and margin stuff, and I miss things when I get distracted by the misspelling or grammar warnings.
Man, I can’t tell you the last time I wrote a check. Seriously. Online banking and the ATM card has all but eliminated that.
I will admit graphs and circles and arrows just don’t translate to the computer.
I started a hand-written diary when I was 13yo, and I filled many notebooks. When I finally decided to write in a computer, I would need to write by hand first, and then retype into the computer. It took a long time, but now I finally feel comfortable composing with a keyboard.
But when I think about how I used to write, compared with how I write today, I was pretty amazing. I could compose quite a bit in my head and then just jot it down as if transcribing notes.
Now, I sure do copy / paste a lot. I spend a lot of time reordering sentences, such as when I absentmindedly write in passive voice (an engineering habit — “The hotplate was measured prior to use”). I might even start in the middle or end of a blog post and fill in around it.
I’d love to run a special computer program to capture how I fill in a page of text. I imagine it would be quite bizarre to watch it play back.
DUH (smacking herself on the forehead) So that’s what the passive voice is and why I use it so much…lol. At best I had a vague idea what it was but for some reason your brief explanation suddenly made it clear to me!! Thank you SPG and I’m sure all of my future legal employers will be extrememly happy you got this concept through my thick skull :)
@SPG I have very vague memories of doing that — writing by hand and then typing it out on the computer. Obviously that was a lot of work. I suppose it’s similar, however, to going from writing by hand to composing on a typewriter.
I know I never mastered that.
That would be interesting to see how you compose on the computer.
@Buf (laughs) I swear that is an engineering thing. By the way, I had a dream last night that I met you where you worked. Your desk was right next to Natural’s and Kathy’s desk was across the aisle from Natural’s. Kathy’s desk faced the window, too.
I remember being so thrilled to finally meet you and of course I was tongue tied. But it was still fun.
@ CG – lol…It must be the engineering, it’s always the engineering thing (or so I like to believe).
Your dream sounds fun. I don’t know if Nat and Kathy could handle having their desks that close to mine, since mine is invariably piled under with stuff. But it would be fun. I can just imagine the bizarre conversations we would get into…lol No need to be tongue-tied in front of me…I’m probably just as uncomfortable as you are but once one of us actually says something I’m sure we would get appropriately silly pretty quick…lol (just realizing that I use lol way too much…as well as the 3 dot thing, need to come up with a new style!)
Btw, if you don’t mind sharing what did I look like in your dream? I’m always curious what type of mental images people develop of someone they haven’t met in real life.
Yes ma’am, it is The Engineering Thing. I believe that should become a gene, if you will, and that it should be applied to the appropriate people. The ones, obviously, who carry The Engineering Thing.
Of course there are probably recessive traits with The Engineering Thing which are the result of spliced genes. But enough about that.
In my dream we were able to chat pretty well but you led the conversation. We were back at my old company and the desks were rearranged but the file cabinets were right where they used to be.
For some reason you were showing me something in the file cabinets. You had mostly brown hair with some blond highlights, but I swear you’ve told me you have mostly blond hair. Go figure.
I do remember thinking you had an average BMI since you have mentioned here that yours is higher than you’d like and that you are working on that. You were dressed in business casual — khaki dockers and a golf shirt, I think — and your hair was shoulder length and down. No ponytail for you.
You were also my height since we were able to look each other in the eye. Not surprisingly, Natural and Kathy looked like the pictures they have posted on their sites, although Natural had 0prah’s hair style since that’s one of the last pictures I saw of her on her site.
Thanks for indulging my curiosity. Actually you’re not too far off. I highlight my hair to keep in blond but the natural color is getting more and more brown (with grays/white) as I get older. I’m just too pale for darker hair. Lengthwise, it’s not quite shoulder length. I think you are actually a little taller than me, I’m 5’5″. Clotheswise, at work I dress refinery business casual which allows for jeans daily!!! So except during summer, I’m normally in jeans, polo/golf type shirt and tennis shoes (aka sneakers out here). I love that you saw me as normal BMI!!! Now if I can just start to see that myself, I could make it happen!
Btw, I’m considering posting a pick but can’t decide if I’m brave enough! Wouldn’t want to shatter people’s mental images of me..lol
You are a brave woman, Buf. I don’t believe there will ever be a full face picture of me on this here site. But it would be fun to see what you actually look like.
I’m on the fence, part of me likes not knowing what you look like but another part of me is curious.
I’m right there on the fence with you!
Um, fan of the moleskin, all the way, baby. I cannot compose at the terminal, save for short emails and comments and the like.
I have always written papers and letters out by hand before typing them (I know, it seems like double the workload, but I just cannot think all that clearly when the buzz of the computer is echoing in my ears). I even wrote my master’s thesis (all 45 pages of it) out on paper and then typed that mofo up (and that was just this past march!).
Of course, I get cramps that extend all the way up my arms and last for a few days after an exercise like that, and must forgo strength training for my arms till the pain subsides, but something about writing things out the old-fashioned way gives me great satisfaction.
I sometimes imagine that someday my great-great-grandchildren will find my journals and something about reading someone else’s handwriting makes it intensely more personal to read, I think.
One of these days I’m fairly certain I will develop some form of arthritis from overuse of my phalanges, but I persist in my archaic ways. :)
I’m totally with you Soonerchick regarding the personal nature of handwritten text. It’s just not the same reading a journal that’s typed. That’s what blogs are for, right?
Whenever I consider my kids or grandkids reading my handwritten journals I always imagine they’ll think I was an air head because there wasn’t nothing deep and philosophical about what I wrote.
p.s. For some reason your comment went to my spam filter. I don’t know why that is since none of your other comments have gone there. I need to give Akismet a stern talking to.
I have to say that I was once just like that – paper all over the place. I’m finally getting a handle on it. After clearing out literally THOUSANDS of bits and pieces of paper floating/scattered/hiding/stuffed in boxes and drawers and on appliances and walls prior to my last move, I decided enough was enough. I mean, I was finding grocery and to-do lists that were 5 and 10 years old! I know this because I have always had the compunction to write the date on everything – yeah. I put the date on the grocery list.
I switched to using Ky’s chalkboard (there’s a “clean the desk” to-do on there from April 1st) – and discovered how groovy-cool it is to have tiled kitchen walls to write on with dry-erase pens. I only ever use paper and pen regularly when I visit Ruby – and it’s HER paper and HER pen. I now own ONE notebook. It’s in the Prissy-Van. I sometimes write in it. I have yet to re-read anything that I’ve written there.
Ky, now, has turned into the old me: She is forever buying yet another new notebook: one for each novel, one for song lyrics, one for thoughts, one for ideas, one for future plans, one for school homework assignments (blank- HA!), it goes on and on and on…
Oh that is so completely awesome Les! Noting the date on every handwritten scrap of paper! I love that and will begin doing that immediately.
That’s wild that you use Ruby’s stuff when in Rome. Does she have a pen with a nice heft? I have to have the right pen to get my literary mojo on. The wrong pen really jacks up my creativity.
I have to agree with Ky’s method. I like the idea of one notebook being used solely for one topic. It’s disjointed if you keep jumping around projects in the same notebook.
Yeah, but there’s paper ALL. OVER. THE. PLACE. And always always always… “I need another music notebook, Mom…” “Is it full?” “No. I can’t find it.”
i’m like lin, combo here. last night i tried to write my post on the computer, but could not do it. i had to use a pen and piece of paper. i only free style write on FB – most everything else i start writing in a notebook then i transfer my thoughts to a word processor.
i keep a little notebook in my bag for jotting, and to me, NOTHING beats a pencil and a piece of paper. i don’t have to wait for paper to boot up, turn on, or do anything. it’s always waiting for me and when the power goes out, so do all my gadgets.
not bad handwriting up there kiddo!
Ugh, I had to write one post with pen and paper last year while we were visiting the in-laws and then used their computer to post. It was not cool, I did not enjoy it.
Oy, you actually use a PENCIL? Not a pen? I hate writing in pencil and will not do it. I won’t, I tell you.
Thanks! I like my handwriting better now that I’m older and it has evolved. I think it looks like an adult’s handwriting rather than large and loopy like a teenager.
Hola Cardio,
Before I answer I must preface with my computer did something really janky just now. I posted my whole message and the laptop disappeared it. Not that happy with Compaq6910p.
Anywho, I will start over and apologize if this is a dup.
So I am way computer. I don’t handwrite anything besides my personal journal. And ever since I went keyboard based my handwriting is terrible. Most times I can’t even understand it. This presents a problem because I like going back every now and again to read my journal to see what I was feeling or doing at a particular time. At times it can be eye opening.
In any event whenever I stumble across some additional funds I would like to purchase the Apple Macbook Pro because it’s hella sleek and has tons of functionality.
Oh side note you have decent handwritting I could actually read it without stumbling :-D
For some reason, Faith, your first comment went into my spam folder which is weird since you left the same link to Apple in both comments. Why wouldn’t it accept the first one but would accept the second?
And it usually accepts one link with no problem. When there are two or more links that’s when it throws it into spam. Strange.
I have to admit I also hand write my personal journal. I think it’s just more portable and I usually write while my kids are on the computer hence it becomes necessity if I want to write.
Thanks! I often wonder if other people can read what I write, especially when I’m in a hurry.
Oh No! I just caught myself whistling “The Cat Came Back”!! Stop me before I whistle again!!!
I have never heard that song so I Youtubed it and I see it is a classic Candian cartoon. How interesting.
And since I listened yesterday I cannot remember how it went. Too bad I can’t sit next to you and listen to you warble it.
Definitely a computer woman here!! Laptap, desktop, cell phone, whatever, it’s definitely better than handwriting. Because NJ has this goofy policy of limiting the number of test takers that can use a laptop to only 1000 people, I had to handwrite the essays for the NJ portion of the bar exam (7 essays in a total of 5 hours or so). It was awful. My hand hurt until Saturday morning. What makes it even worse is that the only thing I write in cursive is my signature, otherwise it’s all printing which seems to take longer than cursive. If I could have typed my answers, they would have been much easier to read, better organized and better in every other sense of the word.
I’m like you in that I cannot stand the cross-outs, inserted words, etc on written documents. When you use a computer, you can fix everything as you go and edit at will!
Despite my preference for electronic forms of writing, I love notebooks and journals. I always want to buy more and I have even used a fifth of the ones I currently have. I plan to use some of them for the non-dominant hand writing exercise I mentioned earlier….of course I’ve been saying this for about 4 years now. ;)
Oh that would bite it hard if you were not one of the chosen thousand, which you obviously were.
Hey do you have that cool all caps graph paper writing? I love that kind of writing but cannot achieve it. And if you do have that cool handwriting, will you please post something at your site showing it off.
Just a quick sentence like, “I’m posting this to get Cardiogirl off my back.” That would work.
And it would be fun to post something written with my left hand. Heads up, it will look like a three-year-old’s chicken scratch.
Actually, practicing that all caps drafting writing is why I no longer write in cursive. I took a drafting class in high school and we were still doing it all by hand no CAD yet. So to practice that style of print, I started taking all my notes in it. Now I no longer print in all CAPS but i will see what I can still do. I will post a sample of both print styles as well as my 5th grade level of cursive writing…lol
For what it’s worth there’s a handwriting sample up on my blog.
I do love your willingness to indulge my requests and I loved the sample! Thanks a million!