2014 goal: use some of these notebooks
“You really write?” someone asked me recently. They mimed a pen scribbling in midair, said, “As opposed to” and then began miming typing in midair. It was kind of funny to watch and also made me realize that maybe not a lot of people write with pen and paper, longhand, anymore.
Take this blog post. I’m starting it on my old iPhone (which is more of an iPod touch now since I don’t have it hooked up to a phone account), and I’ll probably finish it on my laptop. (In fact, when my friend did his miming routine, I said, “Sometimes I even” and twiddled my thumbs in the air. So there you go.) There have been times, though, when I’ve started writing something in a notebook that later became a blog post. In the informal writing group that my friend Sugar and I run a the college where we live, most people write in their notepads. Oddly, I write on my laptop in that group, and they’re always surprised at how much I can write in the space of 30 or 40 minutes.
I can type a lot faster than I can write.
Sometimes speed is not what’s called for, though. That’s when, if I’m home, I’ll shut the laptop and pull out my trusty Remington Quiet-Riter, and when I really need to slow it down, I’ll pick up a pen and a notebook.
Right now I’m filling up a spiral notebook like the kind you’d use in class, as well as a Moleskine whose cover looks like an audiocassette. (And if you know what one of those looks like: congratulations, you’re at least as old as I am.) I’m looking forward to finishing those off because for Christmas I got a new set of pocket notebooks, which included this one:
Naturally, once I opened it I had to write this inside:
