Writers on the Train

I still do hardcopy and red pen and then change the electronic version of manuscripts I write, or people ask me to edit. There is something very helpful being able to lay pages out, physically flip through, free form notes all over them, etc.

On the train this week, there was a guy using a pen to write notes in a paper notebook. A very fancy one with hard cover and everything. We got talking a bit, and he does "design" work for a consulting agency. It was a bit vague, but I sorted out he usually does user interface, but also environmental aesthetics and workflow processes as part of million or multi-million dollar projects. Our common ground was that nothing has replaced the sensation of putting pen to paper for writing, thinking, recording and abstracting, even if we never go back and look again more than once, if at all.

I have a bookcase full of paper notebooks of daily tasks and notes, and gaming and fiction notes. Years worth of ideas, some brilliant, some crap, most of them simply mental exercise not worth much.  I got my first Google docs capable phone in 2012 and my use of paper plummeted from about one notebook per month to about one per year.  C'est la vie and all that :)