Since I spent much of today getting ready for the Chastain Park Arts Festival, I think I’ll take the easy way out and use today’s NaBloPoMo prompt:
When you are writing, do you prefer to use a pen or a computer?
It depends, of course. For blogging, of course, I’m going to use the computer because to do otherwise defeats the purpose. Blogging is meant to be shared, and for that electronically is the way to go. Anything I write that is work-related also is done on the computer, usually because it’s going to be printed out or posted on the web at some point.
If it’s something private, I have a handwritten journal for that. I haven’t been using it very much recently, but if I just need to get something out of my system and I don’t want to share it, it gets handwritten. I used my handwritten journals A LOT during my first marriage. I guarded that group of journals closely and kept them from everyone’s eyes but mine. I still have them in a box in the closet, but I hope that if I die before I deal with them, that someone trusted will go find that box and burn them unread. There is a lot of anger, frustration, and pain in those pages that needs to pass from this earth when I do.
Oddly enough, I can’t do to-do/task lists on the computer. I’ve tried and it just doesn’t work. I have a composition notebook that serves as my to-do book, where I just dump everything I need to do and cross it off when done. When I finish a page, I clip it to the other finished pages. If I get too many half-finished pages, I rewrite and consolidate. This lets me throw out stuff that just isn’t going to get done as well. The notebook is not kept in any particular order; I just write down what needs doing when I think of it. When I need to decide what to do next, I pull out the notebook & see what catches my attention, and do that.
Basically, it’s a mix. Some things are better with pen, some with a computer, and some it just doesn’t matter as long as I write it.