“Sometimes, I just want to get rid of all the technology and sit down in a quiet space with a pen and paper,” she says. “There are so many apps out there and I feel like no one app gives me everything that I need. I’ve tried and really given them a go, doing those to-do lists of having your priorities or brain storming using lots of different apps … [but] when I get a pen and paper, or when I’m using my old-fashioned diary and pen, it just feels more flexible to me. I can always pull it out. I can focus.”
Angela Ceberano is anything but a technophobe. A digital native with a strong social-media presence, she splits her time between traditional and new media, and between Australia and San Francisco. For certain tasks, she just prefers the simplicity, flexibility and tactility of the page. But instead of spreadsheets and fancy smartphone apps, the Melbourne, Australia-based founder of public relations firm Flourish PR, uses notepads, an old-fashioned diary, coloured pens and a stack of magazines.
~ Alison Birrane, from Why paper is the real ‘killer app’
Photo of Moleskine Notebook by extrasist0le
Rachel has been telling you the same thing!
Laughing. True. With colored pencils in both of her hands.
Paper and a fountain pen… my time alone with my thoughts.
Fountain pen…Hmmmmm. Have so tried that and I can’t get there, and so wished I could. Good for you Ray.
I was introduced to nice pens in 1996 and have amassed quite a collection. I call it jewelry you can write with. It freaks kids out because most have no idea what it is. Unless I need to press through several copies, all I use is a fountain pen.
Smiling. Ray the fountain pen collector. I can see this…
The pen..mightier than the keyboard ?
Hmmmmm, for me, not sure I would go that far… 🙂
Girlfriend is singin’ my song!!
Oh, I can see this. Do you “write” your first drafts by hand or on PC?
On a PC, BUT I still take all my interview notes by hand (rather than recording) and I do a lot of thinking and formulating ideas as I’m writing and talking to the source. Oftentimes the person will say something and I’ll think, ‘There’s my close!’ Or ‘I know exactly how I can set that up as the intro….’ There’s something about the act of putting pen to paper that’s important to my creative process…
Terrific. Thanks for sharing Lori.
My pleasure. And what about you, DK? How do you formulate the many fabulous posts we all know and love?
Smiling. 95/5, PC v Paper. Brainstorming @ work – 40 / 60
I wonder if using pen and paper connects us to the past and our curious and imaginative inner child…. and if the future generation will not have that association or inclination … xo
Holy Cow. That’s deep Val. I’m still twisting thinking about that.
Paper, perfectly sharpened pencils and favorite felt-tip pens.
No automatic pencils!
felt-tip. that figures.
What is wrong with felt-tip ?
Absolutely nothing.
😛
Yes I agree. Although I use a PC or laptop 95% of the time for my work and leisure writing, sometimes I just pick up a pen and notebook.
Denzil, I’m in the same 95% place you are, and I lap up the 5% experience with joy.
I love this….pens, papers, inks, watercolors – anything I can feel and touch and I’m in my happy place. My darling husband keeps trying to convince me of the beauty of iCal. NEVER! I love to see it, write it, draw it.
Smiling. Based on the emotion in this comment, I can see you are a lover of paper. Your energy reminds me of the “octane” in this quote:
Dylan Thomas is that rare thing, a poet who has it in him to allow us, particularly those of us who are coming to poetry for the first time, to believe that poetry might not only be vital in itself but also of some value to us in our day-to-day lives. It’s no accident, surely, that Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night” is a poem which is read at two out of every three funerals. We respond to the sense in that poem, as in so many others, that the verse engine is so turbocharged and the fuel of such high octane that there’s a distinct likelihood of the equivalent of vertical liftoff. Dylan Thomas’s poems allow us to believe that we may be transported, and that belief is itself transporting.
~ Paul Muldoon, Introduction to “The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas” (New Directions, 2010)
Simple, flexible, easy. It’s meant to be that way. 😬
Hmmm. For you, how much on paper v paper on % basis?
Well, I do a bit of both. I’m writing my next book and I am finding that I am writing more notes than I did for the first. I feel like it is helping me download my thoughts and ideas. How about you? 😀
95/5 the wrong way.
See I don’t think either is the right way. Just what suits you and if it works then why change? My kids are forgetting how to write so it is changing with or without us!! 😬 it’s Australia Day today off for a swim and a beer ha ⛱🇳🇿 Have a great day
Ms. Glass Always Full. Bursting with Light. Happy Holiday!
Thankyou Mr K!! 🙏🏻
ah, yes. the pen. the paper. yes. sensory porn.
Ha! Good one.
This would be me, also. First drafts are all pen to paper. I forgot my phone on my last trip to the movies, and pulled out my little spiral notebook to jot thoughts instead of playing Cookie Jam before the previews–an old, old practice pushed aside by the numbing of games. It was like coming home.
You are something else. How your mind words, a wonder of the world.