writing on a notebook- a forgotten custom

[zippo]

[i obviously wrote this on my notebook first and then copied it onto here]

Going back to writing with a pen on a notebook after years of getting used to typing letters on a computer. it definetly feels like im coming home to an old neighborhood, driving by an old house, mellancholic.

how things have changed for putting thoughts into text. but is it an external influence (technology) as much as it is an internal one (taking the personal decision of not continuing a notebook)? have all writers also gone through this recent change?

anyhow, it calms me that the format may have changed, but the necessity to write has maintained intact. writing on a notebook instead of typing seems so tiring and harder work than it seemed before, back when instead of focusing on the effort physical writing meant, it would open up my mind and provoke deep thinking insetad of tainting it with mellancholly or the "teenage" ambience it has right now.

back when computers were still cold plastic boxes, when the "human-computer" relationship was still developing, and the computer didnt substitute such a large number of human forms, like images, conversation, sound, etc, as it does now. when computers werent used for so many things as they are now, and so they still seemed so unconnected to us.

but now, weve learned to identify with them and "work" more with them. theyre not as distant as they were before. now the sound of fingers tapping the keys doesnts distract me from my thoughts, but rather inspires me when i hear their repeated clacking, a new form of rush. ive overcome the distance that once separated us and introduced the computer as an extremity of my own self, working with it and it working with me.

so suddenly, i felt the urge to go back to a forgotten custom. god knows if its just for today, like as if i were just looking through an old family album, or if it means the return to the old custom for good (most likely while continuning with the computer format). the next few weeks will confirm this for me...

[Matt]

I know how that is. I've been writing in notebooks for years. I've never gotten used to typing things out in a computer or a word processor as I'm coming up with the ideas. It just seems more natural to me to write it out longhanded.

In my composistion class, we are required to write in a journal. Anything at all can be put in this journal; it could be used as a real diary if one wishes. The most asked question in my class was "Do we have to write it out, or can we type it?" I think I was one of five in the class that turned in an actual notebook rather than a stapled bunch of papers.

[Loppfessor]

This thread should be called writing IN a notebook, the title led be to believe it would be about things like "LF + YM 4ever" written on the covers. But anyway I dig what you're saying. I have a couple of old notebooks laying around the house that I used to use in journal capacity. I miss writing in them but honestly at this point my penmanship is so awful that I can hardly read what I wrote the next day. Short of signing my name on credit/debit card receipts I never write anything by hand.

[Matt]

This thread should be called writing IN a notebook, the title led be to believe it would be about things like "LF + YM 4ever" written on the covers.

=VH= RULZ

I <3 MARK!

C U NEXT SUMMER!

[Loppfessor]

^ LOL exactly....in a related matter, have you ever noticed that a large percentage of notebooks are made by blind people? I spent many school hours pondering why that is

[discopants]

I have a general mistrust of typing. Pens and pencils forever! And rubbers and sharpeners and Tip Ex.

[Nuzzolese]

Pen and paper letters and notes and such seem more real than computer typed. They are tangible, you can put them somewhere, keep them, and hide them. Things on a computer never feel permanent or stable. They could vanish or disintegrate. I don't trust computer files, so I print them out and they look cold and devoid of personality. You know how your math teacher told you to show your work? In a written piece you have the scribbles and crossmarks and circles and such that show how you got to where you are, but the printed cut/pasted/deleted polished up computer typed papers look like they sprang from your brain fully formed like Athena or something, and who can relate to that?!

There's nothing like finding old letters and cards unexpectedly when looking through boxes and books and notebooks. I want to keep all of it but sometimes people can misinterpret that, and wonder why you are holding on to things like that, as if it suggests that you are emotionally holding on to the source of them.

And I don't think that's a bad thing either - to emotionally hold on to the past through objects and letters. It doesn't mean you aren't moving on, does it? I could go crazy just recalling all the things I've forgotten after throwing things away.

Are my posts transparent to the fact that I pitifully wish I was Zippo?

[jabumbo]

i have a notebook somewhere in my room (now i want to go home and find it thanks to this thread) with a number of stories i started writing about 6 or 7 years ago.

initially i said i was going to write numerous short stories and i had all the topics laid out and everything. i wrote a couple of them and then stopped doing it for a while. came back a year later, wrote a few more, then crashed on the latest one where i have pages crossed out on top of paragraphs i had already tried to delete.

i do enjoy the raw feeling of that though. seeing where i had crossed out different words and attempted to edit while i wrote (since i never back checked it afterwards).

the odd thing about this all for me is that now that i use blank or quadruled paper for all of my assignments now, i find it hard to use any normal lined paper anymore.

[zippo]

Pen and paper letters and notes and such seem more real than computer typed. They are tangible, you can put them somewhere, keep them, and hide them. Things on a computer never feel permanent or stable. They could vanish or disintegrate. I don't trust computer files, so I print them out and they look cold and devoid of personality. You know how your math teacher told you to show your work? In a written piece you have the scribbles and crossmarks and circles and such that show how you got to where you are, but the printed cut/pasted/deleted polished up computer typed papers look like they sprang from your brain fully formed like Athena or something, and who can relate to that?!

There's nothing like finding old letters and cards unexpectedly when looking through boxes and books and notebooks. I want to keep all of it but sometimes people can misinterpret that, and wonder why you are holding on to things like that, as if it suggests that you are emotionally holding on to the source of them.

And I don't think that's a bad thing either - to emotionally hold on to the past through objects and letters. It doesn't mean you aren't moving on, does it? I could go crazy just recalling all the things I've forgotten after throwing things away.

as i was reading your post all i would do was nod my head, yes, yes, but you know what, i feel that now the internet has had a great deal of influence for personal writing, not only because of the possiblity of sharing it with an actual audience but because of the speed of sharing it and the quick multiplication of it through e-mail, etc. and thats so attractive. its true, yes, its true, this is a cold cold place and it sucks all emotion on the way from our brains to our fingertips, but, as i said, ive developed with it, ive learned to see it as my own extremity. i made it.

but yes, the experience of going back to a word document/e-mail/thread is not as exciting or sensible as going back to a notebook. the memory of having written it is far less detailed and vibrant. but, the lonely world of the notebook is so internal, closed, quiet, secretive, risking to have no potential, while the world of computer writing is so much more open, and because of this has maybe more potential, the various ways it has of facilitating its multiplication encourage the writer to do so. its different, i dont know, im learning to love it, to equal it to the calm, comfortable notebook.

i have a huge folder that i have to renew every year because it ends up ripping apart from the impossible amount of letters and objects i try to stick in it.

nuzz, dont ever leave this place.

[iceygirl]

i have never gotten used to writing on a pc - i still do most everything on read paper and pen/pencil. my husband is trying to get me to transition to trying to write on a computer but i am very resistant. i cant see how editing, etc. would be easier that way. the only advantages i can see are that maybe my hand wouldnt get so tired and also i wouldnt run into the problem of not being able to read my own writing.

[Nuzzolese]

as i was reading your post all i would do was nod my head, yes, yes, but you know what, i feel that now the internet has had a great deal of influence for personal writing, not only because of the possiblity of sharing it with an actual audience but because of the speed of sharing it and the quick multiplication of it through e-mail, etc. and thats so attractive. its true, yes, its true, this is a cold cold place and it sucks all emotion on the way from our brains to our fingertips, but, as i said, ive developed with it, ive learned to see it as my own extremity. i made it.

but yes, the experience of going back to a word document/e-mail/thread is not as exciting or sensible as going back to a notebook. the memory of having written it is far less detailed and vibrant. but, the lonely world of the notebook is so internal, closed, quiet, secretive, risking to have no potential, while the world of computer writing is so much more open, and because of this has maybe more potential, the various ways it has of facilitating its multiplication encourage the writer to do so. its different, i dont know, im learning to love it, to equal it to the calm, comfortable notebook.

i have a huge folder that i have to renew every year because it ends up ripping apart from the impossible amount of letters and objects i try to stick in it.

nuzz, dont ever leave this place.

I know! I mean, about what you're saying about the easy duplication and sharing of things, and the doors opened, the lack of inhibition. With online writing, I'm bolder and less concerned with crafting something lasting. Because a notebook is permanent it feels secure, but in that security is also some reservation, an awareness of the potential permance of something as I am writing it - in a notebook. And reverence impedes risk.

Online, it's ephemeral, it's a gust of a few keystrokes and no one is looking over your shoulder and no one you send it to matters, because they're all just one night stands who can arouse your shameless passion and cater to your fetishes and kinks and your mother will never look them in the eye.

But then, there's the widening possibility that she will...and that's not so bad afterall. The more you write and share, the more it becomes something that really happened instead of a dream tucked away in a drawer. It's like coming out of the closet as someone who writes. I've stretched my writing, taken on more voices, stepped to the edge of my honesty and looked down, and said to myself "what if I just said it?" and "what if life really was like this?"

And people know about it, and maybe their eyes make it real. I used to feel strongly that nothing was real until I wrote about it, or nothing was clear until I put it down in words. Maybe nothing matters unless it's understood.

[abcdefz]

This thread should be called writing IN a notebook, the title led be to believe it would be about things like "LF + YM 4ever" written on the covers.



That's what I was thinking. Girlfriend's name, band logos, etc.

I dig typing. My handwriting's okay, but I can't keep up with my thoughts that way. I taught myself how to type when I was six, and have never been crazy about longhand.

[bigblu89]

I just started taking a class to be a certified softball umpire, and I'm "taking notes" in a class for the first time in about 6 or 7 years.

And even when it's about sports, I realized how much I hate taking notes.

[instigator7022]

actually, i still have a journal that i started in 6th grade, ripped up then forgot a year then restarted in 8th grade.

I just wrote in it yesterday.

[jabumbo]

I just started taking a class to be a certified softball umpire, and I'm "taking notes" in a class for the first time in about 6 or 7 years.

And even when it's about sports, I realized how much I hate taking notes.


you have to take a course to be a softball umpire???


are you kidding me?

[enree erzweglle]

I don't think I've ever kept a journal or a diary. It's never appealed to me.

I keep notes from books that I read. Mostly, it's for technical pieces, although when I'm reading literature, I'll come across something that strikes me and I'll record it into one of those notebooks.

If I'm learning something and it takes several passes to get a concept, I'll use a notebook to paraphrase that and the process that I used to get there. Those books are not journals of thoughts, more of lessons and I do keep the notebooks to ease the burden of learning the more challenging stuff. Often, I do it because I want to take a shortcut to learning the stuff that I figured out a long time ago but have since forgotten. :o

[cosmo105]

i've written in $2 stationery notebooks as diaries ever since i was about 11. i have stacks of them. but then when i turned 17, i stopped. i don't know why. i just...stopped. and i only started again about a year and a half ago. i guess i felt like my life was worth recording again.

looking back, the stuff i wrote as a teen was so embarassing. but that's to be expected.

what's more fun to read are the notebooks that my high school best friend and i passed back and forth. fuck, we were amazing. she had this incredible artistic talent and would draw the most wonderful sketches...and we'd paste together hilarious collages of spice girls biting each others' tits and celebrity heads on chicken bodies with penises. *sigh* and then of course the standard "i <3 ______" and "_____ is so hot!" and such. and song lyrics. but the things we wrote to each other were neat. we'd write letters every day, because we never had the same classes, so we'd catch up with each others' lives that way. then in about junior year, when i stopped writing to myself, we stopped writing to each other, and we drifted apart.

i'm almost at the end of the journal i'm using now. i draw (usually smiling dicks wearing different costumes) in it, write down lyrics in my head, put thoughts into words, remember, let things off my chest. i use it for grocery lists and notes to myself during class of things i want to keep. i'm a pack rat. it's my way of hoarding life.

[bigblu89]

you have to take a course to be a softball umpire???


are you kidding me?

Yup. To do tournaments and shit, yeah.

[discopants]

Pen and paper letters and notes and such seem more real than computer typed. They are tangible, you can put them somewhere, keep them, and hide them. Things on a computer never feel permanent or stable. They could vanish or disintegrate. I don't trust computer files, so I print them out and they look cold and devoid of personality. You know how your math teacher told you to show your work? In a written piece you have the scribbles and crossmarks and circles and such that show how you got to where you are, but the printed cut/pasted/deleted polished up computer typed papers look like they sprang from your brain fully formed like Athena or something, and who can relate to that?!

There's nothing like finding old letters and cards unexpectedly when looking through boxes and books and notebooks. I want to keep all of it but sometimes people can misinterpret that, and wonder why you are holding on to things like that, as if it suggests that you are emotionally holding on to the source of them.

And I don't think that's a bad thing either - to emotionally hold on to the past through objects and letters. ?

Ah, we should discuss the good old days over a pint and a packet of pork scratchings.