The Process of Writing — The Old-Fashioned Way

Since we're sort of in the process of "reinventing ourselves" here at our place, I've been giving a lot of thought to my writing.

Within 90 days, I will no longer be a shopkeeper, and instead I will fill much of that "space" with one of my old gigs of being an editor and proofreader. Sometimes I wonder if I am just signing myself up for yet another occupation that is about to become obsolete... at the hands of technology... but so far, I am seeing relatively little evidence that the automated tools really understand the difference between there, their and they're any better than 90% of humans.

You know how it goes: Defective input leads to defective output.

Yes, those are my actual notes. Written by HAND. I basically sketched out and outlined FIVE blog posts in 24 minutes...

But I digress.... as this next phase begins, I will still continue writing... but I really need to be a bit better organized. The upside of the days to come (at least as I am imagining it) will be that I will no longer be trying to write articles in 90-second increments between helping customers and ringing phones.

The Old-Fashioned Writer

In many ways, I am a relic from a time long gone.

That photo above is of my actual notes taken as I did a "brain dump" from 11:33 to 11:57 this morning, waiting for an artist to show up at the gallery for his noon appointment to pick up his art.

That was enough time to hash out the bones and outline FIVE potential posts for here, without spending a whole hell of a lot of time. I really prefer writing my hand rather than speaking into a digital recorder, or typing. Yes, that's an old fashioned fountain pen...

Maybe I need more yellow in my life?

Now, there's no telling whether these posts will all see the light of day, although I have a feeling they will. We'll know, in the next few days...

Analog vs. Digital Note Taking

One of the things I have discovered about taking notes by hand is that when I return to those notes — after an hour, after a week, after a year — I still remember the underlying intent behind my scribbles... and I can turn a handful of words into something reasonably coherent.

When I type notes — or even use a digital recorder — I seem to have almost zero retention.

There's actually some science behind that... hand writing uses the same part of the brain associated with art and creativity, while typing more closely resembles the brain pattern used for repetitive assembly line work, or digging holes.

Turning into ordinary human-speak: You remember your handwriting because it's unique, while typing because any one letter, word or sentence looks precisely like any other.

Or something like that. Anyway, I "re-start" here, where I am now...

Thanks for reading!

What's YOUR writing process? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(As always, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 190405 16:58 PST
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