The lure of a fresh pad of paper

I do most of my writing directly on the computer because it’s a lot faster than trying to write stuff out by hand, and when I’m a few thousand words into something and suddenly decide that the beginning is all wrong, it makes it that much easier to go back and fix things. Still, I do love paper and find it very hard to resist a brand new fresh pad of paper or a notebook. It’s like those blank lines are just waiting for me to fill them up with brilliant ideas.

For me, computers don’t lend themselves to outlines, for that only a good old fashioned pen and paper will do. With that in mind I sat down last night with a crisp new pad of paper and some ideas dancing through my head that I wanted to jot down as a very rough outline. I didn’t get too far before I was fighting off sleep and writing things that turned out to be gibberish. I felt like I was back in my overheated Spanish II classroom all over again trying to keep my eyes open while Senora prattled on in a language I couldn’t understand. Just like in Spanish II, I succumbed to sleep and I’ll have to take another stab at that outline on my now not quite clean pad of paper.