#paperful #hidetheeraser

I love paper. I'll admit it. I love smooth sheets of high quality paper. I love thin sheets, thick sheets, narrow lines, dot journals. I have love for yellow legal pads and cheap scraps of paper. It all has a place.

I know that folks have strong feelings about these things. Writing materials are profoundly personal things. I am fascinated by the way that writing tools can be a source of meaning to people. Not to all people of course... My business partner confesses that she hates paper. She has a single scrap of paper that she occasionally jots a reminder on with whatever Bic pen is sitting around. A good childhood friend of mine was full steam ahead, before it was fashionable or easy to do, about digitizing everything and having nothing in physical form. A professorial colleague was most proud of when she rid her office of books by scanning everything she needed. (It should be noted that her husband — also a professor — is an extreme hoarder and acquirer of books, pens, and paper products, so I see here a bit of brand differentiation within an academic couple.) Between the camps advocating digitization and those fetishizing the physical, I will class myself squarely at the extreme edge, in that second camp that delights in the implements of writing and the written word.

The Goldilocks problem

I go back and forth trying to find a journal or paper that is just right. Too small and I don't have enough room to write what I want; too big and it's not portable. Too cheap and it feels like I might as well write on toilet paper. Too expensive and I sleep uneasily thinking about what my wife (not a paper fetishist) would do if she knew that a tiny bit of notepaper cost that much. There's a lot to balance.

I have gone through distinct phases: the period where I had reasonably nice bound notebooks, knock-off Moleskine or Midori or Leuchtturm and the like, usually in the larger sizes (where many brands tend to charge a pretty penny); then I had a period of using the Levenger/Staples Arc/disc systems where you could rearrange pages and have all sorts of nice sections and make custom notebooks of sorts; and then a third major phase involved the very cost-effective use of plain old yellow pads and the ubiquitous manilla folders. Lots of variations along the way, but that covers some 20 years or so of adult worklife.

Most recently, I've been working with Apica notebooks and I think this one might stick for a bit. The problem with legal pads was paper quality; the problem with previous notebooks was high cost; and the problem with the rearrangable books was that they were never quite the right size, too big or too small for the page, and always too bulky in the discs. So there's a lot to like about the CD15 size in particular of Apica. – It is bigger than a standard medium-sized notebook (just a tiny bit, but it matters) and still not so big and oversized as the full 8+ by 11+ or A4 sized ones. It's technically a “semi B5”, at 7” x 10”. – It doesn't have a ton of pages (66 sides more or less), but I kind of like that, as it means enough sheets for, roughly, a month. I can use two page spreads, one per workday, and have room for some extra stuff. I can fill other notebooks with writing and it feels like it takes a while, but it's not like filling a 100+ pages of big paper. I kind of like the turnover and being able to start new notebooks. – They are pretty cheap, under $5 from sites like JetPens. The paper is creamy, not too thick but feels substantial. – The binding feels happy somehow— retro and efficient and just a little absurd in its formality. – I can use a variety of fountain pens and they all seem to love this paper. – There's just enough formatting to be useful but unobtrusive. There are spaces to put dates and custom page numbers. Since I use two page spreads, I tend to number as 2a/2b, 3a/3b, etc. And there are these very small but handy tick marks both every 5 lines vertically and about every cm horizontally that mean you can create boxes and sections on the page pretty easily and cleanly. – And, finally, I like the fact that I can grab them in a ton of colors. So I can have have them color-coded in series. Red ones are for my daily to-do and work records. The pleasant light green is for blog notes and writing. The light blue is the theme color for a particular business venture. I tote around five of them in a stack and that covers what I need to do in different projects during the day: 4 for projects + the red one for keeping track of to-dos, agenda, and schedule. (going by the notion that humans can only hold a limited number of options in mind at once— a number which may be 4, but also may be 6 or 5 but is in any case somewhere around there.) It's like carting around a single thick book which as a book-ish type, is familiar and comfortable.

The whole thing makes me happy as part of my morning writing routine.

As in all things, I will have to see how this plays out over time. It must be noted that the cost per page is a little higher than other notebooks of that standard medium size. And we'll have to see how well the bindings hold up over time and under strain.

#paperful #writingtools #writeas #draftin

I'm very fond of both write.as and draftin. I'm not sure if they are in some sort of Venn relationship or a force dyad or something. There's significant overlap in some features and approaches, then very different things, and a smattering of areas where I wish they could join forces. (I think I'm imagining write.as as the container enveloping draftin, but it doesn't really matter.)

They both share strengths in making the getting words down easy, clean, and enjoyable. Draftin has this focus on version control and collaboration which is its particular strength. Write.as is more robust for the blogging model and the degree of customization with the blog output is in that goldilocks territory of just enough to make it enjoyable but not too much to be overwhelming or distracting. I really love that feature. (It's a solid feature of ghost too, incidentally, but that's yet another set of needs/audiences/workflows and a different answer to the “alternatives to wordpress” question.)

I like both a lot and neither is fully comfortable all the time. And that's ok.

The point is that I know I'm not alone in having a habit of drifting among various platforms and media for writing. There are endless posts out there on the interwebs about choosing writing tools and platforms (and both write.as and draftin make this part of their origin stories to a degree.) I do a lot on paper — typewriters, pencils, pens, etc; I do a lot on the computer — most recently going through an obsidian/zettlr phase, a neovim phase, a typora flirtation, text files in folders, and various other minor flings along the way. Years ago I stashed my dissertation and scholarly notes in evernote. Right now I've fully committed to plaintext and formats like markdown as a functional enough flavor of text.

This feels more and more like the experience I have in my physical workspace. With these past months of working entirely from home (though I did a fair amount of that before), I realize that I am a furniture shifter. I'm one of those re-arrangers who has to move things around periodically in order to feel comfortable. Ostensibly it's about making things more efficient or tidying up — that might be what I would say to someone who asks. But it's really a psychological thing. It's about reasserting control over chaos. When books pile up, it's not enough to put them back. I need a makeover of the book arranging system in some way. Or the computer needs to be moved, the monitors rearranged.

I like that both write.as and draftin (and particularly write.as) give just enough space for rearranging the furniture periodically. There's just enough customization and just enough options and freedom. I think that's a powerful and understated feature. It's more subtle than the kind of addictive UI/UX that is on most apps. But it works for me.

#paperful #fountainpens #3thanks

I have been practicing a fairly simple gratitude exercise for a bit now. Before going to bed you write down 3 things you are thankful for from that day. Nothing complicated; these can be obvious and everyday. In fact it works best when it is things you are prone to overlook. It can be objects or people or attributes or feelings or anything at all. I've found it to be a simple and direct antidote to my tendency and long habits of turning analytic brain inward at every opportunity.

Between a whole lot of doom scrolling over many months and the press of consumering with the holidays, I find myself in reflective mode and looking out for some fairly simple joys. I am also writing a lot, so this morning I find myself appreciative of some specific writing tools.

1. A fountain pen: Pilot Metropolitan Fountain Pen For very cheap (under $30) this thing is fantastic. Anything that makes writing a joy, whether it is work related jotting or extended prose, is fantastic. I feel a bit guilty finding joy in consumer products or “stuff”, but I think what I've come to like so much about this is that I can carry it in my pocket and not feel bad about any potential damage. It's wonderfully smooth when writing, simple and sleek. (It comes in a few different decorations, one of which is here: https://andersonpens.com/pilot-metropolitan-fountain-pen-crocodile/)

2. Yellow writing pads Also fairly cheap and fairly ubiquitous. Don't get me wrong, I love some good paper — Tomoe River or something like that. But I have a workflow that depends almost entirely nowadays on manilla folders and a lot of yellow paper. I tried nice notebooks, I've filled moleskines and the like. But I come back to the cheap stuff.

3. A decent keyboard I held off for years investing in a mechanical keyboard. So foolish. It is the single best computer purchase I have made. Ironically, what made me switch was some typing a bit more on my big beast of a typewriter, the IBM Selectric II. That keyboard is an office symphony compared to the plastic slabs I had been letting myself type on. And while my daskeyboard is no Selectric or IBM M (which I remember banging away on at some point as a kid), it makes me want to sit down at my computer every morning. It just feels fast.

Now that the raspberry pi people have made us a new Commodore 64 my only question is when will someone do this with a good keyboard? I will totally trade my laptop for a keyboard/pi combo that I can tote around the house and plug into the TV.