A Compulsion to Write  − 9 March, 2008

Do you know the feeling of needing to write, but not having the tools?  No computer in sight, no pen, and no paper?  We were half an hour early for the movie In Bruges.  Borders Books & Music, across the street, was a natural refuge.  But it wasn't books that I wanted.  I longed to write.  I purchased a pack of three pocket-sized unlined notebooks and a fountain pen. 

Recently, when I have felt like writing but I have had no computer access, I have simply not written.  Today my need to write was so great that I broke away from my dependence on machinery.  I wrote the old fashioned way, with pen and ink.  

Remember how writers wrote before computers?  On typewriters, if not in longhand.  I believe that it is Joyce Carol Oates who still writes on a typewriter.  How amazing.  I will keep my new notebook and pen with me at all times now.  I want to be able to write whenever I need to.

Comments:

intrepideddie (March 11, 2008. 04:52am)

The beat-up old books I write my travel journals in are my prized possessions. Sure, they look like crap and my handwriting is atrocious, but there's just something about flipping through a book and reading over your own writing. Being able to touch it, hold it, see the way your handwriting changes with your mood... just make it more personable and intimate.