The Notebook

Today I am going to the shop for a notepad and a pen, then to Holland Park to write the first entry by hand. Everything I have written for the last ten months has been typed.

So this is the log of what it is actually like to do it by hand.

The Build Up

This did not start with a decision. It started with noticing.

I kept seeing people journaling on little notepads when I was out. I suppose I noticed it because I was doing the same thing myself, on my laptop. Then I started having conversations with them about it. Then a woman I met in September, who keeps paper diaries, told me I was doing it wrong. Handwriting or nothing. She likes watching the pages go yellow.

I did not disagree with her. I just was not ready then.

I am not doing handwriting or nothing though, because I am keeping the digital side. The paper is for the first pass and everything still gets typed up afterwards.

That second half already works. Every entry ends up as a plain text file in the same repository that publishes this site, and the folder it sits in decides what happens to it. Some never build into a page at all and stay on this laptop. Some become posts.

Not everything starts as a journal entry either. Some posts I type straight into a draft, with nothing handwritten and nothing in the journal before it. This is just another way in.

flowchart LR
  H[paper<br/>first pass] --> J[_journal<br/>typed up]
  J --> N[never builds<br/>stays on the laptop]
  J --> D[_drafts]
  T[typed straight in] --> D
  D --> P[_posts<br/>published]

Underneath that I have been craving the physical thing for a while. I type all day for work, then type my journal, then type my posts. I used to love writing by hand at school, and somewhere along the way I stopped. I am excited to get back to it.

The Point

I am not doing this because writing by hand rewires your brain. The research there is thinner than the headlines suggest and none of this rests on it.

I am doing it because the journaling itself has already done something. Nine months of typed entries showed me patterns in how I behave that I would not have noticed otherwise, and I only saw them because they were sitting written down where I could read them back. The reflecting has been good for me.

So the writing works. I am ready to take it further, and what I do not know is whether the pen changes anything. That is what this log is for.

The Kit

I spent an afternoon finding it.

There is an art shop in Kensington called Cass Art that I always walk past and always thought looked good, and today I had a reason to go in. I found a notebook almost straight away and picked it up because of how smooth the cover was, then saw £15.50 on the front. Then I read the label, which said recycled ivory paper, soft touch cover, 100% vegan, FSC certified and handmade in Italy.

I put it back. I wanted to see Tokyo House down the road first, because I like Japanese products and thought I might do better.

Their notepads were no good. Their pens were another thing entirely, and I was in there for half an hour working through every one of them. I came out with a plastic fountain pen marked made in Japan, for £7.99. I have always liked fountain pens and being left handed has always ruled them out, because my hand drags straight through the wet ink. This one does not smudge, and the colour comes up properly on the page.

Then I walked back to Cass Art for the notebook, because I had not stopped thinking about that cover. The pair came to £23.49.

The Log

One entry at a time, with whatever I noticed that day.

16 September, Holland Park

My hand hurt, and it came on faster than I expected.

The reason is that I was trying to write too fast. I type quickly and I brought that habit straight to the pen without noticing, so I spent the whole entry racing a page that does not move at that speed.

Why going slower helps

Handwriting is slower than typing, so the hand cannot keep pace with the thought. At a keyboard a sentence can be recorded before it has finished forming. With a pen the thought has to be held while it is written out, and holding it is what turns recording into reflecting.

I want to focus more on what I am writing and learn to slow down. That is next.