The pen is mightier than the key
The pen is mightier than the key
A short one on my process for writing and using the pen to get to the computer
Yesterday I was traveling. I was up from 06:00 to arrive with a group of interesting strangers at a house in Tenerife at 18:00. I made time to write in the airport and on the plane, I wrote a couple thousand words and many a sentence, but none of it was any good. So I missed publishing something yesterday. Boo me. The problem was, everything I wrote was boring or meaningless, I couldn’t use any of it as a good answer the ‘so what?’.
Now I’m writing from a beautiful garden under the sun, it’s a perfect temperature, the surroundings are quiet without being silent, and there’s cocktails and chickens and a couple of friendly woofas (dogs). I feel like I should be inspired, but I’m not.
For me, and from what I understood reading ‘daily rituals’ and ‘keep going’ this is okay. Inspiration hits when it wants to hit and you can’t force it, you can just put yourself into good circumstances, but you can still be creative (as a verb) without inspiration, lots of people do, you just have to do the work and find a process that works for you.
I’ve tried many processes and tricks and schedules to try and write more and to try and write better, but very little has stuck. What I do do, what I should always come back to though is I start with pen on paper free writing.
I start almost all my writing time with a jounral-y type exercise where I reflect on the last few days and on how I’m feeling. Once all of that is out of the way and written down, I keep the pen on the paper and talk write to myself on the pag, asking what I want to write about.
Normally I get something, I scribble out a page or a half before I need the internet to reference or research something, at which point I migrate over to the computer. The idea has formed, I know what I want to write about, and I’m happy with it so I can keep the momentum going.
Part of the reason for missing yesterday’s post was, that I didn’t start on the page. I went straight to typing on the keys in the airport. Pen on paper brings out something more. It’s a slower medium and more honest. Whether I’m writing a post like this or something technical or more serious, I start the same way.
What I typed yesterday was fine, but it was missing a base, it was missing heart, it was missing intention. Yesterday I was very frustrated with myself for missing it, for not being able to write something good, and then sitting in the garden worrying about inspiration this morning I realised all of this. That for me at least, the pen is far mightier than the keys.
