Every writer I’ve met, read or heard of wrote their entire lives. File folders, notebooks and piles of terrible writing doesn’t only lurk in my office, but in all other writer’s offices as well. I’m a fan of the composition notebook. I asked my students to use it to take notes, do homework in and generally everything we worked on for class. They are typically indestructible…except in the hands of 6th and 7th graders. That’s another story. Legal pads were my favorite and still are my tried and true companions. My husband/publishing agent hooked me on Moleskine notebooks….we’re at that point in our relationship where gifts are more of a chore than anything. Okay, they’re a chore for me. He’s a tech geek, genius, wizard who is more qualified to buy his own gift than I can. He bought an uber table saw, the one that won’t chop your finger off and to prove it they try to dismember a hot dog. He needed the saw, but even that saw was sort of my gift too. He’s building me a new kitchen and ever since I witnessed my grandfather chop the tips of his right ring finger and pinkie off in our driveway, I’ve an unnatural fear of power tools. They crave our blood and flesh. I’m sure of it.

I digress, no surprise. Back to gifts. Hubby has taken to giving me Moleskine notebooks every once in awhile. http://www.moleskine.com/us/ Paper! I’ve always been a paper supporter. In the early days of my Apple IIsi (first not so great husband), I wrote my stories on paper then transcribed them into the computer. This was in the early days of PDA’s and handheld’s. For those of you who postdate me….personal digital device. In his defence, 1st husband tried to get me out of my Day Timer and into a Handspring. I was a Mac gal even then.

My love affair with paper was ingrained. In high school, after I worked a year at McD’s I was tired of being treated like a troglodyte. I traipsed over the parking lot to Colorado Stationers, Inc. It was a Hallmark store, gift shop and office supply store in the days before big box companies took over everything! Ah, surrounded by stationary, typewriter ribbons, Day Timers, Filofaxes and Mont Blanc pens (we carried other pens too).

My love affair with paper was ingrained. In high school, after I worked a year at McD’s I was tired of being treated like a troglodyte. I traipsed over the parking lot to Colorado Stationers, Inc. It was a Hallmark store, gift shop and office supply store in the days before big box companies took over everything! Ah, surrounded by stationary, typewriter ribbons, Day Timers, Filofaxes and Mont Blanc pens (we carried other pens too).

I was in my glory. Catalogs filled with pens, paper and pencils and all of the things you need to organize them! We sold Crane paper. Crane is made with cotton rather than tree pulp….ooooohhhhh! We sold specialty stationery in bulk. All of my letters, we wrote letters in the pre Internet age, were on fabulous and bold stationery. The Moleskine notebooks remind me of those days. Hemingway used them. I’m not a huge Hemingway fan, sorry, drunk, misogynistic writers aren’t my style choice. No need to reply to that point….English teacher retired. I’m entitled to my professional opinion. There’s no debating that Hemingway was a WRITER! Thus, I like to use them. Sadly, they’re not bulky enough to contain an entire story. I did find an 8.5” x 11” Moleskine on clearance that’s doing pretty good. [see photo here]. It’s still full of room for my story about Hell.

My crisis came the other day when I was driving my teenage son, one of them, to the doctor’s office. I was bombarded with a short story idea and wasn’t in possession of any paper. Not a notebook, not a legal pad, not even a napkin. As we waited for his name to be called, I was frantically thumbing the beginnings of my story into the sticky note app on my Android. (Hubby/Genius/Publishing agent isn’t an Apple fan) People in the waiting room were staring determined to influence my poor waiting room etiquette. It’s clearly posted that cell phones should be turned off and put away. They didn’t understand! The creative muse had me by the hair and wouldn’t let go. I had to get the crux of the story down so that I could find it later. Lesson learned. I’ll always throw a notebook or pad into my bag before I leave.

In the meantime, I also learned the beauty of technology. That snippet that I thumbed into my sticky note app uploaded into my Evernote app and voila! I cut and paste it into my Google Drive folder. Abracadabra! It was magic. My love for paper isn’t diminished. It’s invaluable for those times when tech is impossible, not available or out of juice. I love story maps, diagrams and flowcharts. All things much more easily accomplished….at least for me, on paper. I can’t deny the fabulous ease with which I transferred my idea from sticky note app to word document. As we move further into the electronic age these debates about books vs. ebooks and paper vs. tech will continue and I’m sure become as polarized as the bipartisan system. Just like politics, there’s no perfect answer. That story start did seem a lot longer in the sticky note app than it did on a blank screen page…….