At last I found time to read some of the articles from my favourite Newsletter www.writerdigest.com  One of the posts ‘Does anyone use a notebook anymore?’ from the Jessie Morrison blog MFA Confidential article caught my eye.

I have to admit to writing my novels long hand in a note book before putting it into the computer. With articles, I’m in a different head space so they are mostly done on the computer. But the feeling of resting my hand on the paper connects my mind to the pen and the story literally flows out of me.

 I also admit to sitting in odd places to write. One day during the time I was writing ‘Voices In the Wind’ my husband came searching for me. I had been writing about the structure of one of my horse characters face and remained in the barn for an hour sitting on a timber box watching the expression on the face of one of our mares. I had written my thoughts on several pieces of cardboard!!!
Dare I say that I actually do sit under trees and write! Well I sure do, though they are gum trees not willows – I have a seat overlooking the hills behind our horse stud – the gum trees are like an imposing group of muses leaning over my shoulder offering information and encouragement. I have a great reverence for Mother Nature. In recent times we have learnt how fierce she can be but Mother Nature can also be gentle, almost as if she is seeking forgiveness as she blesses us with every new day…
For me this connection of writing things down with pen and paper sears the story into my head assisting me to retain huge amounts of information. This writing things down also extended to our Arabian horse breeding program, how I loved to write out all the horses pedigrees planning possible mating’s and then researching all photographs and information about the horses. It connected me with generations of horses stemming from the original individual

Mind you I love my Laptop! And I love being able to sit on my deck watching my inspiration cropping at grass, eating their hay or just relaxing around their paddocks.
I really enjoyed this article (see below) because it reminded me to always look at both sides of every equation…

JESSIE MORRISON – MFA CONFIDENTIAL BLOG  Does Anyone Use a Notebook Anymore?

An informal poll: how many of you write longhand? I’m not talking about your jotting, your journaling, or your observation-making here, but about your actual drafting of a story. Conversely, how many, like me, write exclusively on a computer?

The reason I ask is because a friend of mine advised me to try writing longhand when I’m stuck on a scene; she said that while it may seem totally anachronistic—like driving a station wagon or listening to a walkman or making your own coffee—the change in process might free up my mind and allow me to solve the problem my story has created. When I bristled at the idea, she advised, “What was good enough for Shakespeare should be good enough for you.” True, I thought, but then, chamber pots were good enough for Shakespeare, too. I’m sure that, given the choice, he’d have used a toilet. You make do with what’s available to you, don’t you?

There are so many benefits to writing on a computer; the primary having to do with revisions. I change my work constantly whenever I re-read it; if I were to do this on anything other than a Word document, the scratch-outs would render the work totally illegible. And, like most of us who had to take keyboarding in grammar school, I type a lot faster than I write. And a lot more neatly. And spelled a lot more accurately. And with the added bonus of the thesaurus feature and the ease of online research. And more easily saved, and in more places (we’ve all heard the story of Hemingway’s lost suitcase full of manuscripts. Don’t you wish he could have just emailed them to himself?)

But then I got worried. I mean, what if I am too dependent on the computer? What if the medium of the laptop throws some sort of a wedge between the communion of brain and hand and pen and paper? What if I couldn’t go back and revise constantly—what option would that leave me except to continue writing forward, however sloppily? Is it better to have a rough, handwritten manuscript that’s finished from beginning to end, or a meticulously crafted fifteen pages in Courier New? Sometimes I think the former is much better, and that means that perhaps if you’re a compulsive reviser like I am, longhand is the best way to achieve that.

And it’s also true that you have less freedom when you write exclusively by computer. What ever happened to the idea of the roving poet, scribbling away in his notebook on the train, next to the fountain, under the stone bridge, beside the sea? Wouldn’t it by nice to have nothing but a paper and pen when you’re writing the afternoon away under a willow tree?

But then, who among us has ever actually written anything under a willow tree? It just all seems so…Elizabethan.

www.blog.writersdigest.com/mfaconfidential