Paper or plastic?

Beautiful faux parchment paper used to matter very highly in my pantheon of important things. Pre-loaded fountain pens in a rainbow of colors. Real fountain pens for the special adventure with a variety of inks. Hand pressed paper the thickness of a hide and with flowers embedded. Leather bound journals that had gorgeous thick paper. These were the tools that excited inspiration in me. Like an oil painter gets a new canvas and brushes and is inspired to create by the sheer possibility of what could happen next. With a leather bound journal and the right shade of perfect deep sky blue or steel gray, I was ready to write that day. I'd take off to my favorite spot and sit in nature and write for hours. It was mostly journal entries and reports on the sensory experience of sitting where I was, but I'd attempt poetry now and then too. What mattered most was the inspiration of the confluence from sunny clear day with light winds, the smell of the air when the seasons change, the right blanket to sit on, and my pen and paper.

My writing experience underwent a radical shift when I entered college. Like your world view grows and you change your mind, so inspiration migrates and takes on new forms--gradually.

I struggled to learn to write while sitting at my computer. It took too much time to hand write in a student notebook while belly-flopped in the dorm's community lounge room and then transcribe to computer, so I absolutely forced myself to be a productive writer at the computer. It wasn't easy. I remember the agony of flailing for words and finding no inspiration, and I resisted what the desk represented as a change to my writing habits. It brought tons of frantic changes to my posture hoping this would help it work. I moved my monitor this way, I moved it away, I kicked at random things under my desk. I resisted. I resisted because it was so inspiration-less. Had I been able to sit at my computer and write the same way I felt before, there would have been no anguish over the digital transition.

I eventually negotiated a writing scheme where I would belly flop on the bed and read my texts and my notes until I got the right inspiration. Then I'd jot them down into a thorough and detailed outline, and at last I could jump up to the computer and have the inspired seeds of thoughts in my mind already.

After the struggle of learning to feel the texture of the keyboard and the posture of the desk as inspirational as rag-woven paper, I’ve found I can’t go in reverse. Now the computer and the desk communicate to me that it’s time to create, it’s time to sit and write. My best writing happens when my fingers touch the keys. During a short weekend on vacation, I wrote in my old-timey student notebook, and when I went to transcribe my blog entries back onto the computer, the language was flat and boring and it didn’t sound like my typed voice at all. My inspiration hadn’t migrated--it flowed like a stream.