Never Have I Experienced Such Hobgoblins
Neal Stephenson’s writing, to me, often has a sense of condescension to it. It was off-putting to me when I read Cryptonomicon, but when I read his recent post, Writing by Hand is Good for your Brain - Here’s how to do it, I was delighted at his unspoken jabs at the current zeitgeist of our obsession with AI.
Every so often, when I’m signing books at a book tour appearance, someone will come up to me and say something like “you must have writer’s cramp!” or “is your hand sore yet?” I never have the time to provide a full answer. If I did, however, my answer would be that never, at any time during a quarter of a century during which I have spent a substantial fraction of each working day writing by hand, have I experienced even the faintest traces of so-called “writer’s cramp” or any other such hobgoblins.
In his section titled Don’t use a gadget *cough*, he writes:
Too much friction, and too little friction, are both more tiring than just a little bit of friction, and that’s the balance that is reflected in the fountain pen/paper technology.
Interestingly…
Since I do a lot of work from one location, I have a corner of a tabletop set up there with ink bottles and a folded-up paper towel for wiping off the nib after it’s filled (I have been using the same paper towel for about twenty years).
Did I read that part right? He’s using the same piece of paper towel for 20 years? WAT?
My own setup:
- Moleskine notebooks
- Papermate Flair pens, which are felt tipped rather than gel tipped… hmm, I’m gonna try out the Pilot G-2’s and see how that goes.
