In what medium do you compose?

I text it in while drinking and driving. I have a whole book.
"When bumper stickers collide"
It is printed so you can remove them and put on your bumper.

Don't text and drink and drive -
I need you to get out of MY WAY

is one.

Hello,
I am fascinated by all your working methods. I feel as if I know you better somehow!

I'm always on the move, driving, sailing, giging, bar and taverna roaming, and I cannot carry with me a laptop or a pad with little space for sound files, I only carry my handbag with a notebook for writing verse (shopping lists, telephone numbers, income and expenditure lists and everything else included in there) and a miniature booklet with staves for melodies. If I don’t have any of them I just write in the back of my cigarettes packet or other scraps of paper, even on restaurant serviettes. One time, years ago, I used a dictating machine cause I didn’t want to loose rhymes that come while driving, but then I was loosing the tapes later, so I gave that one a miss.
I have a hell of a job when time comes to type them as I did not have any typing training. It takes me ages, cause I have a lot of stuff to type or write notes on a sequencer. I used to use "Word" but I found "Notepad" better and for music I use Sibelius 6 or 7.
But electronic means to me are for composing the details, not for capturing ideas. I mean, how can I hold a pad and write on it while I'm standing on a boat in rough sea admiring a dolphin and thinking lines about it? I just write on a scrap of paper if at all.
Now, when I am on an electronic environment I do a lot of editing and elaboration (in music mostly) and thus I build my archives which I always try to organize nicely but they are always in disarray.
And the worst of all, I had quite a few crashes and as I don’t save often enough or keep hard copies of re-arranged material I have lost a lot of work sometimes.
Therefore and for all above reasons:
Pen and paper will not be replaced for me by anything.

My Android tablet (8" Vizio) is not conducive to writing. I do have a bluetooth keyboard that travels with it but sees little use. Storytelling, songwriting, and writing poetry, all emerge from me in various ways.

My best friend has been a compact reporter's audio cassette recorder, then a mini-cassette recorder, now a digital voice recorder. Moving brings out words -- walking, biking, driving, riding -- the very motions and rhythms are stimuli. I've written poems, songs, essays and stories, just dictating into the little mic. Then comes the transcription, correction, editing process at a keyboard.

Lying in bed at night, a notepad and Pentel pencil are always at hand. Sometimes for story ideas, often for complete songs or poems. Those tools are with me when riding and sitting, too. Sometimes a flurry of words just demands to be set down on paper, RIGHT NOW, and dictation is either too slow or too loud.

I tried writing with a fountain pen on creamy paper long ago. Didn't work. That's not me.

Now, my stories and essays and articles are mostly composed directly on keyboard, usually on my 12.5" ThinkPad, with me reclining in a comfortable seat, feet elevated, machine in my lap, my tablet and a few reference books and tools (pens, pads, calculator, music remote) right beside me. My writings go to cloud storage (via DropBox) so I don't much worry about local storage failure.

I've been thinking about this again.

Although my earlier post is still correct, the main medium for my composition is my brain. Stories and my few poems are held in my memory, adapted, amended, revised and rethought many times before I put pen to paper or fingers on a keyboard.

I re-read part-completed works on screen and then think about them, sometimes for days before I add a word.

Once I start physically writing, I am transcribing the matter that has already been worked on in my brain.

That doesn't mean that I don't have to edit. The transcription process is the flaw. I never manage to get the story or poem from my brain to text without losing something.

oggbashan said:

I've been thinking about this again.

Although my earlier post is still correct, the main medium for my composition is my brain. Stories and my few poems are held in my memory, adapted, amended, revised and rethought many times before I put pen to paper or fingers on a keyboard.

I re-read part-completed works on screen and then think about them, sometimes for days before I add a word.

Once I start physically writing, I am transcribing the matter that has already been worked on in my brain.

That doesn't mean that I don't have to edit. The transcription process is the flaw. I never manage to get the story or poem from my brain to text without losing something.

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I wish my brain retained data but these days the memory is shot, the worst offenders being the poems written in my head just before sleep (you know the masterpieces!!) that are gone by morning!

UnderYourSpell said:

I wish my brain retained data but these days the memory is shot, the worst offenders being the poems written in my head just before sleep (you know the masterpieces!!) that are gone by morning!

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The ones in your head are ALWAYS better than the ones you write down.

And so many distractions, such as "the man from Porlock", can wreck to transition from brain to paper.

Hypoxia said:

My writings go to cloud storage (via DropBox) so I don't much worry about local storage failure.

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your poems have been posted as commentary on the celebrity nude photos on the web

Every cloud has a downpour.

oggbashan said:

The ones in your head are ALWAYS better than the ones you write down.

And so many distractions, such as "the man from Porlock", can wreck to transition from brain to paper.

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Quite so interruptions rule in this household!

I write in stages (when I write seriously). Each draft has a different medium.

For ideas and first workings out, I use a pencil and Moleskine, which are both supremely portable - if something occurs to me whilst out I can jot it down quickly and return it to a pocket without seeming portentous. From this stage onwards, everything is written at my antique desk in my study overlooking the garden (yes, I am extremely lucky).

For drafting and turning those ideas into a proper, consecutive piece of writing, I use a ballpoint pen and lined A4 paper. There is something about the uniformity of both that is conducive, for me, to ordered thinking, which at this early stage is crucial. It seems hard to go off-piste when those striding lines slice the writing into regimental blocks. (Way to mix metaphors there - an image of Bond villains on jet-skis, perhaps?)

For second drafting, I indulged some years ago in a proper leather bound journal and a Waterman fountain pen, with an inkwell. The paper is beautiful, and the care required to make the writing look beautiful as well as, I hope, sound beautiful, means I slow down the writing. Every syllable is polished, examined under a jeweller's lens, before being set in its place. The physicality of the process helps to ground the writing, for me. Words are best when made flesh, I think, in speech or song, and the more aetherial the mode, the further we are from that truth. There is a cold memento mori about the way ink and paper will fade away, and about the way the wrist aches in memory of the day's work.

Finally, for the last draft, I type up on the computer - a proper desktop. Whilst I am doing this stage I do not connect to the internet (if I want to go online I use the laptop downstairs, so that that world is physically disconnected, separate, from my writing world). I might rewrite by hand were it not for the fact that publishers and agents are very precise about their requirements, and virtually none now accepts long-hand manuscripts.

That was boring, wasn't it! Sorry: such narcissism in one so middle-aged is not to be forgiven. But you did ask.

I use dirty napkins and crayons.

DesEsseintes said:

Finally, for the last draft, I type up on the computer - a proper desktop. Whilst I am doing this stage I do not connect to the internet (if I want to go online I use the laptop downstairs, so that that world is physically disconnected, separate, from my writing world).

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This makes me think of the NBA-winning American novelist Jonathan Franzen, who writes in a rented studio devoid of ornament on an old Dell laptop with the wireless card removed and the Ethernet port sealed by SuperGluing a CAT-5 cable into the socket and then cutting off the wire.

The Internet can be a major distraction, but I use it so much as a reference source that that wouldn't work for me.

Tzara said:

This makes me think of the NBA-winning American novelist Jonathan Franzen, who writes in a rented studio devoid of ornament on an old Dell laptop with the wireless card removed and the Ethernet port sealed by SuperGluing a CAT-5 cable into the socket and then cutting off the wire.

The Internet can be a major distraction, but I use it so much as a reference source that that wouldn't work for me.

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That's a little extreme: I just switch the wifi off when I'm writing, but I admire his ruthlessness! And as for reference sources, I am lucky enough to be a member of the Bodleian which, as a copyright library, had every book and journal I needed. I just filled a couple of notebooks over a month and there I was. I accept that isn't a solution for everyday...

Tsotha said:

I use dirty napkins and crayons.

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I applaud you!
Both recyclable and environmentally friendly.
A few other fabric items come to mind for such purposes also.

twelveoone said:

your poems have been posted as commentary on the celebrity nude photos on the web

Every cloud has a downpour.

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Any links?
(I'm always interested on how poetry is been used or abused by celebrities, of course, you can pm me also)

pelegrino said:

Any links?
(I'm always interested on how poetry is been used or abused by celebrities, of course, you can pm me also)

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was just a joke about the permeability of the cloud

..

my first draft is always on scrap paper as I write as soon as the poem forms in my brain. Then the second draft is on the computer, before I self publish them and write them up on normal paper and putting it in a folder, though I have too often lost many poems by doing that. A bad habit I definitely need to get rid of.