?

Papper or Digital

  1. Papper

  2. Digital

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  1. SlocknadMOON

    SlocknadMOON New Member

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    Do any of you write with pen and papper?

    Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by SlocknadMOON, Nov 7, 2022.

    (i hope this is the right forum section)
    I feel my writing turns more precise when writing on paper. It goes much slower though, but the content is focused and filled. When writing on the digital cavewall, symbols blurt out after eachother, cueing up for their escape; or spreading their chaos on perfect blank harmony.

    With the help of instant words, one can of course edit and polish faster. Yet the pen and papper seems to drag me in its direction. What do you have to say? I am a dry novice as of now.
     
  2. Catriona Grace

    Catriona Grace Mind the thorns Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    Until fairly recently (last ten years or so) I wrote all first drafts by hand, but with increasing challenges from arthritis, using a kepboard has become easier for long sessions. Now I write with a combination of by hand/keyboard depending on what I'm writing and where I am when the urge to write strikes. My current nanowrimo project has so far been 100% by keyboard.
     
  3. Lili.A.Pemberton

    Lili.A.Pemberton Active Member

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    Both. I've started writing with paper more recently but I'm liking it (not so much the counting word part for nanowrimo)
     
  4. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    Yes. I find it much better at getting my creativity flowing.
     
  5. tde44

    tde44 Member

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    I write all of my drafts on paper (using a fountain pen) and review/edit each revision printed out. Helps creativity and eliminates the constant minor corrections (is grammar & spelling) as well as the rabbit hole of internet research while I am trying to get the story down.
     
  6. J.T. Woody

    J.T. Woody Book Witch Contributor

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    Digital now.
    Can't lose your project if its saved to your drive.
    (I've lost a notebook with an almost complete story that id hand written in it....)

    Also, ink fades/bleeds. When i was in middle school and HS, i'd handwrite my poems and short stories. After a year or two... The ink is faded or has turned a diff color and the pages have turned yellow with the ink bleeding from one page to the next.
     
  7. ps102

    ps102 PureSnows102 Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    Yeah, no, I'm not fast with pens but I'm fast with keyboards (120 wph is my best score) so paper would just slow me down.

    If I do it on paper, it'll be with my typewriter (an Olivetti Lettera).
     
  8. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Ya wanna bet?

    I've lost notebooks and boxes full of drawings because I had them stacked in the basement right under the washing machine and it flooded, so all the water poured down right onto my boxes through a hole in the floor. But actually only some of that stuff got ruined, much of it survived, if somewhat water-stained.

    But I've lost many things when a computer died and I didn't have a backup. Now I back the important stuff up, and that's a good safeguard, but there's no guarantees. What happens if there's a big EMP and all the hard drives are wiped? Does that happen from an EMP? I don't know, but I don't think there's any absolute way to prevent destruction or loss of our projects. Sometimes digital files just degrade or get corrupted, and that can happen across multiple backups if there's something wrong with the original file. All the copies will have the same problem. Probably the best strategy is to diversify across several different media—multiple backups including online and hard drives, and also maybe have copies printed up and keep them in various locations in case of flood/fire/what-have-you.
     
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  9. Set2Stun

    Set2Stun Rejection Collector Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Contest Winner 2022

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    I used to do all my library research with handwritten notes, and all first drafts of essays and stories on pen and paper. It was a way to force myself to edit by having to write it all over again one word at a time. I also used to keep a notebook to jot down story ideas.

    I thought I'd never break these habits. But when I got my first smart phone (I resisted as long as I could and gave in back in 2014), that's where I started jotting down the random ideas that pop into my head from time to time. It's just too convenient since I'm carrying it wherever I go anyway. And although I loathe the idea of having to pay an annual subscription fee for Office, I can't imagine writing without it.

    I have a weird way of backing things up - I email everything to myself so I have a copy stored in "the cloud."
     
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  10. w. bogart

    w. bogart Contributor Contributor Blogerator

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    Have you looked at tools like scrivener? The binder feature is the biggest help I have found. Having all your notes and character sketches at your fingertips, helps me maintain the flow of writing. When I need to check something.
     
  11. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    I'm not sure what parts of Office you use, but have you looked into free alternatives like Libre Office? I have that and sometimes use it, but for stories I tend to just use Google Docs, which has the best auto-suggest features for spelling and grammar of anything I've used by far, and allows you to easily invite people to read or suggest edits, whichever you prefer. And to download versions whenever you want to your computer or an external hard drive for backup.
     
  12. Set2Stun

    Set2Stun Rejection Collector Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Contest Winner 2022

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    I haven't heard of Libre Office, but I do use Google Docs at work and can see their usefulness. In fact someone shared writing with me using Docs before. I suppose I could look into using that, as long as they save files in a .docx format. For now though, I recently activated a free year of Office that came with the laptop I bought a few months ago (already had an active sub), so I've got some time to consider it.
     
  13. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    It's basically a free clone of Microsoft Office, and should feel very familiar.

    It does, I just checked. It will save in many different formats, including .odt (Open Document format, which is for Libre Office and the other Office clones, and I believe is also compatible with Office itself), pdf, or epub. I' ve been extremely pleased with it so far, though I understand it starts to get buggy when your document gets longish, like novel length. I haven't finished any novels in there yet, though I did upload one there and haven't had any problems reading it or anything.
     
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  14. Catriona Grace

    Catriona Grace Mind the thorns Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    I always email stuff to myself so I can store it not only on email but on two different computers, an external harddrive, and at least one thumb drive. I also print stuff out every so often so I have a hard copy as well. Years ago when I first started using a computer, I lost a chapter I spent eight hours on, and ending up spending the next eight hours rewriting it before I totally forgot what I wrote. Oddly enough, I lost it because the computer and the printer had a fight, and my attempts to convince the two to reach detente caused the innocent bystander (my chapter) to disappear. That may have been the only time in my life I gently but genuinely banged my head against a wall.
     
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  15. w. bogart

    w. bogart Contributor Contributor Blogerator

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    Don't forget about open office as an alternative. No subscription, saves in a wide variety of formats. I am not a big fan of Google and all the marketing information they sweep up in the background.
     
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  16. ps102

    ps102 PureSnows102 Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    It's quite difficult to wipe a drive with EMPs. The metal casing provides a lot of protection to the platter so you need to hit it up close, and people usually do this with specialized devices, but that's intentional.

    Your hard drive has a much bigger chance of dying on its own.

    The best thing to get is an archival-grade DVD. Not susceptible to EMPs as data is stored on them with physical changes rather than magnetic (hard drives) or electronic (solid state drives). That's why I built my computer with a DVD drive, my novels each get their own DVD, just in case.

    Even better, tapes! That's what the pro's use. But the equipment to use them is super expensive.

    That's exactly what you have to do! Have multiple copes on multiple media. Our teacher, who apparently worked for the IT department of a company, had a nuclear disaster recovery plan and this strategy was part of it.

    Even outside such a plan, all companies have different forms of backups. Some student in our college downloaded a virus and that thing somehow compromised the ENTIRE campus network and wiped it clean (this means ALL the student work, terabytes of it, was GONE). They restored it with cloud backups, as per their disaster recovery plan.

    I wouldn't recommend OpenOffice, it's been abandoned by its original developer (Oracle) and now Apache is the one handling it by releasing small updates every once in a while to fulfill some contracts or something like that.

    LibreOffice is better because it receives much more active development, you'll get a lot more out of it because of that, especially when it comes to docx files.
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2022
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  17. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    I used to have Open Office. Lol, in my head I always referred to it as Open Orfice. A rather unintentionally funny name, too easy to distort. I forget what problems I was having with it, but I eventually dropped it, maybe because it was no longer supported, and Libre Office stepped forth as the main contender in that arena.

    With all the talk of massive power outages upcoming, I'm thinking we all need to have physical backups on hand. If the power grid goes down for long periods of time all of your cloud backups will be nonexistent. Time to print up hardcopies of anything you want to keep. We tend to forget how ephemeral the virtual world is, and that its continued existence depends on a massive chain of things, beginning with uninterrupted electricity and including big companies keeping all their servers online and continually adding more. And not deciding to censor content for whatever reasons. We're relying on a lot of corporations to keep our stuff active, and those companies have proven not to have our best interests in mind time after time.
     
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  18. Historical Science

    Historical Science Contributor Contributor

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    I write drafts directly into the computer but keep notebooks for random notes and ideas of what I'm working on.
     
  19. ps102

    ps102 PureSnows102 Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    Converting digital to physical, huh... not a bad idea. But you need a good printer to do it efficiently money-wise. What kind do you use?

    I use laser printers, and I also got an aftermarket cartridge with a cap on the side, which I can remove to do an easy re-fill, but that's only because the printer I got accepts a secret code to ignore those pesky toner tracking chips.

    This way, I have dirt-cheap printing equipment! Some guys elsewhere attacked me and said that this is wrong because it'll break the printer. But I've been doing this for years and nothing bad has happened, and even if it did, I have saved up enough money to buy a new one... twice.
     
  20. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    I'm thinking more along the lines of ordering a few print-on-demand copies, but I haven't really looked into it yet as far as expense and which companies do good work.

    Now if something is in a much earlier stage (which most of my work is)—maybe a few dozen pages, I could just print it up myself, or get it done in a copy shop (do those still exist?). It would take a lot of ink to print up a full novel.

    I remember the time when I wanted my friend to read—I think it was Who Goes There, on which the movie The Thing was based. I thought it was a very short story, so I nonchalantly started printing it up for him. Page after page started dropping into my tray, and pretty soon I had to load more paper in. Then it just kept going, and I realized it was like a novella! Used up all my ink and toward the end the letters were coming out really faded.

    I used to always argue that paper is like the worst way to save anything, because it can so easily be destroyed. Water, fire, fading. And yet I have most of the stories I ever wrote on paper, while many of my digital attempts are lost forever. Then I realized we still have things written on paper (or papyrus) from thousands of years ago. Pretty torn up, but still around. Of course only because the desert is the perfect storage facility, with extremely low humidity, and who's ever heard of a desert fire?
     
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  21. ps102

    ps102 PureSnows102 Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    That's why I suggested laser printing earlier, ink isn't suitable for these kinds of printing applications. Ink printing is geared more towards fine printing for things like photographs and such, so it's a lot more expensive.

    But laser printing isn't as fine, and they use a powder (toner) which significantly increases page yields. I printed my 350k trilogy on paper and I still had plenty of toner left. The only real cost was the paper itself, which is pretty expensive nowadays.

    Sounds like you have those ink printers with tanks, those are a bit better.

    You're right, while media can last a long time (DVDs, thumb drives, etc.) the devices that read them might not. If you make a DVD now, and remember it 80 years later, it's very possible you won't be able to read it.

    But for paper, we are the readers, so no problem!

    That's why I print my stuff, you never know...
     
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  22. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Wow, thank you, I didn't understand how a laser printer works. I think the printer itself is more expensive, isn't it? I should look into it.

    Not quite sure what you mean by tanks? Mine have all used standard cartridges so far. I just got ahold of a new printer recently—my neighbor on the other side of the duplex moved out and left me all kinds of stuff to clean up, including a never-used printer with a full set of ink cartridges. I have yet to hook it up and test it.
     
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  23. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    I got a new inkjet over the summer--it has tanks that you fill from bottles of ink. So far, I like it. Holds quite a bit of ink and seems to be less expensive than the cartridges. I got it to replace a dead laser printer and I do miss having a laser printer tbh.
     
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  24. ps102

    ps102 PureSnows102 Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    Yes, but that's the whole business model with ink printers. They sell you a cheaper printer and they end up selling you super expensive inks. BTW I thought you had a tank-based ink printer because you said you fill it up.

    In general, the consumer printer industry is filled with all kinds of crap printers designed to screw you over. I got mine specifically because I know I can re-fill it myself without buying new cartridges, that way printing is even cheaper.

    Brother is a good brand when it comes to this kind of thing, they don't tend to use dirty anti-consumer techniques as much. I suggested the same technique to a friend last year and he had similar success to me. It is slightly risky but neither of us has had a problem so far.

    Research is always good when buying a printer...
     
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  25. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Any recommendation for a good laser printer? I wouldn't be using it a lot, probably just to print up my stories.

    Lol, and I just realized I have a bunch of laser printer paper already. I bought some once to try drawing on it in pencil. It has a nice smooth surface that I like, but it's hard to draw on. Too slick I think. So I have a big pack of it and no use for it yet...
     

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