Late at night I sometimes watch a stranger’s hand move across a page, and I have stopped being embarrassed about it.
The channel calls this kind of video slow TV, and that is exactly what it is. A pen, a page, a voice you never hear. I put it on when my head is too loud for a book, and after twenty minutes I usually go and find a pen of my own.
Why the hand helps
Typing keeps up with my thoughts, which turns out to be the problem. I can pour out four worried paragraphs without once slowing down enough to notice what I am saying. With a pen I can only manage a sentence or two before my hand asks whether I really mean it.
I am not claiming anything scientific. I only know that when I write a thing down on paper, I tend to know what I think about it by the end of the line.
A keyboard records what I am thinking. A pen finds out.
My small rules
- One page, every evening, on whatever happened.
- No crossing out. Bad sentences are allowed to stay.
- Write the date properly, because you will want it later.
- Use a cheap notebook, so that nothing in it has to be good.
There are six years of these in a shoebox now. I hardly ever read them. It is enough that they exist, and that for ten minutes a day nothing I was doing could be interrupted by a notification.
Video: Write Here Right Now on YouTube. Embedded here, not made by me.
Sample content for The Pixel, a fictional personal blog.
