How do you write?

I think faster than I write by hand so unless it's something I'm mailing in the post then I always just type. I get frustrated otherwise.

I write by hand pretty fast - half the time I'm just squinting at a squiggle and wondering whether it says "and", "any" or "are". Sometimes I'll write "so" and think I've written "to". I'm wrecking my already precarious eyesight.

Yeah see my handwriting is one thing I can be weirdly anal about. It drives me nuts when it's messy. In school I used to recopy my notes from class if I thought they looked too messy.

Yeah, you'd recoil in horror at my many notebooks. I wasn't exaggerating about that "two salvageable sentences" thing - my pages are so messy (beneath my ink slashes, you'll often see me re-writing the same damn sentence five times over) and my handwriting so awful, I like to think I'm developing Holmes-like deductive powers as the months go by.

lol

I used to write ideas for short stories and stuff in notebooks - I have loads of those filled - but all the actual writing was also straight from the keyboard.

i've never been good at holding pens and pencils 'properly' so writing longhand has always been murder for me and my hand cramps up, and my handwriting gets progressively worse the longer i write, so school and shit before the internet sucked. i type fast and am way more comfortable thinking and writing with a keyboard in front of me.

i've never been good at holding pens and pencils 'properly'

Me either - the right edge of my right hand is awash in ink as I type.

I got a fountain pen and I think I would like to write more with it in the future

Worth it - they're maybe the only writing implements for which you can actually use the phrase "heft".

the phrase "heft

Replace "phrase" with "word" - I wouldn't have made that mistake on the page. Or rather, I would have, but I'd have scribbled it out before I typed.

are there 'young' ppl who use typewriters

i'm guessing there is some sort of twee subgroup who are into typewriters and have been the subject of nytimes articles i haven't read

For novelty's sake I toyed around with a typewriter for about a month a few years ago (just turned 30, so not quite "young"). THEY'RE GREAT! Have you ever seen Cronenberg's NAKED LUNCH, with the bug-like typewriters? It really is kinda like that! They've got real personality, and the moment you're within five feet of them they just scream at you "write, dammit!"

yeah, a friend of mine says it's the most productive way he can write

another friend of mine is into typesetting, caxton-stylee

I guess a typewriter is kind of like drugs insofar as when I write using one, everything I write comes quickly, and I think 'holy shit this is genius,' as I write it. Then, when I look at it later/sober, I am like 'why the fuck was I so amused by this?'

It's great, because you can take pull out that strip in the cartridge later and, for some reason, voila - instant prose poem.

According to House, M.D., you can MRI a typewriter ribbon and get all the words off it that way.

According to Mary Roach, a handwriting expert can read the indent of your pen or pencil writing on paper up to six pages beneath the page you wrote on.

And I guess computer files have security problems? Probably, right?

I don't really care about people reading my *secret writing* but I think I have leftover freakout from my parents reading my journal & shit.

Like some dude, I hold a pen weird.

I tend to just splurge sentences on-screen. If I plan something I'll type simple notes, a line per point I want to make, in order, and then write the full copy underneath. Have blogged from my iPhone before.

Comma splices and full stops. I write like a telegraph.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Most of my published work begins in longhand on white legal pads; I've started countless blog posts, articles, and short stories this way. I still keep a handwritten journal.

Prose: direct to computer is ok by me.

Poetry: ink on paper, with many scribbles, arrows, and carets. Some doodles to the side, when things lag.

I can't vote both, so I voted other.

I use my computer or my electric typewriter. Sometimes when I don't have access to either I will write on paper but I really don't like writing prose or much of anything that way cause I am much faster typist than I am a penman and I will often lose track of what I was thinking or skip whole portions of sentences when writing long-hand.

Writing genre fiction with an electric typewriter is an amazing experience and I recommend it to anyone who engages in such things.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.