[at-l] About Journaling

[jbullar1 at twcny.rr.com (Jim Bullard)]

At 06:58 PM 2/6/2005 -0500, Nina Rogers wrote:
>there are several reasons that writing the
>old-fashioned way work for me:
>
>1. It forces me to slow down. Because I write slower, my thoughts seem
>to become more slow-paced and leisurely. I get MUCH more focused. I
>don't know if that's true for everyone. But in my crazy life of
>multi-tasking and a million daily chores to take care of, it's nice to
>slow down for a bit and put pen to paper. When I'm typing on the
>computer, I go a lot faster and my mind doesn't seem to slow down at
>all. I don't get that focus that writing with a pen gives me. But
>that's just me. :-) (Also, I work on the computer all day and am not
>about to spend my private journal time staring at a screen!)

That is the same reason drawing works. If you are doing it correctly that 
is. My favorite drawing teacher used to assign one hour drawings with the 
caveat that your pencil should not be touching the paper more than 20 
minutes of the hour. The other 40 minutes were for studying your subject 
and thinking about how it really looked.

>2. It's too easy to revise on the computer. If you're writing for an
>audience, revision is fine, but if you're writing for yourself,
>revision isn't such a big deal. In my handwritten journal, if I use a
>word that's not quite "right," I can just draw a line through it. When
>(if) I go back to read that entry, I may gain some insight into my
>thoughts that I didn't have before, just by seeing the first word that
>came to my mind. It's also too easy to simply delete things on a
>computer ... you may be glad you deleted something at the time, but
>may regret it later.

That's why I like a computer. When I work on paper, half the page may be 
crossed out, either because I move sentences around or because of my poor 
spelling. Thank God for spell check and those red underlines, three of 
which appeared in this sentence alone (Opps, make that four). I don't need 
reminding of how bad my first draft was.