Chris Howard's Writing & Art: How do you write?

I have been a terrible typist from day one--and I have been designing and developing software for almost twenty years, on VAX, Windows, DOS, Linux, Mac, and I've been using computers (i.e., typing) far longer. You'd think I'd be able to type faster than I do.

I still do the majority of my writing on a computer. I've tried a pile of word processors and editors, Open Office, AbiWord, Google Docs, etc., and occasionally retry them, but I always come back to Microsoft Word. The Doc Map, it's like heroin. I can't live without it. I neeeed it. If you write multi-chapter or just really long written work in Word and you're not using the Document Map, then...it's like you're trying to convince me that you're alive without ever having taken a breath of air. The Doc Map, it's just that necessary.

Now, writing while traveling is tough. I've always had a laptop of some kind, giant Dell's--9.5-pounders, a Casio Fiva sub-notebook, a small Dell, and a couple other brands, Toshiba, etc. I run a variety of OS's, Windows, Vista, Linux (mainly Fedora and Ubuntu).

I have given up trying to write on the laptop while traveling. I can't concentrate with people craning necks to get a look at the screen, over my shoulder, three seats behind me on the plane. It just doesn't work for me.

So, when I don't have a computer or I'm traveling or it's late at night and I need to get an idea down quickly, I hand write everything. I've been a Moleskine (mol-a-skeen'-a) fan for years, and I've gone through three or four of them in my journaling.

I don't understand writers who don't keep journals. They must have unlimited storage and retrieval services built into their memory. Not me. I'd forget every great world-shattering idea I come up with the next day if I didn't write it down.

I know the Moleskine people will be upset me...mind you this is just an experiment...but I have changed journal formats, something a little smaller in paper dimensions, but fatter in pages.

I picked this one up at Barnes & Noble in Massachusetts, and so far I'm pretty happy with it. It came with a fancy metal medallion embedded in the front cover, which I have since pulled off and modified. It's made in Italy, a thin leather binding, and hundreds of blank cream-colored pages with enough weight to draw on and even do some light watercolor.

Here's the new journal with a Skull Candy cover mod. The nice circle impression lends itself well to stickers.

Here's an inside shot with the start of The New Sirens chapter 4 all blurry and unreadable--although I don't know why I bothered. You'd have trouble with my handwriting anyway.