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Best Of: Dr. Don Sanders: Analog Tools for Writers · The Daily Writer

• 0:11
  SPEAKER_05: Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Writer.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_05: Each weekday, we bring you a short lesson that helps you live out the four practices of a great writer: creativity, consistency, courage, and connection.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_05: Here on the weekend edition, we take a deeper dive into those topics through conversations with writers and teaching that helps us apply what we're learning.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_05: For more, you can visit us at dailywriterlife.com.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_05: One of the benefits that we have as writers living in the year 2021 is the wide array of digital tools that we can use for writing.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_05: There's almost an endless number of ways that we can capture content.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_05: There's tons of apps, devices, and tools and resources that we can use for that.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_05: And while all those things are convenient, they can also be really, really overwhelming.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_05: So on this episode, we're gonna kick it old school and we're gonna talk about some analog tools for writing.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_05: Now, this may seem a little bit out of touch to be talking about things like pens and pencils and notebooks when we have so many great digital tools, but that that's kind of the point.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_05: Perhaps those digital tools are sometimes more of a distraction than a help to us.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_05: So I've asked Dr.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_05: Don Sanders to share his passion and his knowledge for analog writing tools on this episode.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_05: He is the director of the Merrill Institute for Ministry at Harvester Christian Church in St.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_05: Charles, Missouri.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_05: Don is also a college adjunct professor, an avid U2 fan, and he happens to be my older brother.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_05: Now, Donna's probably the most organized person that I know, in addition to being a lifelong aficionado of analog writing tools like pens, pencils, notebooks, and journals.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_05: He was kind enough to be a guest mentor for our Daily Writer community call this past Thursday.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_05: And I thought it would be fun to share this conversation here on the podcast.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_05: Now, just a quick note before we get into the content of this episode.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_05: A few times during this conversation, Don's internet cut out a little bit, and his side of the call is slightly garbled for just a few seconds, and that happens just a few times, more so like in the first part of the call.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_05: Now I normally edit out this kind of stuff, but I left it in this time just for the sake of flow because I don't think it's really quite that bad.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_05: Um and I didn't want to really slice and dice uh to lose the context.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_05: So we're just gonna have to leave it in there, and I think it's it's gonna be fine.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_05: So but I did want to let you know that up front, just in case you hear that in the episode.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_05: Well, with all that being said, this conversation was a blast, and it was really fun to be able, of course, to feature my brother on this episode.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_05: So let's get right to our chat with Dr.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_05: Don Sanders.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_05: Welcome to our June 2021.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I'm calling this our guest coaching call.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_05: I used to call it a guest expert call, but I changed the terminology.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_05: Either way, we've got an expert slash coach, coach slash mentor today.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_05: And that is my very own brother Don Sanders, the person who, aside from my parents, has known me longer than any other human alive.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_05: And yet he still has agreed to come on the call.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_05: So um, so that's that's a pretty cool thing.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_05: So, Don, welcome.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I appreciate you showing up today.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate the invitation.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: Always fun to talk about uh pencils and notebooks.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_05: So let me give a brief history of where this this whole conversation came from, and then we'll dive into the topic.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_05: So Don has been um a long time, I would call it an aficionado.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe obsession is a better term label to put on this, I don't know.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_05: But he's been um very, very interested for a long time in pens, pencils, notebooks, all kinds of analog type of things related to writing.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_05: And as a as a pastor, a teacher, professor, recent doctoral grad, um, he has done all kinds of content creation over the years.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_05: So I thought it would be fun to have him on talking about some of these things that he spent a lot of time thinking about and experimenting with so that we can learn from his expertise as well.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_05: So um glad to have you all here.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_05: And let's dive in with our first question, which is really why should we be paying attention to these analog type of tools?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_05: Like with all of our digital tools today, what what role do these tools still play in our content creation process?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_05: And feel free to dive in with anything else that you want to say as well.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's a great question.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, sort of my own journey, I think, probably plays into this.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: And in that sense, being uh just my personality type, my Enneagram type is a type five.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so I'm a I'm a headspace kind of person anyway.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: I do a lot of a lot of thinking in that terms.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, not that anybody else doesn't think, but I probably spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about thinking.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and one of a couple of my obsessions has always been productivity.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh in that because about every, I don't know, every three or four years in in, and I'm a pastor primarily, um it seems like every three or four years my role would change significantly, whether that be I would go to a different, a different church to work at, or uh I've been at the church I'm at now for three years.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: And every three or four years, my role would change.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: And when my role would change, I had to really rethink how I approach just my my job, but also how I actually work.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: And um a couple, I don't know, probably 10 or 12 years ago, I actually had a major shift when I actually launched a new campus for our church.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I went from being a specialist to a generalist.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: And you you all understand what I mean by that.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: A specialist being I do one thing, one or two things, but I have to do those things at a really, really high level to a generalist, which is I do 15 different things, but I don't have to do any of them as I would say.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have to hit a home run with them, I just got to hit doubles and singles with those.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: Love baseball too.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so, in the in the sense of changing, I went from being one to the other, I really had to rethink how I worked.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: And in the process of thinking how I worked, I went through this sort of um discovery process of investigating how other people work and the theory of how we work and all of those sorts of things and product productivity and task management.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: And and I just delved, I went down the rabbit hole, uh, you know, all the way to the bottom.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: And in the course of that, discovered just some different ways about how we approach thinking about our work and and things like that.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: So, in the process of that, really got into productivity and coaching other people and productivity, especially.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I was always, I never paid attention to the tools of productivity in the sense of, you know, whether that be uh a laptop or a program or an app or a notebook that we used.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but then I realized that there's a connection between those two.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: And then specifically, I think there's a connection to get back to your question, Kent.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: I I think there's two reasons why we should care about those things.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: Number one is to be productive.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: And the one thing I would say about productivity is the best way to be productive is the way that's best for you.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I believe that about a lot of different things, but that's the best way to do it.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: The issue is figuring out what is best for you and trying out different things.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: The other thing I think of why we care about it is that we it for me, analog, whether that be uh writing or notebooks or reading a physical book versus a digital book, or even if I turned my camera around, you'd see my my vinyl collection on the wall here.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, even vinyl versus digital music, just to be honest, there's a for me, there's a great deal of just personal enjoyment that comes from analog.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's a it's a completely different experience that for me is a very satisfying and brings a lot of joy in my life.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: So that's one of the reasons why I've really, especially over the past three or four years, just sort of tried to tried to engage and bring the analog back into my life in ways that had been passed.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_05: Hmm.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_05: That's that's really fascinating.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_05: It brings up a lot of questions to my mind, but how I'd like to kind of structure this, and thank you by the way.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_05: That's a really, really great intro on kind of your background and how you got interested in all this.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_05: Let's take about half of this this call today, or maybe 20 minutes or so, and I want to dive into some specific tools that I know you are you have thought you you spent a lot of time thinking about and investigating and experimenting with.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_05: And then I want to do some QA.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_05: So as we're going through this, everybody who's on the call today.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_05: So welcome, Ken and Rajan, by the way.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_05: I didn't didn't greet you guys.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_05: Good to have you all here.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_05: Right, make sure and write down any questions that that you have, or you can just put them in the chat.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, that's fine too.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_05: And I'll I'll kind of moderate those.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, really, you should probably you should write them down.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_05: That's true.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_05: Right, you could write them down on uh no, just kidding.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it is funny.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_05: So I literally have I'm in front of I got my Mac here and a big computer screen that I'm looking at, but I still have index cards, like talk about going back to junior high, you know, and index cards or something.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_05: I still have those and write notes on them.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_05: Here's kind of how I approach all this.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_05: And uh by the way, Don and I we live live like 10, well, probably like five or six miles apart, so we see each other all the time.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_05: But I know that basically, if he's into something, he has thought a lot about it.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_05: So if I've thought about it a little bit, he's thought about it about 10 times more than I have.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_05: And he's read every article and book there is about it.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_05: So pretty much I know if I have a question about something, he knows way more than I do about it.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_05: So that's why I'm interested to pick your brain about some of these tools.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_05: Let's start out with um the thing that's probably most common and that we all use, which is notebooks and journals.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_05: You are kind of obsessed with notebooks and journals and are always experimenting.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_05: Talk a little bit about what some of your favorite ones are and really anything else that you want to say about the value of using a print notebook or journal versus digital tools.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: So for me, the one of the reasons I do it, and again, for me, there's two things that are tied intrinsically together.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: One is just the enjoyment of it.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: So for me, I just enjoy writing on paper.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: I enjoy using pens and pencils.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: To me, it's just a tactile thing.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: I just I just get enjoyment out of it.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: So, but to me, that's tied to a productivity issue, which is for me, I'm personally in um I'm personally in a lot of meetings, I'm in a lot of different areas where I've got to write notes out and also do a lot of planning.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: So for me, one of the things that I always discovered is that uh writing things down was a much freer, it freed me.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: I don't for whatever reason, when I typed something out, to me that seems permanent as opposed to writing it out.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that goes back to in every office I've always had, I always had a giant whiteboard.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I could write anything on the whiteboard and it didn't feel permanent to me because you can erase it literally.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it felt like it's a not even a first draft.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a let me get what's in my head on some sort of some sort of something where I can see it, and other people can see it as well, too.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: So the notebooks for me are a way to do that.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I would say I carry different notebooks for different things.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: So enough sort of about the the theory of it.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but um, and I brought several of them out here, and I was saying earlier, normally I have my camera flipped around, but uh I'm I just thought I'd let people see my desk a little bit because this is where I do the majority of my writing and different things like that.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a uh just a roll top desk, as you can see there.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um nothing special about it.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh can't you know where the desk came from.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: So the desk has an interesting story behind it uh itself.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: But it's just uh it's my favorite.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's I would say it's my space in the house where nobody messes with it.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody comes down here into my office very rarely now.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so this is just sort of my space where I can be myself and indulge in all the things that uh sort of make me happy, as my wife will always say.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: So you're going down to your desk to do whatever you do there, right?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, that's what I'm doing.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: So um, so for me, when I think about notebooks, um, the one that I would say is most important to me is just what I call my daily carry.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, right now, I'm using a believe it or not, it comes from Walmart.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: It is the Walmart Exceed.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_05: I am shocked that you're using a Walmart notebook.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: Notebook.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, because I'm an I'm a snob when it comes to notebooks.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: I've used mole skins in the past, used Electurm 1917 for several years.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: I really like those as well too.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: But here's the thing that um that I like about my daily carry notebook.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: One is that it's got to be beefy in the sense of it gets thrown in my bag, it it goes with me literally everywhere I go.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: So every if I leave the house, I it is probably going with me.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: So it has to be it has to be sturdy in that sense.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: I also uh for a daily carry, I much prefer a dot grid versus a lined notebook.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: And when and if you're not familiar with it, you know, I don't know if you can see this, but dot grid is literally just dot grid.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's all it is.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: Because for me, um, when I think about how I plan my day out and stuff, I use a lot of I use a lot of little boxes and lists and things like that.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so the dot grid really helps me do that.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: So this is the notebook that I'm using right now.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: It also has a heavier bond paper, it has a hundred-pound paper in it.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: And to me, that's just so things don't bleed through, especially if you're using fountain pens or markers or uh sometimes pencils actually bleed through, believe it or not, if the let if the graphite is dark enough.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: So to me, this has heavy paper and they're cheap.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: They're like 11 or 12 dollars at Walmart.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: And um finally what I've discovered is if I can I can buy two or three of these for the price that I was spending on other ones.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: Now that being said, I do like some other ones that have really good ones.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: I really like Baron Fig, if you're not familiar with them.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: B-A-R-O-N-F-I-G Baron Fig.com has great paper products.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I kind of like the I also would highly recommend if you really want to look at other kinds of notebooks, um field notes.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're not familiar with um field notes, is that the note they're literally just called fieldnotes.com.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's fieldnotes.com.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah um is they just put out all sorts of little pocket notebooks.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: They call them pocket ones to bigger ones as well.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: Too the idea behind field notes is that uh I guess in years gone by, uh seed companies would give farmers little notebooks to carry with them that they would record what they planted in each field.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why they're called field notes.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: And um, but they have all sorts of ones.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: They also have a subscription thing where they put out a quarterly special edition.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: For example, this is uh one of their quarterly ones.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually has a theme.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: It was on the space program.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: They put out little ones, all sorts of things like that.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: So field notes is really good.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that's the big one.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: So I said I carry different notebooks for different purposes.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: My my daily carry is for I track all my tasks on a weekly basis for that.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um other notebooks that I use.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I'm a big fan of the yellow legal pad, believe it or not.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh for me, the yellow legal pad is nothing permanent.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: I I rarely put anything on here that I want to keep.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: If I do, I will put it on here and scan it into Evernote.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where I store all my handwritten notes after this, if it's something that I want to keep after that.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: So um yellow legal pad works really good.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: I really like those.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, as far as just other notebooks to write in, uh, I'm a huge fan of a company called Cognitive Surplus.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: And they like if you're in it is notebooks for nerd people.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like, and it's all sort of science-based, but like this one is a they have this the greatest covers.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, this one is linguistics, and I'm a link studied linguistics in the past, just has a thousand different alphabets on it, but they're great size.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um I just use so I use this one.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: This one is one that I just do writing in.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: So when I when I do writing for specific projects, I like to use these.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: And pretty much everything I write now, the first the first draft is almost always by hand now.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: And um, so those are some of the notebooks I think those are the basically the notebooks that I use right now.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm also starting to go back and go as even basic as like just spiral bound notebooks uh for just doing writing, like literally just writing out lots of stuff.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I really like those.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_05: So do you feel like there is a qualitative difference between something that you type or even even something that you dictate in your phone?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_05: I use dictation a ton, versus something that you write out in a notebook or on a legal pad.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: I do.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say science bears that out.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh still lots of studies show that if you want to uh if you really want to remember something, first of all, that writing it out by hand actually when when your brain sees your hand write something out on paper, it makes a memory connection.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: So when in my doctoral program, I had a professor who did not allow any screens in his class whatsoever.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: No phones, no computers, no tablets, nothing.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: And it was all based on the idea that he said, because we were gonna have we had comprehensive exams afterwards.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: He said, when when your brain sees you write something down, it remembers it exponentially more than typing it out.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want to remember something, or he he always said too, because he gave all of his lectures with no notes, never used a note.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: How do you do that?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: And preaching and things like that, he always said, if you want to speak without notes, the key is you write it out, you keep writing it out till you don't need to write it out anymore.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: He he always said, practicing it is you don't need to do that.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to remember it, you write it out by hand.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: And that's how he did it.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: Every one of his books started off with that.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I adopted the process of uh every first draft of everything I do is always written by hand.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: To me, it is almost like a pre-first draft.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: It is the hardest part of writing for me.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know the even first words to type.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: Once I get something down, it's easier to edit, it's easier to shape, move around.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: But for me, writing it out by hand is a much more it's a much easier process for me.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: I guess easier.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, I'm not sure why, but it's it's easier for me to write out a first draft than type out a first draft.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and just a quick question for you.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Are you writing in pencil or pen?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Does it really matter to you?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a preference?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: And do you write in cursive that that that old outdated method that they taught us back in elementary school?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, good question.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: So that is a good question too.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: So um before I started, so here's how my evolution of this happened is before I started my doctoral program, I just used the cheapest, like bic pens you could like the cheaper the pen, the better.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: I I loved to write, but I didn't care about the quality of it.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: When I started my doctoral program, they had this culture of where I went to school at that it was like about fountain pens.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so I really started using in love, got kind of fell in love with fountain pens.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: I had never used them.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I so during my doctoral program, I really started using fountain pens and I loved them and Really like them until I started using pencils again.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: And believe it or not, um, it came about because I'm a pastor, and so like one of the things I do is uh with my Bible, I do a lot of teaching and things for my Bible, and I wanted a a way to underline and mark up my Bible, and I so I was using fountain pens for everything, but fountain pens bleed through the page, especially real thin pages, and I hated that.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I went back to actually the same professor that uh that wouldn't allow any screens in his class, and I just asked him because he's into all this too, and and he said, You should try uh Blackwing pencils.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: Had never heard of it, never picked up, I hadn't picked up a pencil in probably 40 years, like since I had been in high school, probably, except maybe to mark up a board to cut it with or something.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so I then went down this rabbit hole of pencils, and man, that rabbit hole is deep.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'm telling you, it's really deep.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so over the past probably just year and a half at this point, I have uh I still will use my fountain pens for certain things, and part of what I use to write with determines the paper that I write on.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because some paper works and will hold fountain pen ink better, and some will work better with pencil.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: So you just kind of have to experiment with it.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I hate bleed through on pages.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: So uh right now I probably use pencils 90% of the time and fountain pens 10% of the time.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the advantages of fountain pens is if you're gonna do long form writing, you don't have to stop and sharpen your pencil.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um but uh at some point and whenever, if we want to talk about pencils and pens, we can get into that now if you want.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think that would be great.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_05: Um, because I would I would love to know more about the kind of things that you use and and why you feel drawn to those as as writing tools.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_05: Um I think that's really really worth exploring.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_05: And then I definitely want to take some questions as well.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I would say if you really want to start down this road, um, two websites to I'll give you two websites to look at first.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: One is go lay pens, g-o-l-e-t, as in Robert Goulay, go-lepins.com.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: It is the place for fountain pens.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: And fountain pens are really um fountain pens are really intimidating at first because you always think number one, it's for really fancy high-class people, and that fountain pens cost like thousands of dollars, and they they can.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: But you can get really good entry-level fountain pens for 20 to$30.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: And um, Ghoul A pens has videos on how to load them, how to put them ink in them, everything you could want.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: There, they are the sort of the expert on fountain pens and really, really good.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: A couple that um the two fountain, the two types of fountain pens that I use more than anything are uh number one, this is actually pilot, as in like pilot that they make ink pens, but pilot makes fountain pens.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: And um this is called the the pilot metropolitan.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: They make several different models, but I really, really like these.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: They are they just write really well, they really backed up, um and uh just just pretty well.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you can use either cartridges or you can fill your own ink with them.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I like that.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: The other ones that I use, and this is probably the one that I use more often than not, it's called a TWSBe TWSBI.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's a Japanese.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: Japanese make a lot of really good fountain pens.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: You're either gonna find like German, European, or Japanese fountain pens.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: This is called a Twisby.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: Really, really like this one too because it has a you can put a ton of ink in it and you could write for days, I mean weeks and weeks with this, and it doesn't go anywhere.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: And it holds a lot and it just has really good.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: But fountain pens are very individual and what you like, the weight of them, you can put any color you want in them.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's a great, like from an expressive standpoint.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: You can have lots of different colors if you want to have different colors for different things that signify stuff.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: I really like that.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: So those are just my recommendations for fountain pens.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: For pencils, that's a kind of a whole different thing now.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: If you really want to um kind of the of the gold standard for pencils now is blackwing pencils, and blackwing 602 is their website.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: So, sort of the the history of blackwing pencils is that they're the pencils that Disney animators used way back in the day.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: And most of the Disney cartoons that you saw were hand-drawn by that.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: John Steinbeck was famous for using blackwing pencils.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: He wrote all of his books with blackwing pencils, different things like that.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: So the company eventually went out of business.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: It was resurrected in the 90s as really a, I would say, like a premium pencil, which doesn't sound logical, but there's a difference.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but blackwing pencils have a real distinctive, uh, a real distinctive look to them.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_02: They have a distinctive ferrule.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's the thing with the eraser.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um blackwing pencils come in four different cores uh of graphite.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: Soft, balanced, firm, and extra firm.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: But they also make their money by putting out quarterly special editions.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: They all have the same graphite in it, but they they've they've just made this market for putting out limited edition pencils that everybody goes nuts over.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh there is uh there's just a lot of things that go with it.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: In my opinion, there really is a difference between pencils, uh, what you write with them.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a really, really nice writing experience.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: But there are lots of other pencil brands out there that are really good.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I would recommend, and here's the pencil website to look at.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: It is cwpencels.com.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: Caroline Weaver is uh a pencil aficionado.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: She has a pencil shop in New York City, but her her pencil uh website is really, really, really good.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: She has a lot of info on there.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: But there are Mitsubishi pencils, there are Tombow pencils, there there's just every kind of pencil you it's just this this rabbit hole you go down.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and you find the ones that you really like.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: And again, depending on the paper that you use, you can find firm ones or dark ones or different things like that.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I just thoroughly enjoy using them.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: So 90%, so long question, uh long answer to the question.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: About 90% of the time I write with pencil, just because that is what just helps me think the most.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: So for some reason, when I write in pencil, it doesn't, it obviously is not permanent because you can erase it.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: But to me as a writer, that just helps the process so much for me, rather than sitting down and typing the first draft out.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_05: So let me throw a question out there.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_05: Then I I would love to open it up to just comments, questions, uh a great discussion.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_05: What is the balance between exploring your creativity and and trying to experiment with these different notebooks, pens, pencils, etc.?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_05: What is the balance between that side of the writing process, but then also the productive side where you just kind of have to get stuff done?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_05: And here's why I'm asking this is because I tend to have kind of an obsessive personality, like where I get when I get into something, I get really, really into it.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_05: And it would be really easy for me to waste a ton of time obsessing over these kinds of things and ordering different things and just really getting into it, but not actually getting my work done.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm curious if you have struggled with that or if you have any thoughts on how how we can still maintain the creativity and the explorative process, but also still just kind of getting the work done and not getting too lost in that.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that I think that's the that's the struggle with productivity methods, whatever you use, whether that be an app or a website or you write it, handwrite it, you know, you can spend more time managing your system than actually working.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I can fall into that many times.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, about every six months, I literally start my whole process over because it my I find that my productivity, whatever system I use, degrades over time.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: And what I mean by that is here's the way I think I should do it, but the the hectic pace of life means I didn't update this thing or I didn't write this down or whatever it is.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so for me, about every six months, I take a day and just start over and go, okay, I'm gonna just delete all the stuff I've had, whatever.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: I start on a new page of the notebook and I just start, I don't design the process over, but I start over with all the data and rethink everything and sort of get a reset.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's like resetting your computer.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the more you the longer you use it without restarting it, it just it just gets clogged up with stuff and you just got to wipe everything out and start over.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: But as far as experimenting with stuff, I would say obviously is start small and um try one thing, whether that be a fountain pen or um just a pencil, you know, you can get like a Blackwing starter kit.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think they call it that.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: They call it uh they call it something else, but you can get like one pencil of each of their cores.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: Try what you like, um, find some other places.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: Another, like if you really want to go down the the pencil rabbit hole, um, a great, I don't know if you want to plug another uh podcast on here, but it's just called the erasable podcast.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's like uh pencil mania.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: They they talk about everything you can possibly talk about, but they have a fantastic Facebook group.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of the stuff that I get comes from trades where you trade with people.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: You go, hey, I've got these pencils, but I'd really like to try these.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: Anyone want to trade?
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: I get packages in the mail and send packages a lot.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you meet just a lot of fantastic people in the process process of that.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: So, yes, I suffer from the same thing, obsessiveness when it comes to these things.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I kind of look at it as my hobby, but then when it's time to buckle down and work, I gotta buckle down and work.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: And but one of my biggest decisions I make every day is which pencil I'm gonna use.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: So, and sometimes that takes longer than it should.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_05: Let's open it up to some questions, comments.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_05: Um, what what do you all use?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_05: What what are you intrigued by with this whole conversation?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: I personally think that uh the emotional gravity of a tool can be just as important as its uh ease of use.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, case in point, my favorite thing.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: If I write unimportant notes, which I mean, all notes are important, but you know, things that are you know, quote unquote temporary, I'll use just any old ink pen as long as it's like a rolling ball or something that writes smooth.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: But if it's important, I use uh my school doesn't exist anymore.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: My elementary, middle, and high school, I went to all three at the same place, it got torn down.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: This pen is made from the wood of that old school, so it has uh an emotional gravity to it, and this is sort of my magic wand for making the real important ink notes.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: I agree.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: It is it can definitely have um it just can be a fulfilling thing.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: So, one of the things, believe it or not, vintage pencils are a thing, and um because a pencil doesn't uh the graphite in a pencil never goes bad.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: So you can use a pencil from a hundred years ago, and the graphite is still exactly the same way.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: Now the eraser is junk, so you don't want to do that.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: The eraser is like using a you know, it's just garbage, it won't work.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: It dries out and it won't work.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: But vintage pencils are a huge thing.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I I just got a a pack of vintage pencils.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but like a really cool one is uh maybe I can find it.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: So uh what I did one of the things I discovered is that there was a company, and I'm from St.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: Louis, but Wallace Pencils, that there was a company in St.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: Louis called Wallace Pencil Company that made pencils for like a hundred years, and their factory is only about 10 minutes from where I live right now.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: They were bought out in the 1980s and and don't exist anymore, but their pencils are really good, and so you can get a pencil, again, emotional attachment to it from a pencil thing, and um the pencil is 50 or 60 or 75 years old, and it still works exactly as it was designed to, which is pretty cool.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_05: Leo, you mentioned the the uh pencil that you used.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_05: Is that the actual pencil that you used in grade school?
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, no, this is literally made from the wood of the school because it got torn down.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, this is actually made from the school, yeah.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, that's cool.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_05: I well, you probably saw me kind of digging over here.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_05: I still have I'm trying to find out where it is, it's in my desk somewhere.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, wait, wait, wait, here it is.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_05: This is the uh mechanical pencil that I used in uh junior high and high school.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_05: No, I'm sorry, high school and college.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_05: I used the same pencil for like eight years.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_05: That's where you put the lead in, and I just kept it because I just used it all the time.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_05: And it's just funny how you do kind of develop an emotional attachment to these silly things, but there's something still kind of remarkable about these tools that we use because they're so personal to us.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and in many ways, it's as if um in a you know, it's like great-grandmother's skillet that she passes down to you that she cooked all those meals in, or whatever it is.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's just I do think that there's a there is an emotional connection, especially to the past, if it's something, you know.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I don't have any super valuable fountain pens, but you know, at some point, you know, my grandkids, my kids or my grandkids are gonna be digging through this desk when I'm gone.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, they may find a connection to me through it.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: So, and that is something that that is useful.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: They're not gonna keep a big pen, but you know, they might keep a fountain pen that I had and used and especially if I wrote notes to them on it or something like that.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_04: Or you could have them bury you with it.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, we could do that as well, too.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: If it was if I was gonna be buried with my favorite stuff, it's my casket's gonna be chucked full of stuff.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_04: What a great question to ask people on a podcast, right?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what would you be buried with?
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_04: So I I wanted to comment as kind of a new um new to writing and grateful to Kent and this group.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I I think it's pretty official.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um, right, writers are a funny bunch.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_05: No, I don't think so.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_05: No, I really like psychosis or mental issues or weird.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_04: Well, no, I really like I really like the culture, but kind of what stands out to me regarding the craft and the tools that you have, it's kind of like a carpenter, right?
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_04: But with with pencils and pens and the right paper and all the rest of it is uh especially with pens, I think, or pencils, is that there's a notion of status.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_04: And it's kind of, you know, and it feels good.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_04: And you can own it.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_04: And and I think I think that goes a long ways in terms of um it's just kind of an observation more than anything.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_04: It's kind of like podcasters who have their favorite microphone or or whatever it is, you know.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_05: It's the same thing, it really is.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the things I think sort of an ancillary to that, I was gonna show you guys this.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um so this actually this is something that actually originated in we just moved and we have a a house that has more rooms in it now.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: But before, um, I never I didn't have an office in my previous house.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I would just carry stacks of stuff around with me all the time, whether that be books I was reading or pens or whatever.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so my wife finally got me this tote.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: And the tote simply has all of my all of my stuff that I literally carry this tote around the house with me.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_02: So whatever, whatever room I'm watching TV in or or wherever anyone's at, um you can you can read and write and and do it.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I just carry all that with me.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: I've got the five or six books that I'm working on, or this Bible or that Bible, something I'm working on.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: I carry the pencils I want to use.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: There's a this pencil sharpener, uh, my favorite pencil sharpeners is usually in there.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that's something too, is that you can just you kind of get attached to this tool that you walk, you just literally follows me around the house wherever I'm at.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_05: I hadn't planned on mentioning this.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_05: I'd I want to show y'all something real quick.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_05: So you mentioning your tote thing made me think of this.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_05: So this is a lap desk that I use.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_05: This is my wife got me this several years ago.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_05: Um, it's really scratched up.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_05: You can't really see it probably from the cat we used to have.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_05: For some reason, she'd like to scratch it, and it has this cool compartment on the inside, right?
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_05: Store stuff.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_05: Oh nice.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_05: Um, this is actually this guy this is kind of dumb.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_05: But so I when my son is in school, he's out for the summer now.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_05: But so I have these blank comic strip panels that I use.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_05: So this lap desk is what I used to draw the comic strips on, but I also set this lap desk on my desk to read with, and that way you have an elevated book and it's at an angle.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_05: But whenever I'm writing notes or anything, many times I use this lap desk.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_05: And of course, you can take it around anywhere in the house.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_05: So it makes a really nice companion, I think, to things like journals, pencils, other kind of notebooks, you know, because it gives you a really kind of a cool, a cool and handy way to to write as well, as opposed to like just a flat desk.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm a I want to back up to one of the questions we'd asked earlier.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think Ken, maybe sort of similar to the question you asked about writing.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: I think for me, one of the reasons I enjoy hand whatever that is, analog, is for me, it is far, there's far less distraction than with a computer in front of me.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a focus issue.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: That if there's a computer in front of me, if my email pops up, or I want to have the game on, or I'm checking this, or whatever it is, there's just when it's just you, you know, a pencil and a and a notebook, there's just far less distraction.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I actually find that for me, I actually am much more productive when I don't have my computer with everything else that it has available to me.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_05: It's almost like when you're I never thought about this before.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_05: It's almost as if when you're using analog tools, you can't you can't run away from it because when you're writing on a on a phone or a computer, we've got the constant distractions, and you can basically run away from writing that is hard or difficult or or challenging.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_05: But when it's just you and a pencil and a notebook and some or some paper, you can't really run away from that.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_05: You've got to sit there and face it.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_05: So there's a sense in which it takes a lot more courage to use analog tools in many ways.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh at least discipline, I would say.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_02: Discipline, maybe not courage, but yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: You guys find um one of the bigger deterrents for me and why I'm not doing probably a whole lot of handwritten, although I I've tried it and I I actually enjoy that sitting down with the creative side of be it pen or pencil.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: I actually ordered some cheap pencils and I like these erasable pens, actually, that just depends on what I, you know, like the flow of writing with.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: And just you know, trying to stop and sharpen a pencil can be a little bit distracting sometimes too.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: But well, uh, one thing that's real for me that deters me is the writer's cramp.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like I don't know if it's you know, if I'm pushing myself too long or does it just go away with practice?
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is it just me?
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I have that problem, and I don't know if it's just I gotta push through it and it just goes away as you know, as you work a muscle, more or less.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds like a dumb question, but I'm just curious since you read a whole lot more by hand, if that's a thing for you or not.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's actually a great question.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and to answer the uh the rest of the question you asked earlier about cursive versus printing, um, when I really got back into fountain pens, I thought I taught to myself, because like most people, um, my handwriting had sort of devolved into this amalgamation of cursive and printing, and like almost to the point where I was the only person that could read.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Read it.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes that was even tough for me.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like people, like, what is what is that?
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_05: Sounds familiar.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: And part of it is because I wrote so fast that I because I wanted to get the idea out before it escaped me.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I actually experimented with going back and writing by cursive again.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_02: And in my journals, um I started, I do a Bible journal all the time, but I had uh when the pandemic started and we got sort of forced to be at home, I actually started just doing a daily journal.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: Just like here's what happened today.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh part of it was just to keep my sanity because I couldn't leave the house.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, part of it was just to process through the day.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, here was a good thing that happened.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: Here was that's a whole different topic.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: But um so I started actually writing with cursive again.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: And what I found is that it was really hard.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like there were some letters that I just literally couldn't make my hand write make for whatever reason, like a W.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I can't make my hand do a W.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so I tried to, I tried really hard to just be exclusively cursive for weeks and finally was just like, yeah, it's not worth it.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: I went back to whatever my my hand writing, my the Don Sanders font is, um, which by the way, you can you ever know that like you can turn your handwriting into a font?
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's programs where you actually fill out this sheet and then you upload it and then it turns your font.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's pretty interesting.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I went back to just my whatever my you know, just devolved amalgamation of stuff is.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: But I have found that um it is a muscle that you have to work, and you do get cramps, especially if you're writing for long periods.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: I found that I got cramps more frequently using fountain pens than pencils, simply because they're bigger and it took more effort to actually move the thing and they're heavier.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I I I would say experiment with it.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, I I did that too.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_02: But now that you say that, I don't I haven't noticed it lately.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe it's something that you should kind of work through, like when you just start exercising or running.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I really enjoyed the trying to relearn cursive.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I started journaling, I don't know, back towards Christmas when I became part of Kent's group here.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I actually loved it.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, like, well, I mean, it was hard to kind of get back into it.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like for me, in certain letters, like you say, it's like that repetitive muscle in your mind.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: But there is a flow to it that if you can get it going, seems almost, I don't know, in the state of the flow, I guess it just kind of just flows.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I I kind of like that, but I got to get back into that daily journaling too, because I kind of fallen off from some of that.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I gotta, you know, get back to it.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I was just curious, since you guys write so much more, what your preferences were.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate you sharing.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say when I when I write and when I was doing cursive, that um a fountain pen with a really good nib on it made it actually makes it easier to do than even like a ballpoint pen.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_02: So for sure.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_05: Other comments.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_05: Uh what has really stood out to you from this conversation?
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_05: What's maybe something that you want to try or something that you're curious about?
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm definitely gonna experiment more with uh analog tools.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's one big thing.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm actually kind of curious, this is a little unrelated, but have you guys ever heard the term horizontal versus vertical writer?
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, I've never heard that.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like for me, a lot of it is about location and positioning.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh for copy, I usually write it at my desk, which is where I currently am.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: But if I'm writing a screenplay, whether it's copy or fiction, or if I'm writing fiction, I cannot be sitting upright in an office to write it.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: I have to be reclining on my couch or my bed, which is why I have a laptop because I just flipping can't.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: So uh yeah, and uh shoot, who was it?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Mark Twain.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: He coined the term horizontal writer because that's what how he wrote.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: He could not write standing or sitting.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I was just wondering if anybody had heard the term or if they're you know a horizontal rider as well.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe that's where they got the the space pen episode of Seinfeld from.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe I didn't thought of that.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_05: I'm gonna say you're right on the seat.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've found when I was really trying to get into journaling, I enjoyed sitting back in a chair in the morning.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't like getting right to a desk.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: It felt too structured, too rigid.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so when I'd wake up and try to just do, you know, morning notes, it was much more relaxed and free-flowing if I kind of sat back in a recliner.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I never heard the term, but now that I hear you say it, there is some relevancy to how I feel at certain points of writing.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, more serious versus more free-flowing and more, you know, just open thoughts.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: I prefer to be more relaxed and sat back.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: So never thought of it, but I think you have a point there.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think you bring up something that's interesting, which is that there is a definite connection, I think, between writing and um our emotional state of how we do that and that we we do feel certain ways whenever we do certain things.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_02: And um yeah, I hadn't thought about that, Ken, but now that you mentioned that, I tend to do my journals more at my in a recliner than at my desk.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: For sure.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_05: One thing that I wanted to mention, I I had never really thought about this until just now because you know, we're talking about analog tools and physical kinds of things, but this is something that really has helped me.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_05: This is gonna sound really, really dumb, but sometimes it's things that sound kind of dumb and that are very, very minor that do make a big difference.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_05: So this is the thank you card that I oftentimes send out to podcast guests, uh, send cards to people and stuff like that.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_05: I do this all the time.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_05: This is like the size of a card, just kind of a regular thank you card.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_05: I got these from Amazon, and this is about how big it is on the inside.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, just a kind of a standard thank you card.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_05: But then I saw these smaller cards, these have uh like a little uh inkwell thing on the front.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_05: I I found these at a place called Main Street Books in St.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_05: Charles, Missouri, um, which is the town next over for me.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_05: It's an independent bookstore.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_05: And the inside is just blank.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_05: And I bought these and I found that I really, really liked them because something a very, very small sticking point for me in writing thank you cards was that whenever I would use the larger ones, I always kind of felt pressured to say more because the physical space of the card was bigger.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_05: And I found that whenever I use these smaller cards, so this this is how these sizes compare.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_05: It's not a huge difference, but it's enough of a difference to that whenever I use these smaller thank you cards, I only write three or four, maybe five lines because that's all that fits.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_05: And I found that I was more likely to send cards when I didn't have to write as much.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_05: I didn't feel that pressure to like write six or seven lines.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_05: I know that sounds really, really minor, but this whole discussion is, I think, so great because it reminds us that the tools that we use do really, really make a difference.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_05: And sometimes those smaller constraints of using a smaller notebook can help us to just jot things down or get ideas down without feeling the pressure of a physically larger blank page.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_05: I think that really does mentally make a big difference.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_05: I'm curious what you all think about that, if that's been your experience also.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: I I think the pressure uh of doing something is is the hardest thing.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I this is this is gonna sound kind of weird to compare it to, but writing is kind of like flossing in that uh nobody wants to start it, but once you do, you're like, well, this isn't so hard at all.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, uh a perfect analogy for that is I I kept trying to write uh a story one time and it was just not happening.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: And just by sheer coincidence, I had a change of scenery.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, I was very used to writing where I previously was, but I had to visit somebody in another town.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: And because of the circumstances, I'd sort of be holed up in a hotel waiting on them for days at a time, just kind of sporadic.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was only there for three days, and I had struggled to write four pages in a week where I previously was.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I get holed up in that hotel and I wrote 104 pages in three days.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was like a flipping geyser, and it was better quality than the four pages.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, just that change of scenery.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I mean, it just was like a switch went off.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, that's cool.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_04: That's really, really cool.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_04: Say, Kent, I want to answer your question about takeaways for today.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_04: So I think it's field notes.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_04: So um my best ideas come when I'm actually walking around, like going for a walk, just out of my seat, off my butt.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_04: You know, and so yeah, I've got a cell phone, I can take notes and all the rest of it.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_04: But I take a lot of inspiration from musicians and artists, and one of my favorite musicians off uh was Beethoven.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_04: And Beethoven had always kept some version of field notes with him because wherever or whenever it struck, he had to he had to get it down.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_04: You know, so anyway, Don, I want to thank you for that.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you're welcome.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, I agree with you.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I think it's definitely helpful.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I will say that uh one of the great things about field notes is I you can carry pencils with it.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh one of the things about pencils that I like too is uh I actually end up talking to people in weird spots that will see me using especially a black wing pencil because they they're just a little unique looking.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I give more pencils away.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that I didn't, you know, you sort of an evangelist with pencils in the sense of, hey, you know, hey, try this, it's really good.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_02: Try it.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_02: It just it actually just helps you meet people, believe it or not.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um had people at coffee shop really do that.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I agree.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_04: My my other thought is that since I started this new business in July 2020, I actually don't have business cards.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_04: We're in the middle of the pandemic, no reason to have one, right?
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_04: So um what just occurred to me is how much of a nice touch it might be to carry the field notes or something even smaller with me.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_04: And when I meet somebody, just simply write out uh whip the book out and write my name and phone number and email.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_04: Imagine podcasting, rip it off and hand it to them, which would separate that from the stack of business cards they get from other people if they're meeting people at a mixer.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_04: So going analog actually is uh kind of opened up some creativity in my mind just thinking about it.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_04: So again, thank you.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_05: So the next step in this whole process, if we really want to be analog, would be getting rid of our phones and computers.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_05: And we only listen to music on cassette tapes.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_05: If we really want to be analog, right back to the 80s when all the best music was made, that's a whole nother discussion.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_05: Well, this has been a blast.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, Don Sanders, thanks for uh doing this.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_05: I appreciate it.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, lots of really, really good tips here.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_05: How can people get in touch with you if they would like to follow up with more questions or really dig into this topic a little bit more with you?
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I would love to talk with you about it.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: Probably uh the easiest way is uh shoot me an email, DonSanders 3501 at Gmail.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_05: You want to tell people the significance of the 3501?
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_02: The 3501 is uh that was part of our phone number growing up.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_02: It was so uh it's our phone number growing up was 314-438-3501.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then I just used the 3501 for that.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll never forget it.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's ingrained in our brain back when you had to actually dial the phone.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so speaking of analog, that's a great analog connection.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and you might get to make a call because you might you might get on the phone and discover the neighbors were actually on the party line.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_02: We had we had one of those growing up too.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_05: Those were the we did, those were the fun days.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_05: Well, this has been a blast.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_05: Um, thank you all for joining us for this call.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_05: Before we close, I I would be remiss if I didn't mention this as part of our daily writer community membership group.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_05: Um, every week we do a group call uh that alternates between book discussions, guest experts slash guest coach kind of calls, uh, community calls and so forth.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_05: We do this every Thursday at 12 noon Central Standard Time.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_05: There's lots of other cool stuff that are part of that is part of our community.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_05: This is one of the highlights and something I really, really personally enjoy.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_05: So if you're interested in joining, uh just get in touch with me and let me know, and I'd be happy to chat with you.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_05: Or you can go to dailywriterlife.com slash community.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I hope you enjoyed that chat with my brother, Dr.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_05: Don Sanders.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_05: I would say my biggest takeaway from this episode is the need to try different ways of writing content, and that those different ways of doing it can really spark our creativity and maybe switch up our writing process and help us to be more creative and more productive.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_05: Now, as much as I talk about creativity here on this podcast, it's easy for me to get into a rut, just like it is anybody else.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_05: Uh for example, right now I'm speaking this, but I'm also reading my notes for this podcast episode, which I have typed out in my Evernote app.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_05: And that's where I typically write out all of my podcast content.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_05: But I'm gonna try some of Don's suggestions more, such as using the Blackwing pencils that he gave me for Christmas uh a year or two ago, and being more intentional about carrying a notebook with me more often.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_05: And maybe over the next few weeks I will try not writing out my podcast content verbatim and not really using a script, but just making some notes in a notebook with a pencil and seeing where that goes.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_05: The whole point of this is to choose one or two things that we mentioned on this call and giving those a shot.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_05: You know, some things might work, they might they might really add uh some new flavor or some new workflows to your writing and to your creative process, and some things may not work, and that's totally okay.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_05: The whole idea is to experiment and see what works for you and to just continually and regularly try new things because again, you never know what's gonna work until you give it a shot.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_05: Well, many thanks to my brother, Dr.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_05: Don Sanders, who was our special guest coach on this episode.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_05: It was a lot of fun having him on the show, and I hope this has helped to expand your creativity and given you some awesome new ideas for your writing and your creative process.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_05: If you've been listening to this show for any length of time, you know that one of the four practices of a great writer is creativity.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_05: And in order to stay creative, you've got to have great input.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_05: And that's where writing prompts come in.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_05: A writing prompt is a sentence or two that helps you break through creative blocks, brainstorm new ideas, and get back into a state of flow.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_05: Writing prompts are an awesome creative tool for journaling, storytelling, creative writing, stress relief, social media posts, and so much more.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_05: But the great news is that you don't have to create these yourself.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_05: We've put together an amazing package of 365 daily writing prompts.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_05: So every day for the next year, you can have a shot of inspiration delivered straight to your inbox.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_05: You can check it out at dailywriterlife.comslash writing prompts.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks, and I'll see you tomorrow.