The main tool I use for to write this blog is vim (specifically Neovim. “Vim” at this point is not really a particular program, but a clade of software.) I have been using it for many years now, so this is not surprising.
What is surprising (to me) is that I do not write (or at least draft) more posts by hand. I like writing by hand. I have quite a collection of analog writing instruments and I certainly am looking for ways to justify that. I have fountain pens, I have typewriters, I have far too many notebooks, I have many miscellaneous pens. To add to the mess I recently ordered a sampler pack of fancy Japanese pencils. I like analog writing.
And yet I do not use all of those for this blog very often. I usually write straight into my keyboard. This is a contradiction.
Not that you would be able to tell if I did not tell you. These words, as they appear on your screen, will carry no trace of just how they were written. In fact, they cannot remain purely handwritten and reach your eyes, no blog post can. It must be translated into an electronic form somehow.
Translated, not transcribed. One of the things that sets blog posts apart from other kinds of writing is the inclusion of links . Writing is a conversation, even if only with oneself. Blogs directly attach themselves to their respective conversations with links. But I have no way to represent those as I scribble with my pencil. Urls are not meant to be written by hand. Even if they were, on paper they are mere references, not links.
That is not why I don’t draft by hand, though. Really it’s mostly out of laziness. Writing by hand means that I have to retype everything. I write in cursive and OCR can’t handle that. I’ve tried.
So then, what about you? Do any of you write your posts by hand? How often? What are your favorite tools?
