A writer's notebook

School midterm often finds me in the coffee area of places like this.









There is much pleasure to be gained from relaxing over a coffee while your energy saturated offspring wear themselves ragged on gynormous slides, white water rafts and wave machines. You sip your coffee, dip your hand into your handbag and
horror strikes....you didn't pack a book!






A glance around assures you that the other mothers on the same mission have arrived much better equipped. (That's not me bookless in the photo, by the way, but you get my drift.)









So without reading material I'm forced to take out my notebook and write. In these keyboard days, the common or garden pen and notebook have slipped well down the pecking order in the writing stakes.






Ah yes, there's nothing like the real thing -watching those sentences slide onto the sheet as you put your own indelible stamp of personality on each carefully stroked word.








The flow of inspiration that comes with writing by hand is not my imagination (excuse the pun).
This article:
http://theweek.com/article/index/207846/how-writing-by-hand-makes-kids-smarter
indicates that it's not just Mum who is benefitting from the whole writing by hand thing.
Writing by hand helps children hone fine motor skills and learn to express and generate ideas.



Tracy Chevalier, author of bestselling 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' favours the old-fashioned longhand because she finds her "mind thinks at roughly the same speed" as her hand writes."











So, for today anyway, while stranded bookless in a cafe, the pen is mightier than the technological sword.