It always start with a white space, like this blog post.
It could happen on a sheet of paper, or lately an empty <textarea>, but the feeling is the same. You get the first flow of ideas, rushing through your head. That’s why I always have a small Moleskine notebook in my pocket; you never know when these things will happen, how long they will last, and when you’ll have another one. Paper has an obvious advantage on computers: you do not need electricity.
I do not “have” an idea; the idea has me. It comes, and then it goes. My task is to write it down, or let it go. I choose.
Jadis you would have started writing in the old-fashioned way; pen, pencil, paper, but the keyboard has got our attention. It’s a different feeling; before, just one hand was to held responsible for my stuff; now it’s every one of my fingers. Simultaneously. It has an advantage, which is to make things go faster. I can write faster, almost as fast as I think. But I need electricity, though.
I can create not only texts but also code. I can later make that code run on the computer, on mine or even on yours. I can talk to those computers, to make them do what I want. We’re new wizards, in a world that would turn crazy any 16th century man. We talk to the machine, and it answers us.
Then I go back, I erase, I reorder paragraphs, I re-read, I spellcheck, I smile, sometimes I tear off the page and start from scratch (the equivalent of selecting “Edition / Select All” & hitting the delete key).
Sometimes I publish, sometimes you read me. There is a nice randomness in all of this, and I clearly enjoy it. Thanks for being there.