Trying Something Different

I've been having a lot of trouble staying focused on my writing tasks this semester.  I partly attribute this to the fact that my writing for school leaves me barely any energy or motivation for personal writing, but then I realized two things:
1) My school writing assignments are creative in nature and should be sparking my interest just because they're creative and I have free rein, and
2) I've always been doing my writing the same way: on the computer, which also has internet access, all my music, and Instant Messaging on it.

So, I've decided to revert to writing by hand in notebooks my assignments--at least the rough drafts.  I used to write by hand all the time in high school and earlier, and I wrote a lot more personal creative pieces back then, too.  I think I've realized that by always using my computer to write, I've associated my writing with the impermanence and whimsically speedy activities of surfing the 'net, chatting with friends, and listening to music.  When I wrote by hand, I had a much earthier, permanent, direct-link feeling between me, my hands, and what appears on the page.  It's not so easy, especially with pen, to crank out a huge amount of words and then obliterate them all even faster than they were created.  I write slower and more deliberately by hand, knowing that if I make a mistake or don't think carefully about what comes next that I'll have to laboriously erase or scribble out the text: no copy-paste fuction here!

So I've been working on short stories for class (now, toward the end of the semester, more full-blown stories are being assigned, rather than outlines or snippets) by writing them out in notebooks, alternating between pen and pencil, whichever I have with me at the time.  I tend to deliberately use pen when I can tell I'm starting to get distracted; since pen is much more permanent, I have to concentrate harder to make sure what I write is what I mean to write.  Of course, the stories have to make their way into the computer, since my professors don't accept hand-written anything; and well they don't, since my hand-written stories inevitably end up framed in doodles and peppered with scribbles, circles, arrows and marginalia (I love that word).

So I end up transferring the hand-written stories into Microsoft Word, which works well for my process since I end up editing them as I transfer them, so by the time they're all digitalized they're much nicer than they would have been if I'd written them on the computer in the first place.  And even though it takes me twice as long to get them printed, they're much better for it.  I think I've found a permanent method, as long as I can give myself enough time to do it properly.

And on paper I can doodle when I get bored....can't do that on the computer.  If anyone saw my inked-up rough drafts they'd probably think I was a four-year-old.  Well, time to get back to the grindstone.  I have four more stories to write (!!) before Tuesday.  I just hope they don't suck.  Good night.