Some of my friends compose all their work on the screen of their PC whilst others scribble away in notebooks. What's yopur preference and does the screen inhibit creativity? Win

I prefer scribbling away with pencil and paper where ever I feel inspired to write Win. When I have a fair amount of written work I transfer it into a folder on my PC to work on later. Most times print off and prefer to rework the poem on paper. I also use a digital voice recorder when I can`t sleep because my mind is too active and I want to write,once I get the words are out of my head then I can sleep,transfering it to paper when I have the time. Yes I prefer pencil and paper.

I use a new Moleskine each year. It gets pretty tatty being bashed around, wine stains, tea and coffee marks and the odd bit of mud when its dropped whilst out and about.
When I transfer to the Mac, I score out the notes to avoid having to look twice at what I've used. Sad eh?

I have a notepad with me when I go out - waiting for the bus/on the bus=good creative times for me. And I often wake up with a phrase, idea so rush - sometimes for the notepad but I must say, sometimes straight to the computer. I wrote Rosequartz straight onto the computer yesterday, but I had just woken up with most of it in my head. I also find that it's when I write the stuff onto my computer from my notepad that things like length of line, unwanted repetition, where to put breaks between verses etc stand out better for me and I make changes then. I really don't find the computer screen at all daunting. I write short stories too, and that is almost always directly onto the computer. I don't mind either really ;-)

I:
Start off on paper, then continue on the machine. Get an idea whilst out walking jot it down, get home look at the scrawl then wonder what the hell it says, then write something else instead.

Julian
I think I'm a bit like that. I carry around a lot of tissues for various purposes and scribble half thoughts on them for different poems.
Then when I get chance to sit down I ease apart the tissues and transfer the (written) contents to screen.
It doesn't seem to affect the quality of the poem I cobble together from these disparate ideas as I'm sure you will have noticed.

I'm a cheapskate and often carry round toilet roll instead of tissues - I've never tried writing creatively on it - though I believe plenty of people do...

I do scribble odd lines down on the back of bills, flyers or whatever paper I can find in my handbag. My poems don't take serious shape until I sit down in front of a screen though. It would just take too long to write a poem by long hand. I redraft and change a line a million times before I'm happy with it. Can't think how on earth we all managed before the advent of word processing.

I was working in Blackpool last year. Like you, Isobel, I carry toilet tissue instead of tissues to wipe my retrousse nose. I'd got a whole roll of extra soft embossed in my bag, the sort of little woven wicker bag someone with a retrousse nose and freckles ought to carry. However, I'd also got my lucky teddy bear, Una, a plastic hand on a stick and a rubber chicken -- all related to the work I was undertaking. My little woven wicker bag does not close, rendering its entire contents visible to anyone tall enough to loom over me. And, yes, I was in a queue in the bakers when one such looming entity shuffled next to me. And peered.He proceeded to shout out what he could see, and speculate why I should have such items in my bag. But the fact I had a whole toilet roll seemed to unbalance his equilibrium most. It upset him. He began to rant, torn between mockery and fear. Good job I also had a small notepad and pen with me so I could record the moment in case, at some point further into the future, I decide to commemorate/explore the incident in a poem.

We should obviously start off a new strand on the relevance of toilet paper on poetry today. Though I must say that when I write my poems bog paper is not involved. Not at the creative stage anyway! (Oh god, I expect we'll get lots of toilet jokes now!)

Toilet paper, with its fragility and innocence, and its accumulated euphemisms, is really an analogy for poetry, isn't it? Also it's many types -- the recycled, the quilted, embossed, decorative, 2 or 3 ply meta- narratives, the single-ply tough medicated and single sheet dispenser versus the roll, and so forth, cover all the possible verse forms.

We had to process our own words, when I was a lad. Didn't have no computers nor nuffink. I learned to write on a slate. This is true. St, Patrick's School, Oldham. Slates and chalk. 'Delete' was a wet rag.
When I interviewed Jimmy McGovern, on the question of carrying a notebook he said that he has lots of moments of inspiration in the middle of the night, in that half-awake state, when he has come up with some of the best storylines he has ever had. He doesn't jot them down because he knows the ideas are so strong that he will definitely be able to remember them in the morning; and he never can.

I can never remember them in the morning either, though the ideas seem so good and so obvious - you can't imagine forgetting them - I always do.

I did, one night, employ Val's trick of speaking a few phrases in to a recorder. In the morning, I played it back - ready to write down what was obviously going to be a brilliant piece of work - only to hear myself muttering - gufarhfgjla, merohiejbkls ....

Cx

There's a method used by Salvador Dali and Leonardo Da Vinci, among others. They'd sit in a chair, holding a book or a glass in their hands, and as they drowsed the book/glass falling woke them so they could recollect their dreams.

Er, that is not original, Chris. i am sure I wrote it first: gufarhfgjla, merohiejbkls. Yep, bit of plagiarism here.

Is it me, or is there a significance in the fact that toilet paper is an anagram of tapper toil? it is an obvious reference to the hard work on the typewriter that follows toilet paper scribbling, typing up the work at issue.

...also an anagram of 'lavatory paper' is 'approval teary.' Aren't we all, each of us, sensitive souls seeking credence and acceptance?

I once wrote a not-bad sonnet while waiting to provide a sample at a hospital clinic, if that's any help

But what did you write it down on Greg? That's what we all need to know....

Hatta - I would love to rummage through your bag - I would have imagined it to be different from everyone else's! What a hilarious story. The bog roll is certainly mightier than the pen or sword. It cuts a swathe through all our niceties.

I think all those great poems we dream up in our half sleep are not really there. We just imagine we are producing something great. Many is the time I've dragged myself asleep to write some piece of rubbish - what a disappointment in the morning.

Have just wasted the last half hour trying to make a funny anagram of 'a soft toilet roll' - I got 'toll of arse toil' but with a inconveniant t left over. What a bind. Izal have to try harder.

The most comments I've received for a blog were for a poem about toilet paper http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=7821

I wrote it as a throwaway (if you'll pardon the expression) and only blogged when I read it out and people liked it

What is the fascination?

Izz - you could try an online anagram solver (something I've sworn never to do if playing Scrabble online). There are no hits for 'a soft toilet roll' so there was nowt to find

oddly enough for me.. i rarely write at home! for me it is when i am away on holiday (I started or finished 13 poems on my irish adventure last year) or on the go in general.. train journeys are defo good for that, must admit but i did re-edit a little when on the pc as a piece tends to take shape..

If memory serves (decreasingly so), and to mix discussion topics, people who use Izal "do not go gentle..."

I only really write in my head, I have a voice recorder and sometimes use my phone but generally never commit anything to paper until it's nearly formed. I could stare at a blank sheet of paper or a computer screen for hours and come up with nothing more than a shopping list.

That reminds me, which aisle for the bog paper??

On paper first then onto the pc where i often spot where it can be edited more.
Sometimes i find myself typing to the rhythm of the words. It's a strange but comforting feeling of almost musical keys.
Comes in handy for correcting typos too.
Izal is a scratchy surface error and 'I shall' remove it from my lavatoire. :-)

Izal, Bl**dy Izal!
This side of the Pennines us men use a tuft of grass (the ladies use squirrels or small rabbits).

Well you sound well ard John - don't you ever get grass cuts?

I remember using dot leaves as a child - never wrote on them though.

You should try writing on squirrels and small rabbits! xx

Just ran across a nice quote from someone called Andy Andrews

"Who invented the brush they put next to the toilet? That thing hurts."

I feel like a real killjoy, being serious. But - in writing poetry (may I be perfectly clear) I always use pencil and paper. At the risk of sounding downright dopey, I find a definite synergy between my brain and my fingers as they physically write. The pencil seems an extension of my thoughts, and the manuscript is absolutely mine, somehow luring me on. Despite increasing familiarity, the keyboard hasn't made that bridge yet. I do final editting on the pc.

Commentaries are a different kettle of fish. The typing of sentences just whizzes. But I have to double check and delete a lot.

It's odd but I compose my poetry both on paper and PC (depending on where I am). That said, recently more and more of my poetry is composed in the same way as my monologues...by acting it out.

If I've had in mind to write about a specific object/subject for a while I kind of start off with some initial words and see where it takes me, by just spouting out loud the first things that come to my mind.

No doubt that by pacing up and down the room talking to myself I look quite, quite mad. I have also found that some of what I first come out with is a bit 'off'. What this does do is to allow me to learn my poems faster.

PC and WC help me see, pen and ink help me think.