On Fri, Dec 31, 1999 at 02:07:25PM -0500, William Hochman wrote: > In the late eighties my furture wife and i wrote over hundred letters in > four months but now we sign our email affectionately...I even used to > correspond by letter with my office mate at NYU and yet with all my love > and fondness for letter writing have to admit email makes sense to me > now...I'm glad I'm a "hybrid" letter writer and keep my fountain pen at > the ready, will I still write all early drafts on paper and only type them once I have a rough idea that I have it right, and while for a period I typed letters, I now only handwrite personal letters. I'm also very particular about what pen for what assignment. Sometimes a roller ball, sometimes a ballpoint, most times a fountain pen. I love the feel of paper, metal, ink. I guess I'm one of those loonies for whom they make the Levenger catalog. A good friend, also a writer, gave me a cut-down shuffleboard that had belonged to his father and at which he wrote several of his books. A loved one, as a birthday gift, put legs on it for me, so now I have a six-foot flat surface with one of those flat writing cushions, like a giant blotter; it gives your pen or pencil a smooth and uniform backing as you write. I settle for anything that gets me into that hypnotic state that allows me to get work done. Ah, the secrets and peccadilloes that leak out.... --tim