When I first started writing, I had pencils, pens and paper, but by the time I was leaving high school, writing with physical tools became painful for my wrist and I could only get through a couple of pages until I needed to stop. It used to be just me, a pencil and an exercise book from a supermarket or a cheap store like Kmart or Crazy Clarks.

I don’t know when I started writing stories. I thought it only happened around the time I was about fourteen but I’ve spoken to people who recall me writing long before that, going back to at least ten or eleven. When I think hard, I can remember back to ten but I’m thinking the writing was so cringey for a pre-teen that I blocked it out. I had no regard for what I was writing back then. Everything I wrote for myself and myself only (ᵕ—ᴗ—)

Before moving to Western Australia, I had a typewriter that was reserved for “special stories”. I only vaguely remember one of them and I think that’s why I don’t really remember actually getting into writing until about twelve. I had a primary/high school friend that I hadn’t seen in a few years and once said to her “how did you know I write?” and she responded, “because you would write all the time”.

In late primary school and early high school, the house only had one computer. All my writing was on a floppy disk until I was about thirteen and got my first USB. I got the floppys from an Op Shop and used them for my writing and all of my assignments as the digital era started moving into schools. I was submitting a mixture of handwritten and printed assignments until about year eleven when I finally got my own computer (a school laptop) and printer (a nice cheap HP from the Aus Post Office) a couple of years after I moved back to New South Wales. 

I felt unstoppable at that point ᕙ( •̀ ᗜ •́ )ᕗ. Before being able to use the Microsoft Office Suite, that I’d also bought at the Op Shop, I made tables and charts and profiles by hand. I really like using scrapbooks (the ones you buy for cutting and pasting in school) for this. Now with the access to Excel and Access and Word, I had documents upon documents of writing notes. The digital age of writing had bloomed for me. I was still writing much of the stories by hand but now I could churn out every little detail from my brain and my fingers were able to keep up much faster than my hand with a pencil.

But sometimes I miss those days of handwritten stories, smudged graphite, eraser marks and pencil shavings. I still use pencils and paper but not to the degree that I did. I loved the novelty of having a pencil with a rubber capped on the end and sharpening pencils always gave a refreshing feel to the writing. You can see the tone of an author seeping through their handwriting in a way that you can’t with writing on a computer. I didn’t like writing with pens because I didn’t like using whiteout and hated seeing scribbles in my work. I did get better at that and predominantly write with pens when I do write by hand, but every now and then I like to take notes with pencil. It gives me a crafty feeling, often resulting in freer writing and little sketches.