Going Analog

In my work and, perhaps, in the world

I’ve always loved pens, pencils, and paper. I started my career as a history of the book scholar in part because I love books as physical objects - the texture of the paper, the almost imperceptible crinkly sound as you turn the pages. My kids share this love of the material book. They especially like paperbacks that open flat, with spines so flexible that you can hold the pages together and bend them back-and-forth in a kind of wave pattern. Have you ever done that? I have, and I know exactly what they mean.

My kids call these paperbacks “floppy books,” and if the book they are reading measures high on the floppiness scale, it rises considerably in their estimation. For those of you writing for younger readers, take note: ask your publishers to aim for floppy.

When you work with old books like I do, the sensory experience of reading gets amplified. Old books have a weight to them even if they aren’t heavy. They have a smell, whether that is from leather bindings or aging paper. That smell usually doesn’t come from dust — contrary to the cliché, archives are never dusty because no librarian would stand for that. But paper was made differently in the past, and perhaps some of what we are smelling in old books is the scent of a paper-making process that has long since disappeared.

Then again, paper can hold onto ambient smells. Smoke from a candle, cigar, or cigarette; perfume or cologne; a flower once pressed between the pages, now lost or discarded. Imagine the kinds of scents that might have wafted toward a book that has sat for years, even decades, on a shelf.

Maybe, when we work with books that are hundreds of years old, we are getting just the faintest whiff of the far-distant past from a far-distant place. Scents that, however subtly and subconsciously, draw us deeper into the world of people who lived long ago.

We get a feel for the past, too, in old printed books. It used to be that printers set out the types, covered them in ink, laid on the paper, then used the printing press literally to press the type into the soft paper. The letters that emerged have dimensionality to them. If you run your finger over old printed pages, you can feel the words. If you look very closely, you can even see them raised a bit from the page.

Today, we call this kind of printing letter press, and it’s considered quite fancy. But up until relatively recently in the history of book making, letter press was just the way books were printed.

I have always loved the idea that when I read old books and run my fingers over the letter-pressed type, I have somehow connected with countless other readers who have touched those pages over the course of centuries.

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This past summer, I went back to an old method of note-taking that I had abandoned decades ago: notecards. Mine are 4x6, white (mostly), and lined. I am at the beginning of a new book project and have been experiencing the relative terror of feeling completely overwhelmed by the research. While I am trying to immerse myself in a historical period that has, until now, been relatively unfamiliar to me, I’m also trying to piece out the chronology of events, get to know the personalities and idiosycracies of my historical characters, and figure out the story that the archive is trying to tell me.

Using notecards has helped ease that overwhelm for me. The cards help me to atomize the task. My goal gets narrow and simple: just one thought or one quote per card. So far, it seems to be working. At this point, I am telling myself that I will master the French Revolution one notecard at a time.

But it’s not just the atomizing that makes the notecards so appealing to me. It’s the physical act of writing them. A few months back, I purchased a new fountain pen. Nothing fancy, just one made for everyday writing. My handwriting isn’t good, so I tried at least two dozen pens in the store until I found one with a nib fine enough to make my writing at least legible, if not exactly pretty.

How can I describe the feeling of writing notecards with this pen? I can’t really. Words alone, typed out here by me and read by you on your computer or phone, can’t quite capture the sensation. All I can say here is that taking notes on cards is a multi-sensorial experience. I can feel the bite of the nib on the paper and hear it scratch along the surface. I watch as the ink flows onto the lines - and the way ink flows from a fountain pen is completely different from how it flows from a ball point. No better or worse, just different. The muscles in my arm are engaged, which I notice when the nib catches ever so slightly, and I have to adjust my grip. For the ink to flow cleanly, I have to make my entire arm move in a single fluid motion. At my best there is a rhythm to the writing, almost like….well, what springs to mind is a waltz.

Like I said, I don’t really have the words to describe the sensation. But grab a pen, some paper or cards, and see for yourself. It’s amazing how much of your body is engaged when you write by hand.

We’ve all heard that an antidote to our screen and social-media induced malaise is to go outside. To look up at trees, breathe in the air, take in the birds, move the legs. I wonder, too, if being outside heals us because so many of our senses are engaged at the same time, even in microscopic ways that we don’t register. Things like the sound and feel of a twig crunching underfoot, or a chime sounding in the distance, or a breeze blowing. Maybe you don’t even really notice those sensations, but they are there healing you all the same.

I’m feeling the same way about pen and paper. I wonder if all that time on screens — all the hours we hold our arms stiff over the keyboard, the movement of writing reduced to the tips of our fingers, or our hand held still so we can focus on our phones — has taken from us something multi-dimensional and sensory that our brains and bodies need. Maybe those movements and sounds and visuals are microscopic, so tiny that we don’t really pay attention to them, and haven’t even realized that they’ve gone missing. Maybe our bodies and our minds thrive on those tiny sights and sounds and feelings.

Maybe on some deep subconscious level, those micro-sensations remind us that we are in our bodies, that we have the ability to craft the way we’ll move through the world. Maybe we need to feel that sense of control over our bodies to connect better with others. To somehow become more aware of ourselves, of the ways we take up space, so we can see others and how they move through the world.

I don't know. I’m just thinking here, on the page. And I will keep thinking about it.

I’m not yet fully analog — I wrote half this post by hand, half on a keyboard. And I doubt it’s possible in the world we live in to be completely analog. And I also think technology has the capacity to help people, and we should always be looking for those possibilities. But I want to find more ways of going analog now, deliberately and with intention. I’d love to know if this is something you’re thinking about too.

In the meantime, I will keep filling my notecards.

I just love this pen. I cropped out the messy pile of cards that are waiting to be organized and filed.

Thanks for reading.

~ Leah

P.S. If you are new here, welcome! And a note about em dashes and semi-colons: I know they are now considered a sign of AI, but I have loved and used them for years. I’m not giving them up now. Let me assure you that this post, like each of my posts, is AI-free.