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As a lifelong devotee of writing draft manuscripts with a pen on a ruled tablet, then correcting by hand, before (nowadays) entering a more polished draft into my word processing program, I was struck by coming across these comments by famed novelist Ian McEwan. How many of you, if any, still write anything by hand? Or do you start everything out on your keyboards? I had thought my way was the more intimate and trustworthy way to relate to my wordsmithing, but Mr. McEwan has a persuasive argument that I think I would do well to consider: When asked how his writing process has changed with the onset of technology, McEwan answered: "In the seventies I used to work in the bedroom of my flat at a little table. I worked in longhand with a fountain pen. I'd type out a draft, mark up the typescript, type it out again. Once I paid a professional to type a final draft, but I felt I was missing things I would have changed if I had done it myself. In the mid-eighties I was a grateful convert to computers. Word processing is more intimate, more like thinking itself. In retrospect, the typewriter seems a gross mechanical obstruction. I like the provisional nature of unprinted material held in the computer's memory - like an unspoken thought. I like the way sentences or passages can be endlessly reworked, and the way this faithful machine remembers all your little jottings and messages to yourself. Until, of course, it sulks and crashes." (McEwan's comments are from The Writers’ Almanac for 6/21/17)