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Comment by phainopepla2 | Hacker News Reader

When you say "by hand" do you mean with a pen and paper rather than typing it out? If so, can you say something more about why?

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Sorry, edited to clarify. I mean avoiding AI.

Mainly I use vim. But yes, sometimes I also use a traditional notepad with a soft ink pen. To avoid myself some screen time, because I'm out of home, or just to make some use of it.

I think the output flow is about the same using pen and paper than using vim, at least for me.

The original "By hand" did mean "without AI help/inspiration".

I'd love to read when it's available or in preview mode! The mental organization I think that develops when writing on a notebook is far worth the trouble of typing it on vim later, especially for fleshing out scenes and redrafting.

Not sure if call it mental or physical organization, but there is more crossing out of words and whole sentences, words that I try to fit into small spaces, or arrows to/from outlined areas below with more space. Like:

    +--------------+
    |  abcd abcd a |
    | bcd abcd.--\ |
    |            | |
    |  efgh ijkl | |
    | ijkl m nnn | |
    |            | |
    |      +-------+
    |      | abc a |
    |      | abcd  |
    +------+-------+

A technique that I don't know what to call, is the horizontal brace. Like the ASCII 123, but horizontally, to insert something between two words, above or below the line.

A handicap of the notebook, is that you can't find historical data/names/dates so easy, or synonyms... but as I iterate a few times over the text after the first draft, those gaps can be fixed latter while typing the text.

He says he uses Vim, which is on the computer.

He edited his comment to add that detail after I asked

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