Something I've appreciated about writing out a book long hand is that…

Something I've appreciated about writing out a book long hand is that I can put a bracket around each section I write at a time, and put a date to it and sometimes a note; "Written in the lobby of a Charleston Hotel", or "On a free weekend while the boys are visiting their grandparents".

Transcribing it this morning I hit a striking bit. One section I noted was written at my then-girlfriend's apartment while she worked from home. The block ends abruptly because she finished work and we were free to go out for the evening. I wasn't always very disciplined or diligent with the writing because the next block is two months later and notated that the relationship had ended.

Of course anything you read that gives the illusion of a single cohesive telling was in reality punctuated by thousands of bits of life, but it's striking to be able to see it spelled out. To know that on a girl's dining room table I wrote "from where I lie" and then I closed my notebook and clicked my pen, not to reopen the notebook or click the pen again until two months later when I'd sigh and scribble down "I heard the shuffle".

And now, alone in my apartment on a holiday I type them out continuously as a single sentence.