In grade school, PS 29 in Queens, New York, we had school desks with inkwells. The desks had a sloped writing surface with a space underneath for papers, pencils and pens. Ah, what’s an inkwell you ask? In the upper right hand corner of the desk, there was a little round brass lid, that when opened revealed a small glass container for ink. The inkwell was periodically filled with India ink by a responsible class member. We were furnished with steel nibs and holders.

Up in front of the classroom, the full alphabet was displayed, both in block letters and cursive; upper case and lower case. In the lower grades we learned to reproduce the block letters with pencils, forming basic words and sentences. In later grades, we learned to form the cursive letters in pen and ink. The girls formed beautifully shaped, symmetrical letters, and the boys generally produced scrawling hacked-up versions of the same. My penmanship was appalling.

But the hand-mind connection that cursive writing requires is a thing of beauty.A pen in hand loops and swirls, sometimes making straight marks or dots, always moving, mind to hand to pen to paper, letters seamlessly connecting to form the words. After years of writing memos and letters using block letters for the sake of legibility, a few years ago I decided to return to cursive writing for the sheer pleasure of it. So it was that when I wrote my book, I wrote it longhand, pen to paper. The lines I made on the paper flowed like the thoughts in my head; words poured like a gushing stream onto the page.

Yes, I’m typing this blog on a computer keyboard. But the keys go “clack, clack, clack”, every letter making exactly the same sound. Worse yet, when typing on my iPad, there is no sound at all, just the quiet sensation of my fingers touching…something.

So the next time a story idea strikes me, I’ll grab paper and pen and let the words flow; not with quill and India ink, but with a roller-ball pen and a legal pad. I hope you enjoy the result.