37.0

I know why authors tend to have such odd handwriting. At least, I know why I tend to have such odd handwriting. Not that I consider myself an author, oh no. I'm not feeling THAT presumptuous today. Sorry to disappoint.:)

Anyway, it's pretty simple. A notebook page is not just a piece of paper. It is an incubator for a whole world. For a whole scenario. It's like growing sea monkeys only with a pen and it's much harder and it turns out cooler.

But, that scenario or story is still fragile. Nothing more than a fetus of a thought. It's squishy and under baked, and even though it's out in the open it's still sensitive to light. You have to protect it, right? From what? Well, from wandering eyes, of course!
See, that's the thing with writing in close proximity to other people like say, oh I don't know, a cramped 10th grade English classroom. Yeah.
You know those spots where you're talking about the transition of agricultural processes during the 1800s and people just start looking around to find something better to pay attention and they just happen upon your strange poem about dandelions and dementia.
God forbid that they read it and give you those oh-so-dreaded words of "What. The Hell?" to which you're now quite accustomed to responding with a harsh "Nothing."

Yeah, in order to avoid that horrendous scenario you have to disguise your writing in the most indecipherable chicken scratch anyone has ever laid their eyes upon. Then you write worry-free under a cloak of illegibility.



(this is a page from Neil Gaiman's American Gods notebook)