OK. We’re not doing much writing, and today, we have another suggestion, one that might cause an unnecessary rush at the stationery store for pencils.

I was in one today, a place called Office Works, getting some folders to put the printed copies of my latest books about to be published.

I’d previously bought pencils – a box of 24, a motorised pencil sharpener, cards – though I intend to use these for a non-fiction book, pens – red, blue, black, erasable – for doing crosswords. I’ve not had to buy notebooks for a while, small and large, but the last time I got some journalist notebooks.

But, I digress…

It is suggested, and I think it’s a great idea, that at times it is better to write down the story, mainly because I can write as fast as the ideas come, and I cannot type that fast. Not without a million errors and a lot of indecipherable words.

There are exponents for both means of getting words on paper, but I have to say the majority of my original books were written in small notepads, at work and elsewhere, because ideas and storylines come to me at the sometimes most awkward moments.

Consider carrying around a notebook and a pencil or pen.

Otherwise, my other means of getting ideas down is a note-taking app on my phone, the best at the moment being Somnote.

And tired of waiting for the moment when the book gets underway, stand by, news on that front is coming.

I have a degree of scepticism because I generally get words down on my phone, the only implement that is nearby at all times, no matter where I am.

Of course, many years ago, I always travelled with little pocket-sized notebooks and a pen, rather than a pencil, to write. I still have all of these, several hundred in fact, in several shoeboxes in the cupboard in my writing room.

Over the years, I have accumulated many A5-sized notebooks I bought where there were stationery sales, and now use these to both make notes and write. I tend not to use the smaller notebooks now, but I have a hundred or so sitting in a drawer just in case.

But do you like to write using a biro, with smudgy ink, a pen with a rollerball tip with less smudge, a felt-tip pen, which, depending on the paper type, can leach through, making it difficult to write on both sides, a fountain pen with ink, the old-fashioned way of writing letters, and some of the older writers back in the day?

I remember my early days in school, grade three in fact, when we switched from pencil to pen and ink. It was very messy, to begin with, but I remember vividly being the ink monitor, the one who filled the ink wells, and discovering my schoolmate’s prelidiction for stuffing bits of blotting paper into the well for whatever reason.

Even now, it would be a messy way to write.

But the choice is yours.