Paper to Electronic is a pain

I may be called a traditionalist by some. Heck I feel odd enough about this issue myself. It seems no matter how used to all this tech I am that I have around me, I cannot just use it for all my creative purposes.

I am talking about the fact that I write my designs down. I sketch and write about the parts of the game design on a big pad of lined paper. The odd thing about this is of course that in the end it needs to be in electronic form, and I have several machines that should allow me to simply create this design information directly into them. Foregoing the trouble of taking my notes and writings and typing them up into MS Word. Still, the convenience of my pad.. and the feel of the ink from the pen... It keeps me writing and not typing.

So what do I do with the 20 pages I have written over the last several weeks? Well I start by talking nicely to my wife, who is an excellent typist, and she knocks them into a word doc for me (I am not so great or fast a typist, though I get by pretty well). Then I scan the sketches I have drawn and put them all into a holding directory, and from there I drop them into the Word Document.

Now I have an electronic version of the design, only.. well It is still an issue for me to work with. Once I have the design designed, I need to organise it in a nice flowing manner (not the manner or order I wrote it in I can tell ya!). With my papers I simply get to the floor and space them out and slowly organise them into a coherent whole. Finally flicking through the paperwork pile to enjoy this nice order. In the Word document I feel like I struggle to feel the flow, and it makes me organising it a much harder job to do. The biggest benefit to being in a document of course is the fact that I can edit anything written, not so easy in paper form.

Maybe I am old fashioned or simply stuck in my ways, but the tactile and connected feel I have for paper and pen will take a lot of persuading to go.

laters all
Da Voodoochief