Terry Elliot’s weblog talks about meeting with Ralph Fletcher, who I’ve read extensively, and Terry is sending him a note to ask him what he thinks about weblogs. Great idea. Terry says: “‘Weblogs’ have gotten me to write more in the last six months than in the two years prior. But I miss the tactile world of the physical notebook.” I couldn’t agree more. I look back with pride on the four years when I kept a notebook almost religiously because it served as such a good friend then and such a great history now. I wish I could have kept it up. But there just seems to be more connection with me to the keyboard, even though I do love the feel of the notebook itself. I rarely pick up a pen or pencil and really write these days. I actually hand wrote a letter this weekend for the first time in I don’t know how long, and it felt almost strange. Seems like my thoughts just flow more smoothly on the ‘puter. I have felt the urge lately to get into my personal webspace more often, however. This is for professional thoughts, I think. But I don’t seem to have as much connection to the personal one yet, and maybe it’s because I feel like I have some audience here, small though it may be. Maybe that motivates me more, I don’t know. Still, I do miss that feeling of having a confidant and friend on paper or online.

But the thing I love more than anything else with weblogs is the hypertext. That’s just something you can’t do with paper and pen, and I really think it adds so much to the discussion. Now, as I’ve complained before, the only problem is keeping track of it all. That’s why Mark’s Tinderbox technology is so intruiging. It seems like it might actually be a way of organizing some of these posts for easy retrieval and reference.