silverguide.site –

Lately, it doesn’t feel like my ideas have been too good. I don’t mean that I signed up for an ultramarathon despite never running more than a breathless 5k, or took a chance on five-day-old leftovers. It’s more that I’m in a bit of a creative lull. That’s fine, you might say – but as a freelance writer, having a constant stream of ideas is essential.

Of course, ideas rarely show up when you want them to. They pop into your head when you’re staring out the window on the morning commute, walking to the shops, or working on an entirely different project. That’s when I usually pull out my phone to capture my brainwave. The end result? My Notes app is the digital equivalent of an overstuffed handbag.

There must be a better way to not just capture ideas, but develop them, so I decide to try a different tack and use a notebook. A digital one, to be specific: reMarkable Paper Pure.

I love the tactility of notebooks, but I’ve wasted plenty of time flicking through pages to try to find that brilliant idea I definitely remember writing down somewhere a few weeks ago.

reMarkable Paper Pure solves this dilemma, combining the organisational benefits of connected technology with the simplicity of a notebook. Its textured matte glass screen and its marker are designed to mimic the experience of putting pen to paper – which it turns out is much more important than we might realise.

Handwriting might be becoming a lost art, but a growing body of research shows that the process has important cognitive benefits. A 2024 brain imaging study by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that the complex coordination and motor skills involved in writing by hand create elaborate patterns in the brain that promote learning.

A separate study by the University of Tokyo also found that setting pen to paper boosts brain activity significantly more than typing.

Many well-known creatives have handwritten first drafts, including Quentin Tarantino, Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood, who wrote the entirety of The Handmaid’s Tale by hand. I’m not planning on scribbling a 100,000 word masterpiece on my paper tablet, but I am curious if the slower, more mindful process of longhand writing can make me more creative.

What’s immediately striking about the reMarkable Paper Pure is how lo-fi it looks. There are lots of clever features, but no rows of brightly coloured icons vying for your attention. You can choose what type of pen you want your marker to act as – I choose a ballpoint – and there are a variety of templates (potentially a nightmare for someone as indecisive as me, but you can switch it at any point). Opt for a pencil and your marks will even look authentically scratchy on the page.

The first thing I do is set up a dedicated notebook for feature ideas and start adding thoughts as and when they hit me. But unlike on my phone’s Notes app, I don’t just drop and go. Instead, I write draft pitches, sketch mind maps and give my imagination space to wander.

This is made easier by the fact I haven’t got notifications flashing up, or the temptation of 13 internet tabs to click on. Usually, when I get excited about an idea, I immediately jump into researching it. Not only can this end up with me distracted by something unrelated, but the research itself becomes a form of procrastination. Sitting with a blank page and forcing myself to work through an idea on my own before I go down an internet rabbit hole feels uncomfortable at first, but it means I can think more clearly and come up with fresher angles.

One evening I go into the garden for an hour with a cup of tea and my reMarkable Paper Pure, leaving my phone inside, and make more progress on mapping out a feature than I had during a whole afternoon on the laptop.

Writing by hand feels more mentally freeing, too. Typed words just look more official. When you scribble by hand, you know there will be mistakes so you just go with it and let the pen guide you. You can easily erase things on reMarkable Paper Pure, but I quite like my crossings out – it’s nice to see how I arrive somewhere.

When I want to develop my thoughts into something more formal, reMarkable can convert my handwriting (even my spidery sprawl) into text, which I can email to myself or grab from the desktop app once back at my computer.

You can also import documents and annotate them. I’ve long printed out my work and scribbled edits in the margins, and this is a much tidier way to do it. Having my ideas all in one place helps me see patterns, too, and a handwriting search function means I can easily locate that definitely amazing thought I had the other week.

Unfortunately, reMarkable Paper Pure can’t improve my handwriting, but practice makes perfect – and, after experiencing the benefits of putting pen to paper, I intend to keep scrawling.

Made for Thinking
Find out more about replacing your notes and printed documents with a digital notebook that feels like paper at remarkable.com