> I didn't have an editor, so I wrote it as comments in a program - 10 REM it was a dark and stormy night...

The thought of writing short stories on a computer never struck me when I had a ZX Spectrum. I was too busy trying to get into the code for the Bomber game :)

Actually the first short story I wrote (a sci-fi epic for a lad of my age at the time) was tapped out on my Dad's BBC Micro. I remember printing it out on spool after spool of tractor feed and taking it to school for marking as part of an English assignment. I seem to remember being penalised for not writing it by hand and then being told it was "too graphic" there was "too much gore" (looking back at it when i was older I still couldn't see the graphic elements).

I have terrible handwriting but I was at school a few years before computers really made a hit in the UK's education system (I'm 31). I would often get marked down for poor handwriting and yet never quite understood why I wasn't allowed to bring in printed works. Even my art projects at school were best achieved on the one and only Archimedes (the art teacher there was more tech-savvy than the Math department).

Even now I take notes by hand but very few could read them. we're actually thinking of getting some tablet PCs here so that people like me can type notes in meetings rather than jot them down. It would be quicker and the notes can be shared more readily.

If I do have to write by hand then I prefer to use a retractable pencil or a 0.3mm artists pen. Most of my short stories these days are actually written by hand into small hardback notebooks with a view to typing them up into word as a part of the draft revision process. This has led to a stack of small hardback notebooks sitting on a shelf waiting to be revised ;)