Onward for The Cramped

I’m just going to put this as plainly as possible; I have not been giving this site the attention it deserves. That’s going to change. Here’s the plan…

I started The Cramped to promote, endorse, and celebrate, the act of writing by hand or other analog writing tools like typewriters. There are plenty of great pen and paper blogs that do a fantastic job on reviews and stuff to buy. I wanted a site that focused less on reviews and buying stuff and more on the “What comes next?” of using those tools. That remains my mission here. Because of this, you will continue to see a lot of links, quotes, and original posts that speak to this idea.

That doesn’t mean you wont see the occasional review or links to new products or mentions of things I love and use. You’ll find some of that here now and will continue to moving forward. There just will be far less of that than you may see on other pen and paper blogs because it is not the focus.

I also wanted to fill some gaps that I felt were missing in the broader conversation in this area. But, I knew I couldn’t do it myself. So, despite the fact that I’m right-handed, I worked really hard to reach out to a left-handed guest writer to create a really great guide for those folks. I also love this guest post about improving one’s penmanship. I love guest posts. I want this place to have a variety of voices. I plan to reach out to more folks to write guest posts not only about subjects I think are not well covered but, also, from voices (women, people of color, etc.) that are not well represented in this space.

I’ve updated the What We Use page to reflect my current tools. That had not been done since the site started in 2014. Expect other contributors to show up with their current items in the coming days.

I also want to re-emphasize that there is no “schedule”. There may be days where there are no new updates here. I don’t post things for the sake of posting things to keep you “engaged” with our “content”. I value your time and attention and only post things I think are worth them. There may be times where noting reaches that high bar, and that’s as planned too.

If you have something you’d like to see here, feel free to get in touch. If you are interested in writing a guest post, please get in touch. If you’d like to in any way chime in or just say thanks, get in touch. The bottom line, my email inbox is always open to you.

Thanks for reading.

Onward!
Patrick Rhone