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What physical tools do you use for composition?

Well, actually, I probably work primarily in this old school device called 'notebook' where I, you know, fill pages with illegible text, and then once I start to think that my text is coming together, very often I'll do a version of it—just type it into the iPad.

More from Rae Armantrout

What I do a lot is—I've brought some examples of this, if you want to see them—I write a lot when I'm walking. I take long walks and scribble in a notebook like this one. Just usually individual lines—let's see if I can find some examples. And then often I will transcribe them onto note cards.

More from Bruce Beasley

I think actual writing is almost all on computers now, but note-taking is probably 75% notebook and pen, and 25% take notes on the computer.

More from Amy Gerstler

Well, the last couple of books, I've written a lot of it longhand, which was a great surprise, because everything up until Averno was written on a typewriter. All of the composition.

More from Louise Glück

My files are up here to the right. They're artist sketchbook, so they're unlined. And I take notes from the reading I do in those, and I also include (in green ink) my own responses to the things I'm reading, or things that occurred to me that might turn out to be germs for lines. So, I do that longhand.

More from James McMichael

I mean, if I'm somewhere and all I have is a piece of scratch paper because I'm in a meeting and I get an idea. But I don't really do that often.

More from K. Silem Mohammad

My favorite kind of paper is very hard to get. I'm forced to use this because it's very hard to get this. I don't like the lines. I get that somehow society doesn't take this very seriously anymore. You can get it white, I don't want it white...I want it yellow.

More from Robert Pinsky

I draft poems by hand and then I'll go back to the computer and go sometimes back and forth. Prose, I write on the computer.

More from Michael Ryan

Well, if I'm generating new material, I will certainly do a certain amount of writing by hand. I capture, at various points, the material in a Word processing program. The one I work with most intuitively is Word 2003. I'm annoyed at all the extra ridiculous functionality.

More from Stephanie Stickland

I work in longhand, on yellow legal tablets, or just whatever. I have different notebooks that I have. That's what all these notebooks are here; these are my various writing projects in process. They each get their own little notebook.

More from Nance Van Winckel

I have pencils and pens and note books.

More from Robert Wrigley