This column is an experiment. Please bear with me.

For decades, newspapers and books were laid out by typesetters and rolled onto reams of paper, printed and distributed by the thousand. Each word was carefully selected by the writer and, for newspapers, the availability of column inches determined which ones would get read.

Putting word to page meant typewriters, ink stains and whiteout. The draft, write and revise process required effort, both manual and mental.

At last week’s parent-teacher conferences, I was glad to see that process is still taught to third graders. My son’s report on sharks included a pencil-sketched outline before a refined final copy.

The blogs of the internet era seemed to encourage the opposite of this thoughtful process. Typing directly into a personally owned website text box from a home computer and hitting publish skipped so many crucial steps — research, editing, thoughtful review — and yet it could reach millions more people in a fraction of the time and would exist in perpetuity. Pre-Y2K blogs are still collecting digital dust somewhere.

In the past two decades we’ve moved from the desktop to the laptop to the phone. I wonder how many of the words read around the world each day were typed on a phone’s keypad. The format encourages brevity and creativity. Tone is of utmost importance.

Which brings us to today’s experiment.

I was raised in the computer age and since high school I’ve always written on a computer. Word processing is second nature, with its copy, paste, spellcheck and a full screen.

I’m writing this column in the notes app of my phone. I started it on my couch, added some thoughts at PDX, and am currently tapping away in an Anaheim hotel room. Who knows where I’ll finish it.

I’ve heard some people write entire books on their phones. It sounds excruciating. Maybe better writers can maintain focus on a small screen long enough to finish a thought, but like so much of working with technology I’m finding myself distracted and irritable. It feels clumsy and unnatural, like driving a car while looking through a periscope. It also feels incredibly temporary, like making a shopping list or sending a text.

Whether I’ll ever adapt to thumb writing is irrelevant. It’s here, along with video production, graphic design, computer coding and so many other tasks that have required a computer for the past generation.

I’m in favor of putting creative tools in the hands of everyone.

Who knows? Maybe the next great American novel will be written on an app and published only online. There have already been several examples of “books” published directly to Twitter and through text messaging. The form limits word count and audience attention, a constraint that elevates the final piece.

But more likely it won’t be a novel, or recognizable in the old context of printing and publishing. Thoughtful writing and expression can happen on a papyrus scroll or in a three-ring binder or on a typewriter, and has since the invention of the written word.

For my experiment, I’ve found the ease of tapping out words on a portable screen doesn’t make up for the lack of focus and control.