If you have to write something - a blog, a report, a chapter - do you compose it straight onto the screen? There seems to be an acceptance these days that this is the norm. Certainly NaNoWriMo is based on it. Having churned out 50,000+ words in a month, successful participants, jubilant and exhausted, upload their work to have the word count verified. You can't do that if you've spent the month scribbling.
But for me, it's pen to paper every time. Composing directly onto the screen seems clunky and unnatural - it feels like my brain doesn't want to work that way. Put a pen in my hand, though, and thoughts and words flow far more freely.
For me, the physical act of writing is one of the joys of life and it seems to be an essential part of my creative process. Which isn't to say I write in glorious italic script or elegant cursive. On the contrary, I have the same rapid scrawl as my mother and grandmother. (Can handwriting be inherited? My brother's is remarkably similar to Dad's.) Moreover, I write in my personal shorthand, as I imagine most people do when they're writing swiftly and for their own benefit.
It has been suggested to me that writing in pen and then transferring the results to the computer is doubling the workload; and I suppose if you measure the work in terms of word count, then, yes, it is doubled. But remove the pen from the process and the output would be considerably reduced because my brain descends into clunky mode.
I love using a pen. Simple as that.
How about you? Typing or writing by hand? Does it make a difference to your creative output? And do members of your family have spookily similar handwriting?
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Comments (11)
Such an interesting topic for a blog post, Susanna, and the comments others have made are fascinating too.
I'm left-handed and my handwriting isn't anything like that of anyone else in my family. It's been interesting to see how (right-handed) English Rose learned to write. Her handwriting looks very British to me!
Even at work I would rather do complicated things on paper than on the computer screen. I'm in the legal world, so there are a lot of words and a lot of writing.
Wendy, you and I are opposites. For me, the pen releases the creativity. As for letters - I always write them by hand and I write screeds.
Cathy, there was an occasion when my mum and I both sent condolence cards to friends of mine. They arrived on the same day and my friend told me afterwards that she picked up the envelopes from the mat, saw the handwriting and said to her husband, "Why has Sue sent us two cards?"
Your comment about being left-handed is interesting. As I mentioned in the blog, my brother's handwriting is similar to Dad's, but my brother is right-handed and Dad was a lefty.
Thank you both for dropping by.
My two sisters have almost identical handwriting and I can never tell from the address on the envelope which one has remembered to send me a birthday card until I open it. Their handwriting is very similar to our dad's too. My handwriting is completely different to theirs but I'm left handed and they're not so that might explain it.