Writing by Hand

With all of the technology available to writers today, it is easy to lose the skill of handwritten composition. Technology makes the writing process vastly easier, but it can also distance us from our writing. That connection of mind to hand to paper is a different connection than the one from mind to hand to keyboard. There is a sensual quality to putting pen or pencil to paper. There is texture and touch and the sensation of carving words into a paper canvas that's missing when typing on a keyboard and watching words appear on a screen. Writing on a computer is much faster and infinitely easier to edit. But writing on paper is more grounded, closer to what we feel when we write. The computer screen creates a distancing phenomenon that makes our writing more abstract, more removed, less real. Writing on paper is an immediate experience that puts us in the moment, makes our writing concrete because we can feel it, and connects us with our inner selves. Typing on a computer can be fast and blurred, and composing can seem almost automatic, thoughtless. But writing on paper slows us down, makes us savor each word. There is more thought, more pausing to reflect, more clarity. I encourage my writing students to maintain that connection between mind and hand and paper and not become lost in the screens of cell phones and computers and other gadgets that take us further from ourselves instead of closer. And I encourage them simply because there is no other feeling quite like the touch of pencil lead on paper. We should all strive to be as close to our writing as we can. It will make us better thinkers and better artists.