High Wire Act: Why I Started Writing By Hand

Essays
April 11, 2012 | 36 4 min read

This essay is the first piece of writing I’ve done by hand, start to finish, since 5th grade, 1992. I drafted it using a Uniball Signo pen and black notebook while sitting at my desk. I edited it in the same way. When it came time to enter the essay into the computer so that it could appear on this website, I typed it in almost exactly as I’d put it down on paper.

I had several reasons for wanting to write by hand. The first is that I don’t have positive associations with writing on the computer. In fact, just thinking about a blank Word document makes me sweat. At the same time, switching from the computer to my notebook might do little more than prove the adage my dad likes to quote: Wherever you go, there you are.

But I think there are legitimate reasons to believe that writing by hand might be a better kind of process. I compose bits of essays in my head during a great percentage of my idle brain time — when I’m running or brushing my teeth or trying to fall asleep. I’ve noticed that the writing I compose in my head usually feels more fluid and articulate than what comes out when I sit down at my computer and try to translate those thoughts into typed words.

Now, there’s reason to be skeptical of the quality of the “writing” I do while lying with my head on a pillow and the lights out. We’ve all had the experience of having brilliant insights when we’re half-awake, only to emerge into the light of day and realize that our midnight ideas seemed brilliant only because the side of our brains that knows the difference between crappy writing and not-quite-as-crappy writing was turned off.

This is the first piece I’ve written start to finish by hand, but I’ve done a lot of drafting by hand over the past year. In that time I’ve noticed that both the experience of writing and the end product are different depending on whether I use a computer or a pen.

When I write by hand the correlation between the thoughts in my head and what ends up on the page is a lot closer to 1:1. This is good in one sense: When I write by hand the process doesn’t prevent me from putting into words what I already know. It might be bad in another sense: My ideas as they come straight out of my head aren’t necessarily my best ideas; it’s possible that all the reconfiguring I do on the computer produces more sophisticated thoughts and better forms of expression. I don’t know.

Writing by hand also alters the relationship between forming a thought and recording it in words. When I write by hand I almost always form a complete sentence in my head before I write it down. When I write on the computer I tend to start typing at the onset of an idea or a sentence that I then figure out how to complete during the process of recording it.

Put another way, my process for writing sentences by hand looks like this:

THINK THINK THINK THINK WRITE WRITE WRITE WRITE

Whereas my process for writing sentences on the computer looks like this:

THINK WRITE THINK DELETE THINK WRITE THINK DELETE THINK WRITE

I find my thoughts come out cleaner by the former process. Whether they come out better is a different and still unsettled question.

The different process leads to a different product. When I write by hand I use simpler words. In the last year I’ve typed essays that have included the words “garrulous,” “neophyte,” and “bivouacked.” When I’m walking and thinking I never use those words. Instead of “garrulous” I think “talkative” or “annoying sonofabitch.” Instead of “neophyte” I think “inexperienced.” My word choice tends to be simpler; my sentences also tend to be shorter. Because I hold a complete thought in my head before I write it down, my complete thoughts are briefer.

At the same time, writing by hand produces some flourishes that writing on the computer does not. When I write by hand I’m more intent on following the thought-track in my head. The whole process is slower, which allows me to notice detours in my thinking. That bit in the last paragraph about “garrulous” and “neophyte” is an example of one such detour. I’m almost positive that it never would have occurred to me to write that if I’d been working on the computer. Or if it had occurred to me, it’s a fair bet I would have ended up deleting it on the grounds that the detour was more interesting to me than to anyone else. You can be the judge of that.

I haven’t come up with a way to fit this thought into the rest of the piece but I wanted to include it anyway. This desire is an example of how writing by hand can be more self-indulgent than writing on the computer. Anyway, here’s the thought: Writing by hand takes more of your brain’s RAM than writing on the computer does.

I find writing by hand to be a lower pulse-rate activity than writing on the computer. Writing on the computer feels like going to war with myself. Consider, for example, that in the process of writing this essay I’ve crossed out exactly 47 words (and half of those were in one ill-considered sentence back in the sixth paragraph). If I’d been writing this on the computer the carnage would have been 10-times as severe.

Of course, easier processes almost always produce inferior results. Thus there’s considerable reason to be skeptical of writing by hand, at least if its only bona fide is that it’s less likely to give me a heart attack.

Overall I think there’s greater variance in the quality of the writing I produce by hand. The good stuff I write is cleaner, more honest, less stylized, more well-considered. The bad stuff is more obvious, more ponderous, more self-involved, maybe weirder. In fact, this is definitely one of the weirdest pieces I’ve ever written. Writing on the computer drives my writing towards some average value — I think/write/delete/think/write until I have something that’s decent but maybe less vibrant than the ideas as they were conceived in my head.

Writing by hand is higher risk, higher reward. More than writing on the computer, it’s a skill in its own right that can be improved upon, which I intend to try and do.

Image Credit: Piqsels.

, a staff writer for The Millions, writes the Brainiac ideas column for the Boston Globe and blogs about fatherhood and family life at growingsideways.wordpress.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @kshartnett.

Essays Notable Articles

I Guess It’s Probably Time for A Manifesto

Essays Notable Articles
July 7, 2003 | 4 min read

At work yesterday, after my first 15 minute coffee break, but before my 30 minute dinner break, I thought about some things. Among them was the idea that The Millions really ought to have a manifesto. A manifesto takes this messy collection of asides and non sequiturs and gives it purpose and meaning. You are no longer reading my uncollected natterings… you are reading a means. And ideally this is a means to an end. It seemed like a good idea save one problem. I’m not really a manifesto guy. They strike me as too rigid, too static. Will I adopt a manifesto and then stop delighting myself, and perhaps a few others, with the promise of a varied discussion on varied topics? On the other hand, I decided a while ago to devote the blog to books primarily, so what’s another artificial restriction anyway? Plus, what if my manifesto is purely a force for good, and by devoting myself to it, I provide a service to whomever encounters this little blog. Still, that word manifesto bugs me… so maybe it’s just a problem of language then. Perhaps if I think of it as a declaration, a statement of purpose, an annunciation, a mission statement… a pronunciamento if you will, perhaps then I will have less reservations about its formulation. Luckily, last night when I decided that perhaps The Millions needs a manifesto (or whatever you want to call it), a manifesto sprung fully-formed into my mind. It stems from a fact that most readers are not fully cognizant of: there is a concrete number of books that you or I will be able to read in our lifetimes. I’d say that on average, given my moderately busy lifestyle and the fact that I read the New Yorker in full each week, I am able to read approximately one book a week, and therefore, allowing for longer reading time for some of the behemoths that I occasionally undertake, about 50 a year. (n.b. I set a goal for myself to read 75 books this year, but it looks like I’ll be lucky if I hit 50). So therefore, I would estimate that I have probably read about 500 real books in my life, give or take a few dozen, and assuming I live until I’m 80 (and am still able to read at such a rate), I’ll read another 2750 give or take a few hundred. 3250 books may seem like a lot to read in a lifetime, but a look around the book store and you quickly realize that it is possible to read only a very small fraction of what has been written, and only a fraction of what is worth reading. Which brings me to my manifesto (or whatever), given that you and I will only be able to read a finite number of books in our lifetime, then we should try, as much as possible, to devote ourselves to reading only the ones that are worth reading, while bearing in mind that for every vapid, uninspiring book we read, we are bumping from our lifetime reading list a book that might give us a profound sort of joy.I know, heavy shit: death, obligations, the conversion of unimportant choices into important ones… that’s why I wanted to keep my mouth shut. But we have to look at this the right way. I am not making the declaration that if you haven’t read Dostoyevsky or Joyce, you are under some sort of moral obligation to do so. I am saying that, given the finite number of books that you will be able to read, you ought to read ones that are good for you, not so much nutritionally, but spiritually. I’m partly inspired here by the food writers that I seem to enjoy inordinately. Calvin Trillin refers in Feeding a Yen to seeking “deliciousness” wherever he can find it. He and his fellow food writers are not saying that if you don’t eat at this place or eat this type of food you are doing yourself a disservice; the goal is simply deriving joy from food as often as possible, ideally at every meal. The list of foods that qualify as delicious is different for different people. Likewise the list of books is different for different people. To reiterate: this isn’t about compulsory reading; this is about making sure that whatever you read will serve a purpose for you and that, as often as possible, this purpose is to bring you the curious sort of joy that only a book can. Clearly there are some problems with my manifesto, first among them being that, I need a word as good as deliciousness to describe the quality we are looking for in our books. Any suggestions???Lighter NotesMy good and old friend Hot Face has finally joined the rest of us and got himself a blog… follow his adventures if you dare. I continue to feel obligated to mention The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis at least twice a week. I do this because, more than any other book, I insist that you read this… Never have I enjoyed a book so profoundly. My excuse for mentioning it this time is that I just found an interview of Mutis in Bomb Magazine. The interview is conducted by another Latin American writer Francisco Goldman, who is an old friend of Mutis’ and provides the introduction for Maqroll.The book I’m currently reading refers to this historial event that I was unaware of: “Dan White, on trial for shooting and killing San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, was convicted of manslaughter instead of first-degree murder after his lawyer raised the Twinkie Defense, the claim that Dan White’s brain had been so deranged by Hostess Twinkies and other sugary junk foods that he should not be held fully responsible for his actions. Twinkies, the argument went, made him do it.” (Apparently this occurred in 1979, but it was news to me)Anybody know of any decent book blogs or websites about books?… I haven’t been able to find any besides Arts & Letters Daily and the various newspaper book sections, of course… I’d like to find something that’s a little less review focussed and more discussion focussed. (Something I hope to do here in the future).

Essays Notable Articles
| 4 min read
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Essays

The Millions Guest Contributor: Author, Kaye Gibbons

Essays
September 5, 2003 | 1 6 min read

I had the pleasure of making Kaye Gibbons’ acquaintance via email, and I have very quickly become a big fan. Aspiring writers and precocious readers could learn a lot from her. One of the more noteworthy events of Gibbons’ distinguished career was the selection of two of her books, Ellen Foster and A Virtuous Woman by Oprah Winfrey for her eponymous book club. I asked Gibbons how she looks back on this experience as a writer, and she was kind enough to send us the following reply:You’d asked how I felt about having two novels of mine on the Oprah Book Club. There’s so much to say about it that I’ll talk about it chronologically. Before the Oprah call, I was doing fine, amazing fine. But it didn’t start out that way. My advance for Ellen Foster was 1500. But I’ve always had a strong work ethic, and as I worked, as rights were sold and awards won, the money began to catch up to the blood and time I was putting into it. Unfortunately, being a rather eccentric, free-thinking woman in the South led others and eventually me to conclude that there had to be something pathological about me, and it wasn’t until two years ago that a twenty-year old diagnosis of bi-polar disorder was eradicated. Doctors made me feel forced to take drugs that took the edge off my creativity, but I’ve taken nothing in two years and haven’t ever felt and written better.My theory is that I want to write the best literature possible and have it read by as many people as possible. Living in NC, now half-time in NY, there’s a long tradition of writers helping one another, reading manuscripts, finding agents. Lee Smith introduced me to my agent, and then in 1997 I was able to pass that along when I read the first pages of Cold Mountain. Chuck [Charles Frazier] and I had had children at the same Montessori school for years and had been close friends. Things like that happen here all the time.But there’s still a great deal of intellectual isolation here–and that’s probably why I write and read as much as I do. The other day in the grocery store, an acquaintance asked me what’d I’d been writing since I finished Divining Women. When I told her I’d been reviewing books for Atlanta and Chicago, she asked, “They let you review your own books?” This is a strange occupation to have in Raleigh, not so much in Chapel Hill, where Alan Gurganus, Reynolds Price, and others live. But sometimes 20 miles feels very far away.So, with regard to Oprah, one thing her call did was to give what I do for a living a certain amount of validation. I’d been knighted by the French, won awards galore, sold about a million books, had a movie made, done 12 thirty-city book tours, but dealing with the perception that I was a local writer was often frustrating. I’d have an audience of 2000 in Michigan and then 30 in Raleigh, for example.What it took to manage it was self-esteem, and that generally comes from having a firm grasp of reality and what’s important, my children. A digression, because I anticipate someone mouthing about the Oprah money: I have a hard time tolerating the starving artist in the garret whining about how a writer writes a brilliant book that the publisher won’t promote and that no one is reading. It’s easier to be a victim than take action, write a better book, listen to an editor’s input, find a new publisher. I truly believe, because I’ve seen it, that if a brilliant manuscript exists, that if that writer has had enough gall, brains, energy, etc. to write it that he or she can get it to the right people. When a person sends me something that deserves publishing, I see it through the process. But ninety-nine percent of what I’m sent just isn’t good. A writer has to be a superb editor, and wishing a book good doesn’t make it so. When someone sends me something drowning in cliches, I tell them that language is to use, not to take easy advantage of. When Oprah called and said she wanted to put the two novels on her show, I was nervous about it diminishing my literary reputation, which sounds pompous to say. When she held A Virtuous Woman up and said, “America, you’ve wanted a love story, well, here it is,” I thought, Well, here we go.But, you see, her selling, what now, about three million books that month, didn’t change the basic nature of the novels or me. When Jonathan Franzen started running his mouth about the maudlin trash or whatever he said about her choices, I smiled and remembered that the first novel, Ellen Foster, is taught all over the world beside The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird. When it was finished, in 1986, it was sent to and read by Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, Gordon Lish, John Barth, and other people who, over the years, became dear to me. The whole Franzen thing got sort of tedious, and I didn’t have the time to get dragged into it.What someone like a Franzen doesn’t see was how poor I was growing up, a surreal state of poverty, and then that small advance, and how I worked my way up to financial security. I’m finally making now what many, many first, very young writers are getting, and I think it damages the soul. I finally have a house that doesn’t have something hanging off in disrepair. There’s the whole attitude now in music and writing of, I’m 21, Where’s my Big Deal? So, even though the Oprah thing seemed to come out of the blue, it had been earned. I think I’d have felt a little ridiculous if it hadn’t been. I used a lot of the money establishing a library at a local children’s home, which my daughters and I still maintain. We sat down and wrote checks, making decisions together about where the money went. Anything I put away personally was completely eradicated, gone, during a horrible divorce two years later. So, I found myself back at the beginning financially, having been reamed. But I’ve got this work ethic, and I’ve got the post-Oprah, broadened visibility. It’ll be okay. My daughter wasn’t able to go to college in NY, stayed here because of the financial drain of the divorce, but it remains, we will all be okay.I admire Oprah, enormously. As for the book club, she’s getting it done, getting people in bookstores. If there’s the criticism that the books she selects have taken on a certain sameness, well, so what? She’s not picked Danielle Steele, for crying out loud. I know for a fact, given the hundreds of letters, that people are reading, because of her, who haven’t read before.Let me tell you that when I got a letter from a mother who said her daughter’s impression of her totally changed when she saw her mother sitting down, reading a book at night in bed, how very proud this woman was, it is hard to say anything critical about the Oprah Book Club.The problem is that it is hard, to impossible, for people who live around books, who read them, own them, who have, like me, about 4000 books in the bedroom, to even process the notion that houses exist where there are no books except the ones the kids bring home from school. That’s a deplorable, elitist attitude. When I was house-shopping, I looked at about fifty upper middle-class houses, and only in a couple did I see more than a handful of books. I started asking the real estate agent if the sellers had hidden the books, thinking they were clutter.I have two younger teenagers, and I can tell you that seeing them reading anything is a blessing. I don’t go over and demand that they upgrade. And for those 350 kids who use the library Oprah made possible day in and day out because the public library in their town will not trust them to check out and bring back books, they’d wonder what all the snobbish hoopla was about. They’re able to do their homework better, their grades have improved, and that money was funneled directly from Oprah.I felt nothing but honored by the whole process, and only wish that I’d been in better emotional and physical shape at the time. I was 75 pounds heavier, weight that drugs I didn’t need had put on me, and I felt run down and a little thick in the head. But that was then. This is now. I’m the person I used to be before my marriage went to hell, and I’m nothing but glad that the Oprah thing is a part of my experience. If nothing else, local ladies who stop me in the grocery store don’t talk to me like I’m having to sell books out of the back of my car.I think anybody who wants to be successful at this whole ordeal of publishing has to take a certain amount of responsibility that I see so many people abdicating in favor of bitter comparisons. Language is a gift, and to be able to use language to make a living is one of the most joyful enterprises I can imagine. I try to take that joy and make what I’m writing a better book every time I edit it. I work 18-hour days. It is a long, lonely, spiritually hazardous occupation. But the joy I feel in putting even two words together in something of an original way has nothing to do with money or movies, nothing external. I think that people buy and read my books, regardless of Oprah, because I’ve always studied everything I’ve read, even packaging on the mascara I just bought, and tried to figure out why a particular word was chosen. You can get in a habit of alert, concentrated reading that comes back when the writing begins. I’ve learned to be honest with myself and cut what sucks.Kaye Gibbons lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her books include Charms for Easy Life, On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon, A Cure for Dreams, and Sights Unseen, as well as the titles mentioned above. Her latest novel, Divining Women will come out April 14th. And make sure to check out her cool new website, kayegibbons.com.Many ThanksThanks to Will Femia for allowing my self-promotion to extend to MSNBC’s Weblog Central. For those that are blog-fans, it is always a must-read.

Essays
| 1 6 min read
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36 comments:

  1. Another benefit is that when I write by hand, there’s no temptation to fiddle with the page margin sizes or font. I don’t switch to another window to look for more suitable background music. There are no brightness or color saturation controls to tweak until the work area looks “just right”.

  2. Think of great literature written hundreds of years ago. Those authors wrote by hand and we’re still reading their books today.

    My friend passed along this essay and I’m glad I read it–keep up the writing by hand. (By the by, I wrote this comment directly on my computer. It might have been more interesting if I wrote it by hand, but I have to leave for work in a minute. ;) )

  3. Thanks for this essay. I always wrote journals by hand in college and never strayed from it as I got into fiction and poetry. Someone early on in my writing life told me studies had been done where writing by hand created 20 percent more brain activity. Something like that. Aside from this, though, I find the computer difficult to look at for too long (especially after looking at it all day at work), and writing by hand feels like meditation, especially in the early morning or late at night.

  4. Two benefits from writing by hand that weren’t noted. First, the crossed-out words are still visible, and available for inspiration (they came from somewhere, didn’t they?), unlike deletions on the computer, which are gone forever. Second, the juicy visual placement of words on the page — those insertions that scale the right-hand margin, in the tiniest font, their smallness somehow related to their urgency.

    I like to write first drafts by hand and then put the handwritten paper on my copy stand while I type the second draft. A triangle forms between the paper, the screen, and my mind, and there’s energy there.

  5. Even as someone heavily immersed in digital publishing, I think writing by hand makes a lot of sense. It imposes another level of editorial where you are probably more closely reading the piece than you would had you first typed it out.

  6. Here I thought I was the only one with this problem. I always find that I start my written work by writing it by hand or I do all of it by hand first before entering it on the computer. For some reason, when I look at a blank screen I can’t seem to get anything out. I feel the slower pace of writing allows me to process my thoughts before I get them out, while when I type everything moves so fast that I don’t get to process it all as thoroughly as I hope. So I find myself stopping to think about what I was trying to write, and it all goes downhill from there.

    I also find I become distracted with the formatting and the misspelled words underlined in red, and the spacing, and the periods and the…you get my drift. It could be a matter of conditioning. Most people currently in their late 20’s and above were taught to write out their rough draft first and then type their final copy on the computer. It is possible that going to the computer first to type your first draft still feels foreign or not natural. Some theorizing…great post!

  7. Am certainly in sympathy with this. Last year I went to a specialist pen shop and said, “This is how I hold a pen, this is how I write: what’s the best pen for me?” They sold me a fountain pen for £16 (approx $25) and it’s turned out to be one of best productivity aids. Overall, I don’t think it’s ‘handwriting good, word-processing bad’ – it’s more a case of the two technologies each having their own strengths and uses.

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  9. I guess it is more of a personal choice. I don’t exactly agree that your brain is stimulated better when in front of paper – depends on how you train your brain.

    I prefer writing when I’m composing something big needing footnotes, to-dos, etc. However, while blogging or writing one-page articles, I do prefer typing. Basically, if something ends up typed (soon after), why write first? Especially, if it needs online research.

    It is just a choice.

  10. Pingback: Writing by hand | morris.wm

  11. I enjoyed the essay very much. The biggest draw back writing by hand for me is my penmanship. I have found that I try to write as fast as I think, and therefore the quality of my penmanship gets kicked down the rabbit hole with Alice and strange things along with it. I had a professor in college give me an A on a term paper with a note saying, “If the half of the paper I could not read is of the same quality of the half I could make out, you did very well. Slow down!” Perhaps I should try again slowing down my brain, or at least my writing speed.

  12. Great essay! I also have often thought about the differences and benefits between methods of writing. I prefer to draft on my typewriter and up until a year ago I even wrote blog posts and articles there that would eventually see light on the computer screen. But that took a lot of time. Besides from my more personal work, I use the typewriter when I have to work out a problem in my writing, the kinks seem to untie more easily—I think there is more space for my thoughts to flow. I love the tangibility and that my fingers get inky.

  13. There is a certain pleasure in the act of writing with a good instrument and the right sized notebook and quality of paper. Positive associations that can only serve to make the process more enjoyable.

  14. I only write by hand–at least the things that I’m trying to make count–unless I’m in a hurry, which usually doesn’t bode well for the writing anyway. But there’s also something to the process of allowing yourself to get it all down on the page without pre-editing as you compose. The real editing comes through in the drafting and re-drafting, I think, which is a process of taking the typed up copy and writing all over it about seventeen times. Ultimately, the computer is a tool for translating the work to a readable format.

    Come to think of it, I don’t really like reading words on a screen, either, so call me a luddite.

    So, yes, it does take more time, but what’s the hurry? Ars longa, vita brevis (I did have to look that up, one of the benefits of typing on a laptop.)

  15. I really enjoyed this essay. In a writing courses several years back, my instructor made the point that …”to backspace is to interrupt the natural flow”. Well, I believe that, and have developed a habit never to do it.

    This is not to say that I think it’s better to write- at least, to create- with some sort of word processor. Quite the opposite, I value the pen and paper- or graphite pencil, or colored pencils and or inks- yes, I really value the essence of the hand-to-paper experience.

    My problem with hand-to-paper when dealing with words is that I become so frustrated with not being able to write quickly enough. Everything tends to become such scribble, and then there’s the re-write- at which point I am thankful for modern word processing.

    Not to suggest that I’ve devalued the other- on the contrary, I’ve decided it should be better training for me to dedicate more time to handwritten story telling. Not only this, but to dedicate myself to doing it deliberately enough so that it remain very neat in hand. Forcing my mind to slow this way while constructing may eventually lead to more good surprises.

  16. RE: “Think of great literature written hundreds of years ago. Those authors wrote by hand and we’re still reading their books today. ”

    Actually, there is very little of what was written hundreds of years ago that we’re still reading today. So you could also make the case that writing by hand produces ephemeral creations that are doomed to disappear.

    For some processes I find writing on the computer more useful and for other processes writing in long hand. It’s just a matter of the right tool for the right job.

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  18. I’m part of the last generation to have written its first fiction on the typewriter. The beauty of that process — as with handwriting–was how it slowed you down and made you more familiar with your work, its scale and iterations. I find it hard to have that sense of familiarity with a screen and the virtual pages lurking behind the current page you’re typing on at any given moment. For the most part I treat the laptop as a typewriter, printing out pages for review, making multiple versions of everything, editing by hand. I often find that when I’m really stuck with a passage it pays to write it out by hand. It must engage your mind and imagination in a way that the computer does not. I also have the need to spread pages all over the floor when really grappling with a work as a whole or in pieces.

  19. neophyte: three syllables.
    inexperienced: five syllables.

    Garrulous: three syllables
    Annoying son of a bitch: seven syllables.

  20. I have a question: Do you think your writing by hand makes your prose more embodied? And if so, how would that manifest itself?

  22. Pingback: The beginning… « Novel Telegraphy

  23. As Egypt Steve mentioned…. not one of your examples for words chosen due to writing by hand is actually shorter than the computer-written words.

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  25. Pingback: This essay is the first piece of writing I’ve done by hand, start to finish, since 5th grade | RC Gale

  26. Bravo! I for one would write by hand other than for the problem of not being able to decipher it afterward (a genetic flaw in the basal ganglia).

  27. I am ancient enough to have attended college several years before personal computers were conceived for 99% of the population, to have had a penmanship teacher visit my first grade and teach us how to print and write cursive properly, putting us through gymnastic exercises to combat writer’s cramp and promote muscular development. So, writing by hand is not alien to me and it is how I have kept book and cooking journals for the past 35 years. It is how I begin the process of all writing, but it is not how I finish: word processing promotes faster, tighter editing. Despite the journaling, my penmanship has deteriorated to the point that personal letters are best generated on the computer if they are to be comprehended by the recipient. But in the end, writing by hand creates an irreproducible bond with thought and words that binds them to memory, and that’s why we should all keep at it some way.

  28. hi,
    Well said. Intreated writing long hand for all of those reasons, but reverted back to the computer after the first draft of my short story collection. It just is too cumbersome to have it later all converted to a digital file.
    Thanks for the article.
    Johanna van Zanten

  29. I loved this article. Thank you for sharing! I have been thinking the same thing for years, but thought it was my imagination until reading this. What a relief.

    If so many great works were written by hand, the only gadgets we still need are pen and paper. Nothing else.

    And to that I say just one word: Amen.

  30. If you don’t handwrite it first, then you miss out on the jolt of moving it into type.

    Writers need that jolt.

    We need all the jolts we can get.

  31. On 4/16 I asked if you thought your handwritten prose was more embodied and if so, how would that manifest itself? You then asked what I meant by “embodied prose.” To me ep is less abstract, more concrete; it appeals to our senses with descriptive images that evoke touch, taste, smell; it can be intensely visual but also visceral; nouns can literally refer to the body; action verbs can physicalize experience. Sports writing falls into this category; ditto fiction and reviews that require bringing experiences to life. Embodied prose can also be poetic; e.g., he punched her in the arm until her mind turned blue. To these questions let me add another: You have said that the relative slowness of handwriting seems to produce writing that is simpler and more direct. I’m also wondering if writing by hand gives you more direct access to your thoughts and feelings—for better and for worse—because there is no digital interface to distance you from your material. By distancing I refer to your editing your sentences before you complete them. Your article made me wonder if the body’s processes could be argued to be more efficient/economical than our speedy, time-saving computers.

  32. Pingback: Skin a Cat: Keeping a Journal | thethingaboutflying
  33. Pingback: #50 Skin a Cat: Keeping a Journal | thethingaboutflying
  34. Pingback: Hand writing | eric.r.shelton

  35. Great article! I just have 2 suggestions. The first is to use draftin.com as it is amazing for writers who want to write without having the need to delete words. The website also saves drafts of your work so you can compare your work. Also it is free. Second suggestion is to use a program like Dark Room to have a distraction free writing environment set up. It can be downloaded from cnet and is free. I use both to write and it has helped me very much when I write. I no longer need paper and pens.

  36. Thank you very much for your insights.

    I used to write a lot, always by hand, when I was a kid or teenager, and I’m on a personal project of going back to this habit, maybe start publishing. I also noticed that writing by hand was more creative for me too… of course it’s a matter of choice, but you explained very well your feelings about it and I think you are right.

    That said, I think it’s possible to take the same writing workflow for good writing software (maybe not a word processor), yet that requires discipline and clear thinking. For example, training oneself to think a full sentence before typing instead of being compelled by the keyboard to type all the time.

    In any case, I’m learning a lot from your article, thank you. (Sorry, english is not my native language).

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Essays

Tis the Season

Essays
November 30, 2004 | 2 min read

It occurred to me over the Thanksgiving weekend that after three years of paid participation in the holiday retail experience, this year I am free to don my civilian garb and stroll blithely past the giftwrap lined trenches in which I used to toil. I have to admit before I started working in a bookstore I never gave much thought to what the month of December means to America’s retail army. But then, on December 1st, 2001, I was hired as holiday help. I hadn’t been at my new gig for longer than a few hours when I was informed that, since there was no time to train me on cash register, phones or anything else really, I would be “designated giftwrapper.” This came as quite a shock. Up until that point, every single gift I had ever purchased had been wrapped by my mother, sisters, or girlfriend. If none of them were available, I would simply present the gift to its recipient in the shopping bag that it came in. That December, though, I put in many hours at the “wrapping station,” struggling with fists full of Scotch tape and wrapping paper as disapproving customers peered over my shoulders.For many stores, and, it seemed, my independent bookstore in particular, the holiday gift-buying season is vital. Between success and failure lie two dozen days in December. There was a lot of pressure, but it was fun, too. With double the staff and quadruple the customers, the crush of human generosity was heartening.But the holidays bring out a certain amount of desperation, too. Every year, I fielded scores of questions that were variations of this one: “My dad’s a lawyer. Do you have any books about lawyers?” Or worse: “What do you think I should get my mom?” As I got good at it, I could watch the blind panic fade from their eyes, reassured that the book that I had just slid into their hands might do the trick. As Christmas neared, the real tough cases came out. The frantic parents emptyhanded on the way to the houses of their grown children, or the daughter who decides at the last minute that she’ll get a gift for her step-mother after all, if only just to make her feel guilty. Saddest of all were the drunks on holiday-inspired benders who might stumble in a day or two before Christmas, forgetting why they were there but pulled by some ingrained impulse to try to buy something for someone.I’ll just be a regular shopper this year, but miss I’ll the frenzied energy of working at the bookstore, and for many Decembers to come, I suspect that the peaceful snowfall of whatever northern clime I inhabit will remind me of December drama at a bookstore nestled in the palm trees of Los Angeles.

Essays
| 2 min read
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Essays

Leonard Cohen, Master of Prose

Essays
January 4, 2005 | 3 min read

Leonard Cohen turned 70 a few months ago and, amid the celebration, was the subject of countless pieces of reflection. Most of them concentrated on the music career that has consumed the last half of his life, and on the poetry which runs as a current through everything. But this is not a music blog, and I’ve never felt particularly confident writing about poetry. (Though I implore each of you to get your hands on his various volumes of poetry and at least his first three LPs. No record collection is complete without Songs from a Room.)So this, then, is about Leonard Cohen, master of prose, and in particular, his first novel – The Favorite Game. By 1963 a 29-year old Leonard Cohen had already given the world two volumes of poetry and was living in London, reflecting on his youth in Montreal. And so we meet Lawrence Breavman, poet-adventurer. The Favorite Game weaves past with present, with an acute comic eye for Breavman’s childhood — his years of discovery of his place within and without his family, of friendships and girls. These scenes cut in and out of a later narrative which finds Breavman in his college days, still prowling for adventure, now adding words to his arsenal of weapons to conquer the hearts of women.Poetry is “a verdict,” Breavman tells us, a judgment passed, and quite distinct from the creation of the words themselves. When he writes them, when he utters them, they are “propaganda,” Breavman confides to us. They are spoken for their luring powers. In his childhood, Breavman experimented on unsuspecting girls with hypnosis with much the same intent. The boy becomes the man.Through it all, childhood and youth, there was Krantz — Breavman’s best friend, partner-in-crime. Devil in his ear. Their friendship was an ongoing dialogue played for comic effect, a running commentary on the world around them. It gave them an awareness, a self-awareness. A detachment.And then Krantz leaves. His next chapter will happen, unwritten, in England. “We’ve got to stop interpreting the world for one another.” And so the dialogue is suspended, but not immediately. The early post-Krantz days find Breavman still the prowler, still soaking up experiences, and still invoking Krantz’s name as if he were still there. Still devil in his ear.Enter Shell. We’d met her before. Snippets of dialogue and confidences popping up in the early narrative. But we’d never been properly introduced. Now the narrative catches up with their meeting. In New York now — grad school. Breavman and Shell. Shell and Breavman. They become a closed world to themselves. The tone becomes more serious. More adult. Krantz is no longer in his ear. We don’t know yet whether Shell will wind up as merely another conquest, another shadow, another scar. We do know that this seems different. She not only enters Breavman’s life, she anchors it.When Krantz’s name is mentioned late in the narrative, it’s jarring. A name from the past, from a different Breavman. We realize how different his world has become. And then Krantz is back — but he’s changed. Or maybe Breavman’s changed. Either way, the suspended dialogue is released, and it crashes.There’s more. Old voices call Breavman back. They mix with the new voices. Pretty soon the new ones become the old ones, and Breavman’s life continues, unwritten, beyond the pages of the book.Three years later, Leonard Cohen would give us Beautiful Losers, his only other novel. Its a stunning work, stylistically rich and daring. It deserves its own discussion, but not now.There’s a common and rather irritating perception of Leonard Cohen as a harbinger of doom. The song “The Future” and a few other cautionary tales aside, I’ve never really bought into this. Maybe for some its the deep voice of the later records. But then they can’t be really listening to the words. So maybe it’s the depth of the words. He digs deeper into life than most writers, but he doesn’t just reveal foreboding. He reveals absurdities with wit. He reveals longing with passion. And he reveals loss with sadness.This is not the stuff of dread and gloom. It’s the stuff of life. And we’re all the richer for his passion.

Essays
| 3 min read
Essays

Books to Laugh with

Essays
February 9, 2005 | 3 min read

In 2001, the New Yorker treated faithful readers to Fierce Pajamas, a comprehensive survey of humor culled from the 75-year history of the magazine. When I heard about this, my well-honed cat-like reflexes snapped into action and, three years later, I bought the book. These short pieces, known as “casuals,” include parodies, absurdities and flights of fancy. They showcase the wit of some of the giants in American humor – from E.B. White, through S.J. Perelman and George S. Kaufman, on up to Steve Martin. And along the way, two of my favorites – Woody Allen and James Thurber.As is often the case with anthologies, I wind up seeking out more complete works from specific writers. In this instance I was led back to my own bookshelves, to the dusty ‘A’ section in the top-left corner of my wall, for my small but complete trio of Woody Allen books. This necessitates the use of a stepladder because in addition to being obsessively organized – fiction alphabetized by author, then chronological within each. I won’t even get into what I do to my non-fiction – I’m also quite short and can’t actually reach the top shelf of anything in my apartment.Getting Even, Without Feathers, and Side Effects collect Woody Allen’s written humor from the mid 60s through to the late 70s, in 5-year chunks. I think you can get them all in one volume now, but I’m quite partial to my pocket-sized second-hand paperbacks – perfect for explosive bursts of laughter on the subway. There’s hardly a page without some jaw-droppingly hysterical absurdist musing, non-sequitur, or parody of some philosophical tract or of a psychological case-study. Even a few one-act plays for good measure.Getting Even contains “The Metterling Lists” – essentially a collection of Herr Metterling’s laundry lists, spun-out Woody-style into a psychological and biographical profile. And “The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers” – a succession of correspondence-chess letters, each one more politely sarcastic and seethingly hostile than the last.Without Feathers includes “God” – a now-classic one-act play in which an actor and a writer are on stage bemoaning the lack of an ending to their Greek play. “Audience members” join in the scenario and eventually the melee includes cameos by a wayward Blanche Dubois, and one Mr. Woody Allen, the Creator himself. Reality is turned on its head, then rolled up in a ball and shot through a hoop in this Pirandello-esque comedy.Side Effects has “The Kugelmass Episode” – a hilarious story in which our hero, with the help of a magician, escapes his humdrum world and retreats into the lusty pages of Madame Bovary for a succession of romantic encounters with Emma, confounding Flaubert’s readers and scholars with the sudden presence of a balding 1970s New Yorker in Emma Bovary’s boudoir.Fierce Pajamas also led me to the “Ts,” to my somewhat haphazard collection of James Thurber books. Many years ago, my good friend Doug Holland, always a step or two ahead of me, introduced me to the world of Thurber. Humorist, cartoonist, editor, James Thurber was a mainstay of the New Yorker for decades.Out of the half-dozen books I have, my pick would be My Life and Hard Times, a humorous memoir written by Thurber in the 1930s, replete with illustrations by the author, looking back on his youth in turn-of-the-century Columbus. Deceptively gentle and low-key, his stories often build to a frenetic climax. A common theme is how misunderstanding leads to rumor leads to panic. Seems simple. Yet no one does it quite like him.A few weeks ago, as I was thinking of what to say about Thurber, fortune shone as my fellow Millions-contributor Patrick posted a great piece about the Paris Review, and in particular “The DNA of Literature“, a treasure trove of archived interviews that you can read on their website. I’ve been exploring this site in the weeks since then, and one of the first things I came across was a great interview (pdf) from 1955 with James Thurber himself!In it he speaks of his astounding memory and how he can juggle hundreds of details in his mind. And of how he never knows until he’s typing away exactly how his stories will develop. He talks about the “New Yorker style” of humor in which you take your initial gleeful idea, your hilarious impulse, and then rewrite it, playing it down. Thurber also reflects on Harold Ross, the great Editor of the New Yorker, an unread man with bloodhound instincts who demanded clarity of his writers, and, to a man, kept them from being sloppy. Thurber also talks about his wife, his sounding-board, who it seems prefaces everything she says to James with “Goddammit Thurber…”Always writing, always crafting the perfect phrase, always keeping it concise and clear, Thurber was the consummate New Yorker humorist. His humor took over his body. So much so that when turning a phrase over in his head, his daughter grew so concerned with the look on his face that she asked her mother: “Is he sick?” to which Thurber’s wife reassured her: “No, he’s writing something.”

Essays
| 3 min read
Essays

Battle of the Sexes by Patrick Brown

Essays
April 25, 2005

Earlier in the year, I took a look back at the books I’d read in 2004. I was surprised to find that most of them were by men. I’d always thought of myself as a guy who reads good books, regardless of who wrote them, but the facts proved otherwise. My girlfriend, meanwhile, pointed out that her reading list was split fairly evenly between the sexes. The only conclusion I could draw is that I am a chauvinist pig. Well, maybe not, but for a guy who claims he has no biases, my reading list was well stocked with white men and little else.To remedy this, I’ve decided to try a little experiment this year. For the entire year, I am alternating between books by men and women. Aside from enforcing gender equality, this has so far leant some much needed discipline to my life.Some of you will no doubt say, “But Patrick, I’m not a sexist pig. I don’t have to force myself to read women, it comes naturally.” My hat is off to you, but I’m sure you have a literary blind spot that could be addressed with a program like mine. Maybe you only read contemporary literature. Perhaps your reading list is strictly non-fiction. Maybe you haven’t read a short story collection cover-to-cover since college. If any of these are true, I recommend developing a little curriculum of your own. You’ll find your literary world blown wide open, and you’ll introduce yourself to some great books you might not otherwise get around to reading.

Essays
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