The Benefits of Writing by Hand
Until recently, I couldn’t have told you the last time I wrote anything by hand. Having grown up in the age of computers, I’ve always been able to type so fast that handwriting seemed redundant.
However, when recently suffering through a bad bout of writer’s block, I was desperately trying anything to get the creative juices flowing again, and decided to try mixing things up. I turned off my computer, grabbed a notebook and pen, and just wrote. Before I knew it, I had a completed draft of a short story in front of me.
Was it a work of literary genius? Certainly not. Was it, in fact, almost illegible, thanks to my terrible handwriting? You bet it was! But it was still a rough draft, and that’s something I can work with.
Since then, writing by hand has become a big part of my writing process, and I’ve noticed so many benefits. Here’s why I think you should try it, even if you consider yourself glued to your keyboard:
It’s slower.
For most people, writing by hand is considerably slower than typing. This may seem like a downside, but it can actually be a huge benefit.
I’ve found that writing slower gives me more time to think about what I’m writing as I’m doing it, and it has generally resulted in much cleaner first drafts that don’t need as much editing.
It feels more creative.
Writing is a creative act, whether you’re composing sentences on a computer screen or on paper. However, something about physically creating the words with your own hands feels much more creative to me, and it really helped me overcome my writer’s block.
In a way, this isn’t surprising. It’s been proven that writing by hand uses more areas of your brain, and so with more of your brain in action, creative work becomes much easier.
There’s less risk of distractions.
Computers are incredible things, but for people who are easily distracted (like me!), they’re an absolute minefield. With everything from Twitter to YouTube and Pinterest at my fingertips, I’m extremely likely to become distracted, whereas when I sit at my desk with just a notebook and pen, I’m more likely to actually write, rather than procrastinate.
It stops you editing as you go.
For the longest time, I had a serious problem with never finishing writing projects. My computer desktop was littered with half-finished novels, short stories and articles like some kind of graveyard for writing, and I chalk this up to perfectionism, and my tendency to edit as I go.
I was constantly going back over what I’d already written trying to improve it and get it perfect before I moved on, but the problem was that it was never perfect, so I just never moved on. In the end, I would become disenchanted with the project and move onto the next shiny new idea.
Writing by hand, however, has helped me conquer this damaging habit. Whilst it’s easy to shuffle around, change and adjust the words on a computer screen, words set on a page in ink are another matter. Yes, you can cross things out, or tear our pages and start again, but otherwise you just have to keep going and fix the problems in the next draft.
It makes editing easier.
As well as fixing my chronic edit-as-I-go problem, writing by hand has also made the editing process itself much easier.
When you go back over a typed document, you’re simply rereading and tweaking, and bigger aspects like the structure can seem as if they’re set in stone. However, when you type up a handwritten first draft, you can easily make big changes as you transfer it onto the screen, and because you’re rewriting every word, it forces you to analyse it on a much deeper level.
Generally my second drafts have been making it onto my computer virtually ready to go, with only a couple more read throughs and tweaks necessary. Having to type up your rough drafts may seem like a hassle, but it has been saving me so much time on editing!
This has, of course, just been my personal experience, and perhaps this wouldn’t work for everyone, but why not try it? Sometimes I think that just changing up your writing process can leave you feeling rejuvenated and more creative, and there are so many benefits to writing by hand.
