Stop Using Pencils!

Why you should always pick up a pen

Pick the pen!!

I handwrite things for the same reason I exclusively use pens and avoid pencils at all costs.

A quick note. I’m a lefty. Handwriting anything sucks because it just smudges, turns the side of my hand the color of whatever tool I’m writing with, and is ridiculous uncomfortable on spiral notebooks.

Still, I constantly find myself reaching for the printer paper at work to take notes, brainstorm ideas and write out tasks. A lot of my coworkers and friends don’t get it. My boss has asked me a few times why I’m handwriting it, he needs it typed.

Trust me, it’ll get typed. I lose things like it’s my job, so everything I write because a note or document in the cloud pretty quickly. But first, I handwrite it and I can trace (writing utensil pun alert) that back to my junior year of high school.

One of my Spanish teachers refused to let us use pencil.

Because you can erase mistakes. You can erase your errors. And then what happens?

You don’t learn from them.

This was such a wild lesson to learn in Spanish class and I can’t begin to describe how much it improved my Spanish writing skills. I stopped making the same grammar mistakes repeatedly because I could visualize when I had messed it up the first time, since it was still on my paper. I had the proof. I hadn’t erased it anywhere and all of my mistakes were visible. You can use the wrong pronoun once, for example, but when you see it crossed out and replaced, you don’t do it again.

You can make the same argument with typing on the computer as compared to handwriting. I can backspace and delete all I want on my laptop, in a Word or Google doc. But you can’t “esc” a handwritten error, especially not when it’s in pen.

Here’s the perfect example of an easy mistake to correct.

It’s inked on that paper and in your mind, for much longer than an erasable or backspace-able mistake.

You want to learn from your mistakes, not erase them. And the best way to do that is good old fashioned handwriting and pen.

Try it out yourself and let me know what you think. And please, for the love of everything, don’t pick up an erasable pen.

I make plenty of mistakes as a ghostwriter, too! Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned about myself from the experience.

What I’ve Learned as a Ghostwriter

Thanks for reading Writers Guild — A Smedian publication

Write for us. Share your stories on ManyStories.com to reach more readers. Auto-tweet your stories on repeat with Signal to increase engagement.

If you enjoyed this story, please recommend 👏 and share to help others find it!