Why Writing By Hand Is Underrated

[markh]

Original Article:

 

http://contently.net/2015/03/02/resources/writing-hand-underrated/

 

 

TEXT:

 

March 2nd, 2015

Why Writing by Hand Is Underrated

By Marianne Hayes

 

Call me old fashioned, but I’m a big fan of handwritten notes—thank you cards, love letters, friendly reminders for my husband to take out the trash; I prefer writing these sentiments on actual paper with an actual pen. But in an age of 24/7 smartphones, tablets, laptops and the like, the truth is writing by hand has become a bit of a lost art.

For those of us who make a living with words, digital technology is often our go-to means for work. It’s the speed and accuracy with which we can type out stories, transcribe interviews, and complete research that have many of us reflexively reaching for our laptops.

Despite all this, writing by hand isn’t dead. In fact, it’s alive and kicking among many well-established writers like Neil Gaiman and Amy Tan. It turns out writing the old fashioned way—with pen and paper—is associated with a number of benefits for the modern writer.

According to Michael Gelb, creativity expert and author of Creativity on Demand, stream of consciousness writing is one of the most essential and powerful tools for getting your creative juices flowing. He also adds that this is rarely achieved when pecking away at a keyboard.

“It’s simply about writing without editing,” Gelb said, who believes that the discipline of printing your words helps support this.

For over three decades, Gelb has been teaching a nonlinear note-taking approach called mind mapping. This unique take on brainstorming uses visual cues, words, and pictures to generate new ideas. Gelb said this tactic can be a particularly powerful tool while fleshing out the details of an in-the-works story.

This raises a popular question among regular mind mappers: Is it better to do it my hand or with mind mapping software? (Yes, this exists.) While some prefer the speed that comes with going the digital route, many still attest to the creative benefits of generating by hand. For kinesthetic learners, the fluid movement of pen on paper is hard to beat. Others simply say they prefer the cognitive stimulation and feeling of freedom that comes with crafting a hand-drawn mind map.

“Mind mapping incorporates color and drawing pictures and images, which gets you to do a couple of things that create more benefit in terms of generating more ideas,” he explained. “It also makes it easier to see connections between your ideas, and that’s the big part. It’s not just generating lots of ideas; it’s seeing those connections that help you make a creative breakthrough.”

Bestselling author Elizabeth Sims seems to be on the same wavelength. Sims, who writes the first drafts of all her novels longhand before typing them out, uses a mind mapping hybrid of sorts to coax her creative gold out of its shell. She calls the approach stormwriting, which is inspired by improv’s golden rule: “Yes, and…” It basically embraces the idea of generating first, editing later—something Sims much prefers to do by hand.

“I get my best material when I follow that pen; when I let that pen free on the page,” Sims told me. “Also, and here’s another visual aspect, I like to be able to spread out the pages of a chapter that I’m working on and be able to look back and forth at what I’ve done, which is harder to do scrolling up and down on the computer screen.”

Sims, who has also spent part of her career writing for newspapers, thinks writing longhand isn’t just for authors and novelists. Magazine writers, bloggers, and copywriters can benefit from stormwriting everything from pitch ideas to interview questions.

For Sims, writing by hand both “works the best and feels the best.” After chatting with Virginia Berninger, PhD, an educational psychologist at the University of Washington, the idea makes sense. In one study of how children learn to write, Berninger found that kids tend to write more words at a faster rate and express more ideas when writing longhand. It should be noted, however, that the children were often “hunting and pecking” when they used the keyboard—a factor that may have stalled their ability to express their ideas in a more robust way.

“We have just published an article that shows that with cursive writing, you get advantages for spelling because with spelling, you have to link the letters into word units,” Berninger said. “Cursive writing actually has a relationship to both spelling and composing probably because of linking letters into word units, but also because it helps pick up speed to sustain your working memory while you’re writing.”

Additionally, research led by Dr. Karin James at the University of Indiana suggests printing letters by hand is a critical part of priming brain systems for reading acquisition. The idea carries some weight. Another 2013 study out of Princeton University found that students who took notes by hand—as opposed to on a laptop—had a stronger conceptual understanding of the material. When they needed to recall the material, they were better at actually applying what they’d learned.

The findings may inspire some freelance journalists to use pen and paper when researching the details of their next story.

“It may be more effective to take handwritten notes because handwriting engages parts of the frontal lobe involved with thinking on the opposite side of the brain from your writing hand,” Berninger added. “When you type, you are constantly going back from one hand to the other, and also the two sides of the brain. So it may be less efficient.”

Another added bonus of putting pen to paper? Berninger claimed you’re more likely to catch errors if you proofread your work using a hard-copy printout. “The reason is that paper reflects light, while computers emit light,” she said. “It’s harder on your eyes, so you miss some of the little details looking at a screen with emitted light. When it comes to checking things over for the typos, it’s better to have reflective light.”

Now, do I see myself transcribing hour-long phone interviews with pad and paper? For the sake of time (and Carpal tunnel syndrome), probably not. But since adopting Sims’s stormwriting technique a few month’s back, I can honestly say my pitches feel fresher and more interesting. And overall, I believe my creativity has increased. The pages of the notebook I carry with me everywhere may look like scribbly nonsense, but there’s a method to my madness, and I couldn’t replicate that madness on a computer.

 

 

 

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[Inkydinkydog]

I have a love/hate relationship with all the gadgets that own me. I love pens and pencils and paper, though, and use it as much as feasible.