Ten months ago I decided to start a personal collection of quotations and comments and the like, and I decided to do it by hand, in a small hard-cover notebook of lined pages.* My primary motivation was to be able to find those writings and their sources -- author and publication -- and to date the day of entry. It's worked out surprisingly well. Not surprising that I now have a gathering of intellectual signposts, that was what I expected. What I did not expect was the intellectual impact of hand writing the materials. My handwriting has never been a work of art, a sort of sloppy cursive, so I was forced to slow down and work on each word. I also discovered that I often skip over or unconsciously modify a word, substituting my own perspective to some degree. I early on decided not to worry about appearance, and if a word is put down in an illegible manner, or if I accidentally skip ahead or substitute a modifier, or so on, that I will proudly scratch out the error (I'm writing in ink, not pencil). By contrast, if I were to be typing this journal into my laptop it would appear neat and orderly. But that's not my goal. It would be so easy for me to copy and paste from many of the sources, but that would allow my lazy mind to skim it over and read it for what I want it to say, not necessarily reading all the details that the original writer struggled to put in. The fact that I cannot easily, if at all, index the notebook is another unexpected benefit -- when I want to find something in the notebook, I have to skim it in the general date area I entered it (if I recall it) and often my eye and mind settle on some other nugget that piques my interest and reminds me of another truth or perspective. This is especially true with material I find in some book from my library. Unless I take the time to locate a copy of the book on line -- which I refuse to do -- I am forced to write it by hand in my journal. The irony is that the Google or its friends have figured out my scheme -- I swear I never wrote or talked about this before -- but now I'm being besieged by ads for optic readers that would allow me to e-highlight non-internet text and feed it right into my laptop, trying to entice me to move my journal online. But I won't give in -- the handwriting bit has made the journal much more personal and much more valuable to me. Go ahead, call me a Luddite. I embrace it. *The notebook, ironically, was a bit of swag my wife picked up at some swanky conference, by a company called Genomenon, "AI Driven Genomics."
Hi, Hope it works out for you. Personally I discovered years ago that ever since I've been using computers, I can't actually write anything by hand - it's simply too awkward and I can barely sign my name! My fingers have forgotten how! Cheers, Greg.
It is working out for me, surprisingly well. I invariably discover bits and places at which I am glossing over the precise words and wording, and the fact that I have to slow down to write legibly lets it sink in more. Not, of course, that I have given up using keyboards as my primary mode of recording and writing, but the handwriting journal (first volume is nearly full) is a useful auxiliary. Of course the keyboard and spellcheck make things easier -- I just had my computer remind me how to spell auxiliary -- but by letting the computer highlight and change the error I "fixed" it without necessarily learning where my mistake had been made, or even that there was a mistake. And, BTW, my signature is worse than ever. Cheers back at you. Graham.
Great post, Graham. My handwriting is atrocious. Aside from jotting down notes on a pad, I can't really remember when I last wrote anything of substance by hand. I, too, need to get back into handwriting more. My handwritten signature isn't too bad.
I do a lot of writing by hand, and most of it is reasonably legible. Okay, a lot of it. Some of it. By me. Most of the time. Sorta.
I may have shared this before. My high school English teacher once walked up to the chalkboard and drew a column of nearly straight lines. She turned toward the class and said, "Mr. Lewis, what does this mean?" I said I didn't know. She said, "well, your essay is full of this." I think I still got an "A" on it, so either she persevered or gave me the benefit of the doubt.
I do most of my writing on a keyboard...however, sometimes i am out and about and I suddenly get an inspiration for a scene and I will write it down on whatever I have available: receipts, napkins, etc. When I get back home I will transcribe my scribbles from the mustard-stained napkins to a more legible word document
I never stopped writing by hand. Now, don't get me wrong, I can't write print to save my life. But I do write cursive. There's something therapeutic about it. It also develops literacy as you're engaging more senses. And really, when you get good at it, it's not like it's any slower than typing it out. I do not mean to toot my own horn but to get it to this level, you have to be so efficient that you're not even thinking about how to form each letter. I'm also not entirely sure why I write like this either, because this isn't the cursive I was taught in school. I was seriously thinking about doing one of those ASMR thingies on YouTube where I write out my drafts as a way of advertising my book.
Just closed my first volume, running from April 16 of last year through today. Opens with a brief quotation from the late Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh ("Are you sure?") and ends with a rather longer quotation from Mark Coleman, a meditation teacher: "So, as part of healing the heart and the past that keeps cascading into the present, we practice extending forgiveness to ourselves for our past choices and actions. We aim to fully accept what happened, take responsibility for it, and form a strong intention to learn from our past and live more wisely, with more care and compassion. We also extend forgiveness to ourselves in the present and for the future, knowing that, being human, we will make other choices that we may live to regret. We aspire to hold true to our intention to act with as much integrity and kindness as we can muster, but we forgive ourselves when we inevitably mess up." In between are other sources such as scientists, historians, novelists, poets, short-story writers and whatever. I didn't write every day, and some days I wrote a few entries. But I find value in each one. And I'm excited about beginning volume 2.
