Why write by hand?

This is an extract from Write What You Don’t Know: 10 Steps to Writing with Confidence, Energy, and Flow by Allegra Huston and James Navé. Purchase the paperback here. It’s also available on Kindle and Ibooks. Join our mailing list for updates on the launch of the online video course, coming in May 2023.

Write by hand if you possibly can. First, because it unplugs you from the digital space. Second, because there’s some kind of hot-wire that happens between the imagination and the page. Maybe it’s because we all learned to write by hand before we learned to type, or because when we drew, as children, we made an association between creativity and the hand moving across paper. Also, there are pressure points on the side of the hand that connect to the heart.

The pen is like a magic wand, inviting your body to relax and let buried memories and insights come out. When you write by hand, it connects you to the emotional tones in your body. The pen becomes an extension of your hand, and it urges you to keep moving. It’s a different rhythm than typing on a keyboard. You’ll start to notice that your pen reflects your mood: when you’re upbeat, you’ll write faster; when you’re more contemplative, you’ll write slower. You just feel more connected to the words.

You might say, “But I type so much faster than I write. I won’t be able to keep up with my thoughts!” Well, lucky you. You’ll just write messier. And if you can’t read what you wrote, remember: mess is currency, not a liability. Now you won’t be so tempted to go back and read over what you wrote, and start tinkering with it and judging it. Your rational mind will find it harder to take control of the dance and pull you out of the flow.

Writing on a computer has a finished look to it, and that invites your inner critic to butt in. It’s super easy to read, and super easy to change things, and before you know it you’re in editing mind or, worse, self-judging mind. You may be saying, “This is garbage” and “I can’t write at all—what do I think I’m doing?” And if that mental dialogue sounds familiar, you know what comes next: you give up.

When you write by hand, it looks like a rough draft. It doesn’t look like it’s supposed to be good, or grammatical, or anything at all. You can still go back and cross out or add a word or two in order to set something up, but soon it gets hard to read so the dynamic makes you want to move on, rather than keep messing around with your words.

Also, you deal with emails on your computer, you write business letters on your computer. When you sit at your computer, you’re likely to be in a “getting it done” frame of mind. Anything you can do to free yourself from the expectation of having to write well or having to accomplish a task will help you.

You may want to type up what you wrote later, with the thought that you might use some or all of it in a finished piece. So it seems like extra effort to write by hand, then type it up. Trust us on this one. The results will convince you that the extra effort is worth it.

If handwriting is absolutely impossible for you, there is one further option: dictate into a transcription app. It doesn’t work for everybody, but it might work brilliantly for you. Give it a shot.