I am curious to see what everyone prefers. Myself, I started out writing everything out in pen and pencil on loose-leaf paper, constantly stealing some from friends in school to continue my stories. Now, as technology has taken over the world in many aspects, there is no doubt that typing things out on a computer screen is not only faster, but is preferred by many. After all, you have a program correcting grammar and spelling for you and a lot less time spending getting new pens, paper and sharpening pencils. But I find there is nothing more therapeutic than taking a pen and paper and writing down thoughts in my head. I have a special notebook myself where I make notes on my characters and ideas that come to me and it calms me. What does everyone prefer?
Well, I can't really give an answer because if I write something on paper it becomes impossible to decipher. Long live technology!
Round 1 - Fight! Pen & Paper: hard to edit, and does not copy or paste into any program...must be done by hand. Computer: Easy to edit, and can be copied to anything, even onto paper. Round 2 - Fight! Pen & Paper: Easily lost or destroyed, and you are limited to the speed with which you can drag the pen across the paper. Computer: Very difficult to destroy, especially if saved to external devices, and is much faster as each character does not have to be drawn but merely pressed. Finish Him! Computer: Required for final draft, and has resources for study at your fingertips while you are typing. Grammar and spelling check is usually available, and thesaurus is a click away. Also organizes documents and even keeps track of your word count. Layout and page size is also available, and you will know exactly how many pages you have. Plus, you can change your fonts and font sizes at will...wizardry! KO: Computer Wins! I tried writing with pen and paper as a kid once, but quickly went back to my PC, even with dial-up and dated technology it was still better. lol
Haha I love this! I agree with all of those things, but I still sometimes like to just sit down and write on good old pen and paper. But hands down, technology has made it easier to write without having to stop and start so much and grab books or whatever and search things up.
What about writing on a smartphone? I think it's right in between pen & paper and computers in terms of speed.
I've posted this before, because this question has been asked before. It's my last word (for now) on this subject. I write either with computer (Microsoft Word Scrivener, these days) or with a pen. The pen and a notebook comprise the best word processor ever invented. Of course, like everybody else, I type much faster than I can write by hand. In my case, that’s irrelevant. I’m not one of those geniuses who can write good prose at typing speed – about 98% of my writing time is spent staring off into space thinking about what the next sentence or phrase should be, not actually setting it down on the page. My writing speed is definitely not limited by the speed at which I get the words down; it’s limited by the speed at which I can think of the words, and that speed is not very high. So it really doesn’t matter, speedwise, whether I use a computer or a pen. One of the major benefits of writing by hand is that the user interface, so to speak, is very free-form. I cross out words I don’t like, but as another poster said, never enough that I can’t read them after. So all “mistakes” and corrections are always visible. Sometimes when I can’t decide which of three or four words to use, I’ll write them in small print in a column where the final choice should go in the manuscript so that I can choose from them later. I can add new paragraphs by writing at right angles to the normal text in the margins. If I have to insert a large amount of text, I put a red circled A (or other letter) where the insert goes, and write the insert on the reverse side of the page. If I favor one version of a sentence over another at the time of initial composition, I write both down with the favorite written larger. I use several colors of pen and each color has a different purpose. Some people who do this kind of thing wind up complaining that their manuscript looks like a mess, and that’s why they prefer using a computer, but I think my pages look kind of like works of art in themselves, and they’re certainly a better record of my thought processes than any computer-written page. Another benefit of using a pen is that I get immediate psychological feedback from doing it. I can tell by the look of my handwriting, and by how my hand feels as I write it, how I’m feeling at the moment, and I can use that information as I write. I can, to a certain extent, play myself into and out of moods with my guitar; I can do the same with handwriting. I get a little of the same kind of feedback when I write by computer, but nowhere near as intensely, and the effect is only there as I’m actually writing – I can’t look at the results the next day and see what kind of mood I was in because the computer text looks the same no matter what I was feeling like when I wrote it. Lastly, there’s the pure physical pleasure I get from writing by hand. When I’m playing a synthesizer, I’m keenly aware that my fingers are on plastic keys and the sound emerges from a speaker separated from my fingers by a long chain of transducers, electronic hardware, and digital signal processing software. There’s no connection between me and the music. When I’m playing guitar, my fingers are touching the strings that are vibrating and producing the sound, and I feel very physically connected to the music. The same thing happens with writing by hand – I feel connected to the words in a way I never do when typing on a keyboard. I’ve never tried to quantitatively measure whether that affects my prose at all – whether or not my sentences are longer or shorter one way or another, or whether I use more metaphorical imagery, or whatever – but after an hour of writing by hand, I feel like I’ve been doing an artist’s work, whereas after an hour of typing, I feel like I’ve just been, well, typing. Oh, one more thing (so the previous paragraph shouldn’t have started “Lastly”, I guess): Obviously, I can’t submit a handwritten manuscript to anybody, so when I’m writing by hand, I know that I’ll be typing the work into a computer at a later time. It may be that the knowledge that what I’m writing isn’t the “final” version, that I’ll have another pass to make corrections and rewrites, makes me freer during the composition to experiment, maybe, or just to be a bit more adventurous in my choices of words, images, and rhythms, than I would be if I thought I might be working on a “final” version. So there it is: about 800 words on why I like writing with a pen, all written on a computer.
Gosh. I wish I could do that. I still make most of my notes in notebooks (then try to remember where I've put them) and I always carry a small notebook and pen with me, to jot down any ideas that occur to me when I'm 'out.' But I was NEVER able to do actual creative writing with a pen and paper—or a typewriter either, as I made too many mistakes! It was a matter of great frustration for me for many years, and is probably the main reason I never wrote anything much until I got my wordprocessor, back in 1994—when I was 44 years old. The minute I write something, I want to change it. And that becomes a dog's breakfast in no time at all, if it's handwritten or typed. I would love to carry around a notebook (a nice one!) and good pen, and sit and write wherever I find myself. And I used to try to do that when I was young, because I always had a story in my head. But no. Just didn't work for me. The notebook became a scribbled mess in no time at all. I even tried writing in pencil, so I could erase the mistakes, but even THAT became a mess. Handwriting doesn't allow space to insert several paragraphs, etc. Or to transpose them. Three or four times. Nope. I'd be lost without wordprocessing. Sadly.
I can't write for more than about 30 seconds without my hand hurting, and I have no desire to re-train the muscles to write like I did in school. PC all the way!
It's funny how that happens, isn't it? My hand starts to hurt if I write very much as well. Not to mention—I blame the job I had for 12 years before retirement—the fact that my erstwhile reasonably readable (never pretty) handwriting is now nearly illegible, even to myself. Sad.
Same here. There was a Twitter game recently where people posted pictures of their handwriting and I was actively trying to make mine nice and failing. I had a three-hour written exam in 2015 and the pain was incredible. By the end my handwriting was coming out as shaky lines because I had lost all control of motor function in my right hand
My hand hurts just thinking about that.... I noticed over the Christmas period that I struggle to even write a few lines on a Christmas card or address an envelope without having to cross out at least one word. Pathetic.
My brain works differently when I'm typing than when I'm using pen and paper, and I try to take advantage of this. So I type most of my work (faster, tidier, easier to modify, etc.) but when I get stuck I'll brainstorm ideas on pen and paper.
My brain tends to be saying ouchity ouch ouch ouch when I try to write anything more than a grocery list these days. Brain/hand? No connection whatsoever ...other than pain. Amazing I managed to get through grade school, high school and university. Mind you, I used to speedskate as well. Don't do that any more either ...ouchity ouch ouch....
I find it strange that so many people (not just on this forum) seem proud of the fact that their handwriting is illegible. It's as if they have contests to determine whose chicken-scratch is the most embarrassing . And they don't get embarrassed because they won a kind of virtual trophy for it. "Boy, I wish I was like you! Your handwriting is so illegible that you must be the freest of all free spirits! Not one to be bound by restrictions of readability, are you? Wow! You must ride your unicorn naked at midsummer, singing paeans to the stars, carrying mead in one hand and a torch for Apollo in the other..."
I don't think it's quite like that. My handwriting used to be excellent, but then when I got out of practice for long enough, it just turned to mush, and since I cannot stand writing and prefer typing, I have no desire to retrain those skills. Of course, my handwriting isn't all that bad, at least in long hand, cursive is a different story... As long as I'm going slow, I can always read what I have written, and I can't say the same for other people I know who do actually spend more time with it than I do. For me, I just hate writing things out. I'm so much faster with typing, and my mind flows much better when I can quickly express my thoughts on a keyboard. The way it works for me, if I don't get my thought out quickly enough, then I might actually lose it or get distracted with another one and not finish it the way I had planned originally. I'm easily distracted though, a twinge of ADHD that seems to only affect me at certain times. Anyway, for most people discussing how bad their handwriting is, it's not so much a badge of honor, it's more the fact that it's not a required or even important skill, so many people do not practice daily. To be honest, it's a waste of time, and apparently even some older generations agree, people who grew up before the widespread use of technology. So while some people still like their handwriting, it's taken a backseat to typing, and that means that writing is not progressing, it's actually falling to the wayside while typing takes over. It's more like their comparing that their typing is that good that they've completely forgotten how to write. Someone who still boasts of their excellent penmanship is probably not going to boast the same about how fast they can type. In a flat out contest, I doubt anyone could freehand as fast as even a slower typist. On top of this, if you're asking me, everything should be written digitally. If you're bragging about how many trees you can scribble on legibly, you're still forgetting that they used to be alive. The less paper used the better. Call me a treehugger if you will, but to me it's not an insult...wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for trees. If you really want to write, write on hemp paper at the very least, far less damaging to the environment.
I only use pen and paper for jotting down notes and formulating a story. But it's all shorthand. Almost every single word and phrase is abbreviated in some way and words like "the," "and,"... don't get written at all. Jake looked up at the bright orange sky. Would probably look in my notes like Jk look bri ora sky. Usually I shorten words by writing the first few letters (the ones I would type before allowing the word prediction to fill it in.) I've gotten so used to thinking and writing at a particular speed that slowing my mind to deal with the pen is frustrating.
I prefer handwritten any day of the week. Spoiler: Also Physical Books above ebooks I also prefer physical copies of books to electronic ones—I'd gladly drop $70 on a embossed leatherbound than 10¢ the same ebook. It might be cause I'm like my mother who's tactile obsessed—can't keep her hands to herself–and I just love the feel of pages, covers, spine; I also love the smell & sounds and the look of 'em. I've got one leatherbound, two hardbacks, and five paperbacks of Pride & Prejudicd—no ebooks. I have two different leatherbounds of The Good Earth, and so many various styles & types of the same books. In the same way I like physical books, I like pen & paper. It's there; it's immediate; it has character. Next best thing is with a typewriter–it's a physical presence with a tangible result, and each key you can feel & hear the effect of the effort. My parents bought me my own old fashioned typewriter when I was a preteen because I was so enchanted by them. I think there's a reverence of the ritualistic nature in a typewriter. Every word, every mistake, is so vivid & real. But there is something so clinical about typing on a computer, it puts me off. It reminds me of docotor's offices with neat & tidy white rooms with their light gray chairs with white stiff paper draping and their clean, sterile tools all precisely arranged on the white countertops, so innocuous yet unnerving. It's like those houses with their plastic coverings over their sofas, their faux wood cushioned tabletop pads, their mahogonay China display cabinets, their decorative glass trinkets perfectly placed, without excess or clutter of any kind—immaculate & pristine yet seeming utterly uninhabited. It feels clean, cold, distant. Ironically I haven't been writing on paper for several years now—primarily typing on my smartphone or tablet or laptop. And I just realized as I was writing this post that in the same past several years I've had a decline in actual written-out stories. I have outlines, dialogue excerpts, and detailed critical analysis of what I intend the story to mean & do, et cetera, in spades. But I haven't completed a story. I need to pick up some old notebooks again. I've probably found one of the sources of my writing problems〜
You can get mechanical keyboards meant to sound and feel like typewriters and I'll admit - I want one bad. I'm too young to've ever used a typewriter for real, but my grandparents had one boxed away in a back room and I used to sneakily play with it. The tactile feedback and sound of the keys and the smell of the ink were something else. Realistically, though, I just use my laptop and a combination of libreoffice and notepad. I'm used enough to the flat keyboards of laptops that I type without even really registering it's there, which I think is the best way to get ideas out, as aesthetically pleasing as a typewriter-emulating mechanical keyboard would be. A couple years back I was without a laptop for a couple months and I had to resort (I know! the horror!) to pencil and paper. It was enjoyable enough and my hand didn't cramp up or anything - which surprised me - but the thing that really got me was how fast I filled up the pages. In a under sixty days I filled up two spiral notebooks - not big ones, to be fair, but ones that, if I'd been able to use that as sparingly as I normally do, would have easily lasted me more like a couple years. What I took away from the whole thing was a bit of relief that I get to use efficient digital storage, more than entry. My crappy old 4gb flash drive has two novels, an assortment of short stories, and a crap-ton of notes on it, and it hangs out innocuously on my headboard next to my keys and pocketknife. On the other side of the headboard I've got a stack of notebooks half a foot high that still probably wouldn't hold all that. And I love my notebooks, but I already have enough of them cluttering up the place. I don't need to add about 24 every year!
Hi, I like to write my first draft on paper then edit it on paper. I then type it up again on the laptop.
The stuff that I wrote in the 'eighties and printed out because I didn't trust floppy disks is still available to me, as is the stuff that I hand-wrote. The stuff I wrote in the 'nineties and didn't print out because I did trust hard disks is lost to me. Oh, it might be in a hard drive or ancient laptop somewhere, but odds are that I will never find it again. So I've started printing things and putting them in a binder. We'll see what I do when I have too many binders. Also, if you're writing in anything but plain text files, changing technology could make them un-openable. I'm not saying that what's true for me is what's true for you. I'm just suggesting that paper is worth considering as a second form of backup.
Well, I'm not proud. I'm just mostly accepting. Not entirely accepting--I have now and then Googled for ways to improve my handwriting. But I never got around to taking action.
I think it's one of those things that if you get out of practice it actually becomes difficult. I know that now I find it hard to write anything without making mistakes. I make more mistakes writing than I do typing! My brain thinks one letter and writes a different one. I've even been known to screw up signing my name. It's not that the writing is illegible. It's just ...wrong. I think it's true that if you don't use it, you lose it.
I ALWAYS keep a paper backup of anything that's important. And whenever I upgrade to a newer system, I also take the time to go through ALL my old files and upgrade each one. It takes a while, but it's worth it. None of my files are any older than the system I'm using now. I hate the fact that text files that are only 8-10 years old can be obsolete, if you don't 'keep up.' Writers often need to refer back to something they wrote a while ago, or re-start an old project, or look through research materials. Heck, I'm still using stuff I gathered 20 years ago, back when the world was young. Of course the regular upgrading also means I dump a lot of stuff I really don't need to keep as well. Which is good, I suppose. Thus far I've not dumped anything I regretted. Yet.
Handwriting divides the generations. I'm always so proud of my lists, but my brother only two years younger took to Star Wars and the Apple...writes like a monkey.
