Writing with pen and paper - is it better than typing?

[havocthecat]

Writing SFF With Paper and Pen Spurs Memory and Creativity by R.J. Huneke

While the article has a SFF focus because it's written for the SFWA blog, it's really also about general handwriting and whether it's better. It links to studies and articles on handwriting vs typing.

Personally, I turn to handwriting fic in a notebook when I'm trying to break out of writers block. It's a change of format, for one, and for another, I do then stop getting tempted to scroll through whatever social media site I've got loaded. Also, I do just like handwriting fiction.

So this is definitely a biased site for handwriting because it's journalsandplanners - but really, we're all on Dreamwidth. What do you think?

Comments

[caramarie]

My handwritten journal is also what I write stories in (including novel-length stuff). I vastly prefer writing fiction longhand – it feels better to me, like my brain–paper connection works better than my brain–keyboard connection, and I also think I produce better work when I handwrite. So I don't mind that I still have to type it up afterwards.

Like ioplokon I also handwrite for language practice – Japanese in my case. I have a very bad visual memory, so I basically remember characters by what my hand does when I write them rather than what they look like. If I were only typing kanji, I would never learn them properly!