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

[havocthecat]

I find I can't be a perfectionist writing by hand. It's impossible to avoid making mistakes that can't be erased - hard to erase ink, for one. And that makes it okay to keep going when things are "wrong," if that makes sense. Even if they're not wrong, it's just a draft.

[cindybug]

Exactly! Not having that back space is so freeing. :'D I also kind of like to have a record of my mistakes -- I know GDocs has that function too, but idk. For me, it's nice for discarded passages and stuff to be immediately accessible.