Physicality of writing

Typing out your drafts in a text editor allows you to insert whole lines where you need to add more detail. You can be notified of spelling errors and bad grammar on the fly and go back and fix it. It's easy to delete mistakes and when you're done, it's easy to send off to wherever you publish. Text editors are pretty sweet.

Why, then, do some people still like to write in physical notebooks?

I like to write everything in Moleskine journals, so maybe I might be give a few reasons why you might like to try it too.

First, I like the physical feeling of having a book in my hands. For years I thought that once e-readers became common I would never need another physical book, and would carry all my library around in my pocket. But after my first year in college I found that reading digital was much harder for me to retain. I found that in reading a physical book I gained advantages over a pdf or kindle. First was the ability to retrieve the information physically. I noticed that it wasn't just the words that were sticking in my mind, but details about where the words were in the book. If I needed to reference those sections and had not made note of them, I could find them by which side of the leaf they were on, how thick the pages behind the page in question were, and a rough idea of it's place on the page. When trying to do the same thing in pdf or on my kindle, the extra details were lost and I would spend too much time trying to hunt for information I needed. I found being able to take notes next to my book or compare entries in multiple books was also an advantage of a physical book.

But what does this have to do with writing? Well, being able to reference details I had previously written benefitted from that same type of on-page memory. If I'd been writing for a while and forgotten something I'd written an hour before, I could quickly find it by looking at one position on the book and flipping pages until it came into view.

Secondly, the limitations of a book are part of what helps focus my writing. With a laptop or desktop, when I sit down to create, the temptation of distraction is sometimes overwhelming for me. If detail is uncertain, I like to look it up when I'm on a computer. I've spent whole afternoons following link after link on wikipedia, forums, and other random links returned in a google search. When writing with a pen on paper, it's an extra step for me to look things up, and that discourages me from breaking my flow. I can always look up details after my draft is written. On paper there are no chat programs, no video games, no Facebook, and no google.

Thirdly, I can doodle when I'm stuck. This seems minor, but doodling is a good way to get your brain working again. I can't say why it is. Maybe it's putting something on a blank page, that gets you started. Or maybe it's allowing your brain to wander around whatever patterns you doodle that frees up you creativity. I don't know but it's an important part of writing for me.

Next, writing by hand slows me down. That sounds like a bad thing, right? When I'm on a keyboard, I can write at 60-70 words per minute. Hardly the fastest typist, but it's fast enough that I can only think ahead a word or two while I'm typing and this causes me to stop and start a lot when I can't stop myself from editing as I write. When I'm writing by hand, I'm writing much slower, maybe 25 words per minute, maybe less. But that extra time between letters and words allows me further ahead as I write. I am able to change plot points or create new scenes on the fly while I write.

And lastly, as I've hinted at throughout this post, I can't stop and edit so much. Instead I go forward with writing. I document my thinking and changing mind. I leave notes to myself in the margins while I'm reading through it, and then keep going. Later when I'm transcribing my writing I can follow my thought process and expand where I need to, cut where I want, and re-arrange with the power of hindsight.

_{(Side note: Have you ever noticed that nobody in stock photos knows how to write? They all start in the middle of a blank page.)}

Do you prefer to write digitally, or physically? Why? Leave a note below.