With handwriting becoming a lost art, one writer sets out to recapture the fine points of this organic form of communication.
I have stopped in the middle of writing this piece to shake out the ache in my hand and arm.
I am rediscovering handwriting. Longhand composition, not just a few words on a grocery list. Here’s a stat for you: on written (long answer) college entrance exams these days, only 15% of students use cursive writing. Which means the other 85% are printing. In our keyboard and touch-pad digital world that’s no big shock. Most schools only teach cursive writing briefly, in grade three or so, then drop it from the curriculum.
I actually use pen and paper more than many people – I still like to scribble notes in notepads (the paper kind), in the margins of books (the paper kind) and on reminder stickies that I use to try to convince my wife that I have my household tasks duly noted.
Even so, as a writer I was an early convert to computers and keyboards. It’s so great to see those perfectly formed letters appear on the screen. Copy and paste was one of the world’s spectacular inventions. Likewise the backspace delete key. These things were not always with us, kids.
Recently, though, I have made a daily practice of writing three pages of journal notes every morning. I finally got around to reading a book on creativity that has been a staple in arts and writing workshops for decades – The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron – and decided to give its exercises a whirl. Cameron is a strong advocate of starting the day with stream of consciousness handwriting, stuff that you never intend to publish or even keep – just a shaking loose of the writerly muscles.
Three pages doesn’t sound like a lot but when you have been accustomed to jotting small phrases here and there, half an hour of continuous writing is a bit of a strain. Literally, physically.
The other day, I realized I was grimacing as I wrote – and it wasn’t the subject matter. I noticed a tension strain in the tendons on the back of my hand. No surprise there. But then I found tender points all along the arm: the under forearm, the tendon right at the elbow, the outside of the arm just below the shoulder (triceps?), and even up into the shoulder. All from pushing a pen across paper.
I now see that the fleshy little callous on the first knuckle of my second finger is puffed up from the pressure. That callous brings back memories of school classes when the entire period consisted of copying the teacher’s blackboard notes into a scribbler. There would be four big blackboards filled with notes when we came into class and by the time we were copying blackboard #4, the teacher would have erased the first two and be writing new notes on them. I wonder how sore those teachers’ arms got?
Rediscovering handwriting has been interesting in other ways. There’s a good chunk of personality in anyone’s handwriting. I’ve never been fond of mine. The handwriting, that is. And the personality could probably use some work too.
My penmanship has never been particularly strong or fluid. It’s decent in that it’s mostly legible but has no flourish, no flow. I often start out well but slip into a cramped and jagged scrawl.
I always worry about how I write the word “I.” And I write “I” quite a bit, being a navel-gazer by nature. In my handwriting, I prefer to just leave the “I” as a single vertical stroke, not that cursive J-looking loop. But then it could be a number one. So sometimes I tag on the little upper and lower serifs, even while resenting the need to do so. But that printed “I” looks big and clumsy, standing so stiffly in a sentence of looping letters.
Are you seeing glimpses of neuroses here?
What I’m getting at is that handwriting, by its very nature, is personal. It is you. When writing on a keyboard, there remains a distance, a separation. There’s the fingers on the keyboard, sure, but bouncing between keyboard and your screen and your eyes something is lost.
Pushing a pen or pencil across paper, the writer and what is written are as one. There’s a visceral connection.
With handwriting, you receive feedback: ‘look at those rushed scratches, are you angry or what?’ You create a unique record. Ever come across your mom or dad’s handwriting, unexpectedly, and have that instantaneous recognition, before you even register a word of what is written? Handwriting is authentically human.
At least that’s how I feel. And I do feel it, at this moment, up my hand into the wrist, zipping through the forearm, into the shoulder. In the muscle memory. I am writing.
Photo Credit
“Handwriting” courtesy of Lorne Daniel.
Recent Lorne Daniel Articles:
- Walking Consultations: moving public engagement beyond opinions
- Murals, pride and history help prevent graffiti
- Striding Unfamiliar Streets
- The Scientific Map Of A Human
- Office Technology As Appliances
Love this, Lorne…and also love the number of comments you’ve received!
Handwriting is close to my heart…the biggest memory I have of my Mom is of her writing letters, and I followed in her footsteps at a young age. I always found it calming to be around her when she sat and wrote and sipped on a cup of tea or coffee, and it’s the same for me today. Whether it’s writing letters or writing in general, I like to create a calm space…quiet and contemplative. Using special paper and a special pen makes the whole thing even more personal for me.
You’re right about personality, our handwriting is very much a part of who we are. So many of the things I cherish today are hand-written notes, recipes etc. I love what the computer can do, but find there’s a time and place for both. Thanks for sharing your thoughts 🙂
I wrote my first novel by hand. There’s something about it that just can’t be replaced. I think the word you used, órganic’, sums it up best 🙂 Lovely post.
This was interesting. I still handwrite the first draft of every story I begin. It’s a lot more edit-friendly, because you can see the original.
The thing I love about typing, though, is that it actually feels like, yes, I’m writing a book! When I handwrite it, it just looks so…unprofessional isn’t the right word, but it’s close. When I’m typing, it looks like an actual book, and it really inspires me.
Lorne,
I just ran across this wonderful article. Thanks for so clearly describing the benefits and power of writing longhand. I had a therapist tell me one time that the reason he wanted me to write things out longhand was because you “get” what you write in a whole different way. He said it actually starts a chemical process of some kind, where you have greater comprehension writing than just saying out loud “this happened.” I found that interesting. I continue to write a lot – I’m still a voracious note taker. I do use the computer more for knocking out articles, things like that. But if I want to see how thoughts and ideas go together, such as for a piece I’m writing – I’ll sketch my ideas out on paper.
Like you, I read the Artist’s Way and wrote morning pages for a long time. It was enormously helpful, and gave me a whole new appreciation for the process of writing longhand.
Cheers,
Dan
I love to write longhand. Unfortunately, I have a slight compulsive issue about it that causes me to slow down to painstaking levels when I write long chunks of information. If my letters aren’t perfectly formed I have to go back, remove them, and the word they’re in and start over from the beginning of the word. Therefore, I moved to a more easily scratched scrawl that’s miniscule. Complaints are commonplace about my miniscule main-body with the flourished, carefully detailed and scribed art of the capital letters for any given part of something I wrote.
I am old enough that I first learned to write with a fountain pen. I went through sequence: fountain pen, ballpoint, typewriter, computer and now at the very end, I am writing with a fountain pen again. I find that it is both personal and beautiful. I like the way the ink flows onto the paper; I use a fountain pen that is intended for pen & ink drawing, so it adjusts the weight of the line with pressure I apply. Very satisfying. I am so sorry to see handwriting go the way of the Dodo, especially cursive which tells so much about a person.
I am told, by many, that I have beautiful handwriting. My oldest daughter even asked me to address her wedding invitations, so it was personal and elegant, as she put it. It takes practice for sure. Any time I am dissatisfied with a particular letter, as you are with the letter “I,” I write it over and over again, trying out different styles, until I like what I have done. That’s all it takes; years of practice and adjustment. That’s not so hard. 😉
Great article Lorne! I love The Artist’s Way and morning pages, and yes, I love the exercise of putting words on paper longhand. Nothing like it for a first draft! I had a literary agent (young one) look askance at me that I did the whole first draft of my memoir longhand, but I know that was a vital component of the creativity. Typing just doesn’t give me the same creative experience!
Well done to highlight this vital phenomenon!
Dan
You’re in good company with the longhand drafts, Dan. I think many writers (at least of our generation) start there. I know the award-winning and best-selling Canadian poet / novelist Michael Ondaatje hand writes much (all?) of his work. In fact, he’s got a book of poetry titled Handwriting.
Vital is exactly the right word – there’s a real vitality that runs from the head through the hand to the paper with handwriting.
Good to know longhand drafts are still popular with many writers, Lorne! The way the literary agent reacted, I felt like a dinosaur! 🙂 One of my mentors who was a psychologist even told me that there was a chemical reaction that started from putting pen to paper that was part of the cathartic process. I never checked that out, but it sure works that way for me.
I, too, do morning pages and other journal-writing, and thanks to a prompt from a sister, have added longhand notes and letters back into my correspondence repertoire. But my neurosis goes even deeper; I have always loved letterforms of any kind; used to know the names of dozens of typefaces; and am drawn, drooling, to any museum exhibit or art work that contains handwriting. Write on?
I have discovered that my teenage granddaughter has trouble reading some cursive writing because teens nowadays are avid twitterers and texters, etc. She says she can read my writing because I use roundish letters. (the old Zaner-Bloser method). It is a shame to lose the individuality that cursive writing can show in its message.
Just what we need, right Kay – another challenge for communications between generations.
No one mentions graphology here. Handwriting is a record of brain impulses that are interpretable.
I studied years ago when longhand was not considered strange. I have certificates from schools, but the favorite book in my library is Reading Between the Lines by P. Scott Hollander ” Handwriting is a means of relating to others, and the style of your script is influenced both by what you want to say and can’t, and what you try to leave unsaid. ”
My books are old. I’m sure there are some great computer programs out. It’s a great tool for self discovery and getting in depth views of what really motivates an person.
Hi Dedra – I think many of us don’t want to know those ‘hidden messages’ in our handwriting 😉
Thank you for this post.
I, too, write the three morning pages. Sitting with a cup of tea and writing, what is at times neat and precise, but at times becomes a scrawl as my hand attempts to keep pace with the flow of words swirling about in my head.
I like that you mentioned looking back at familiar writing of parents. In my case, I loved the way my Great Grandmother and Grandmother wrote my name. They wrote the letter C differently than what I was taught to write. My mother would complain about my handwriting, saying that when I wrote Cindy it looked like Andy (a comparison which is completely lost when typed). I practiced and worked on it. My signature is mine, but contains a little bit of three generations of women who came before me.
I love to write – on paper, with a variety of pens, tablets, notebooks, and journals. Sometimes I use the computer, but what is closest to my heart, is written by hand.
That’s great that you have maintained some of the tradition and history of your ancestors’ handwriting in your own, Cindy. There’s no question that our computer or even typewriter generated records won’t have that element of connectedness to personalities and styles of expression.
Lorne, I love your piece about handwriting. As you know from your wife’s snail mail, I think there is a place in our keyboarding world for the old-fashioned hand-written letter. Why it feels more “personal” than the same words typed out is a question for smart people like you.
For many years, one of my most beloved possessions was a “fountainpen.” Remember those? As a young girl, I had the bottle of ink and refilled my pen that way. Now there’s cartridges and even those are hard to find in these days of throwaway pens.
I read somewhere that printing, as opposed to cursive writing, is a symptom of ADD. Apparently, the ability to connect the individual letters within a word requires more executive functioning in the brain than the stand-alone letters of printing. Interesting, huh?
All the best to you. C
Your letters are a wonderful case in point, Catherine – not only the handwriting but the fact that you are so eloquent without the easy cut-and-paste editing that we have come to rely on. You actually know how to construct sentences on the fly – a rare art these days.
Yes, I remember the fountain pens – and the school desks with ink wells where the ink bottles sat. I always managed to get ink streaked over my pages and hands. But those pens also have / had a charming aural quality – the scratch of a nibbed pen over paper sounds more profound than a silent ballpoint ever will.
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment.
“Pushing a pen or pencil across paper, the writer and what is written are as one.”
That’s so beautiful. You’ve managed to put into words what I’ve felt about writing by hand for so long. There’s such an intimacy to it that can’t be duplicated on a screen. Our handwriting carries pieces of ourselves in it, and when those pieces meld with our words and thoughts it really is a unique record.
Thanks so much for sharing this.
You’re welcome Natalie – and thanks for taking the time to read and comment on the piece. Handwriting certainly helps us ‘be present’ when we are writing and that’s a good thing.
Lorne, I enjoy writing longhand. It helps me get into the flow, that first draft on paper. When I run out of ideas, I switch to the computer so I can slice and dice and see where I got lost.
A funny thing? I was staring at your hand in the picture with the vague idea that something was seriously wrong. It took me a minute to realize you’re just right-handed, lol. As a left-handed writer, it was like staring at a mirror image and being aware that it was a mirror image… Okay, now _my_ neuroses is peaking out… 🙂
Thanks for this personal look at writing.
Hi Taqiyyah – thanks for the left-handed perspective. As I mentioned on Twitter, my left-handed daughter would appreciate that 🙂
Like you, I depend on the computer for editing – the ability to cut and paste with a manuscript is invaluable. I AM old enough to remember the days when I did that with typed pages – cut them up with scissors, scotch-taped them together in different order, then laboriously retyped them. There is some advantage in that old analog methodology in that by retyping you are rethinking the content — but not enough to want me to go back there.
Lorne – I love this post. I was just having a discussion about this with family members in regard to my nephew, who is NOT learning cursive in grade school (I won’t tell you all the other things the schools aren’t teaching… Seems, with the advent of the calculator, kids don’t even need to know how to add, subtract, multiply). But I digress. I think your point of cursive writing being so personal and such a part of us is well taken. But like you, I adapted to the keyboard and have a physically difficult time writing more than those sparse notes you mention.
I like the idea of sparking creativity each morning, and am actually doing something similar where I roll out of bed and just write. Without thinking. Without editing … with the aim of freeing my unconscious mind and giving me the ability to ‘write on command.’ And you know what? It’s working! I think it’s helping my creativity. So… the big question is: does that make me a hypocrite? While I hate to see the written word disappear and/or not be recognizable (or executable) by the next generation, this is – unfortunately – my preferred method for creative writing.
Melissa, I see lots of creativity in your blog and other writing so you approach must be working. I agree that there’s something about the quality of freewriting first thing in the morning that differs from the other writing we do. And I think I am gradually learning to ‘go with the flow’ more with first drafts – just let them go without pausing to edit or critique. If the creativity is flowing, I wouldn’t worry about whether it’s hand or computer written.
Update (or backdate?): while digging through some old files I found my school report card from Grade 3. Miss Clara Manning noted: “An excellent pupil. Needs practice in letter formation.” Some things never change.
Interesting article. I’ve been keeping a hand written journal for 15 years and I really do find that the process is “visceral” as you state here. I enjoy the way the ink flows from a pen and marks the page. Hand writing occurs in the realm of the physical in a way that typing on a computer doesn’t. You have to print pages to make computer typing exist physically so I always feel as if writing on a computer is fragile in some way–it could be suddenly deleted! I certainly use both forms of writing, but hand writing is something I will always do, even when it’s completely archaic.
Interesting, Andrea, about the ephemeral quality of digital writing. We used to be told that digital records were forever but now of course we know that they actually have a very short life – shorter, in fact, than handwriting on paper in most circumstances. I wrote a bunch of journals back in the late 80s that are now lost because the big old floppy disks return “no data” messages. My crusty old paper journals are still at least legible. That’s somewhat comforting – not that they have any long term value in the big scheme of things.
Lorne… its interesting the connection you make between handwriting and identity. I definitely make a connection between my parents letters/handwriting & their personality. They had totally opposite handwriting stylings (one clean & orderly, the other almost indecipherable… a la short-hand) to match their totally different personalities. 3 pages of journalling daily! Impressive. Michael Gelb (creativity/innovation author) says journalling and mind mapping are 2 genius skills… just so you know.
Yeh, well you know I ain’t no genius Ben. A wannabe genius, for sure. The 3 pages are totally stream-of-consciousness: don’t stop to think, just let the pen follow your thoughts. Plan on tearing up / recycling the pages at the end of every week or month. In other words, don’t “compose,” just go! With those criteria, 3 pages aren’t daunting – which of course is part of the intent of Cameron’s approach. Sort of like a warm-up jog before going for a serious run.
For the past six years (and at various occasions previously) I’ve been exercising my longhand in journals. Three pages a day would be a stretch, but sometimes it runs longer (usually less). I find that I generally think better in longhand. The pace of the hand helps sift some of the static from the blizzard of the mind. As marvelous and convenient as computers truly are, there is something very humanizing about the “effort” of longhand. Have you noticed how large the journal sections in bookstores are getting to be? And I would bet that sales of fountain pens are up, not because they’re more efficient but because they add a special humanizing quality to a note. We’re yearning for the personal, and longhand is one of the ways we can communicate the essence of our humanity.
Well said. Did you write that out by hand before typing it in here? 🙂
Nope.
“Ever come across your mom or dad’s handwriting, unexpectedly, and have that instantaneous recognition, before you even register a word of what is written?”
It’s profoundly personal, as we realized last January taking down the Christmas cards and finding the one written to my young son from my dad, who had passed away shortly after Christmas. It was such a jolt to see his bold flourish across the card. I would recognize it anywhere. And, yes, of course I kept the card. 🙂
Yes, a signature or bit of handwriting can be a profound reconnection with someone who has gone. Especially, as in your example, when it’s unexpected. There is a lot of life in the form of those letters. Something to ponder, something real.
I was always surprised in the 60’s and 70’s at how good Canadian students’ handwriting was. I think Britain gave up teaching hand-writing a long time ago. It was something to do with left-handedness because obviously it was very difficult for a left-handed person to write across their body. It was no longer PC to force everyone to do the same so people could write the way they wanted which meant you couldn’t ever tell a child their handwriting was illegible. I do remember also that one of our teenage things was to write Italic or some form of arty handwriting to distinguish ourselves and, of course, in green ink, or was it purple?
That’s interesting to hear Julia – I wasn’t aware of Britain’s disinterest in handwriting. I certainly remember the years of trying (unsuccessfully) to create an impressive, cool, look with my scrawls, and much practicing of my signature 😉
Interesting point about how HAND writing communicates the author’s mood / personality in addition to his/her actual words. Computer emoticons don’t have quite the same effect.