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One author drafts entire novels in longhand. Someone else jots the simplest notes to self on an electronic device. Fear not, I won’t tell you which to use, much less jump into the fray about what to teach in grade school. But how, when, and why people choose which technology intrigues me.
Different physical ways of writing interact differently with the brain. Students who take notes by hand have to put the material into their own words and formats. Afterward, they answer conceptual questions about the material better than those who use laptops. Keyboarding requires less mental processing; the student can type more nearly verbatim. When something closer to transcription is the purpose, the laptop has the edge. Conversations with writers and others reveal that many of us vary our writing tool based on purpose. I use longhand to journal, to get unstuck, and to wrestle with a sentence that refuses to work. Almost all my blog posts begin with ink on lined yellow pad. If a longer scene or exposition is clear in my mind, I’ll go to my desktop computer and let the words flow. My typed drafts are wordier and need more later edits. Other writers tell me they have the opposite experience. When do you write by hand? When do you keyboard?
6 Comments
Lisa Imhoff
2/12/2018 08:58:13 am
Interesting. I always thought the method I used was simply based on how mobile the result needs to be, rather than how it affected my brain. My lists are on paper, with pencil. My writing, journaling are on the computer. To take your second paragraph to the next, more amusing level, I could answer a more conceptual question about my grocery list than if I kept it on my tablet? :)
Mobility is always as a factor, too! I don't own a laptop, so always write on yellow pads during travel and carry an iPad for email. I've known people who carry their lists on their phones. Ha ha about the grocery list. The research on note-taking seems to me limited to taking notes on external input. It probably takes about the same processing to write a grocery list (lots to translate a dinner plan into ingredients and quantities, little to see what's running low in the fridge) regardless where it's recorded.
Lisa Imhoff
2/13/2018 09:22:51 am
That's what I was doing last night with some genealogy records I was transcribing. Watching the Olympics and transcribing them with a pencil onto charts. It may be a path to inserting an error, but I could make notes to check this or that or look for holes better than I can when putting it straight into my genealogy program. And I could (and have) certainly made mistakes in typing the information, too.
James Phillips
2/13/2018 02:15:58 pm
I am secretary for two committees. I write in longhand in a notebook for both, before typing into my laptop and distributing. All of my fictional or biographical pieces have been short. I tend to get an idea think about it for a while, maybe days. I then "blast" it into the computer. I have an unfortunate habit of correcting grammar and spelling as I go. Reading it through I sometimes see that the ideas are better presented in different order, then I cut and paste. This is just my little contribution.
James, I too would rather prepare committee minutes by taking notes first by hand, though I've seen people write minutes at their laptops during the meeting and have them ready to distribute as soon as the meeting adjourns. I think for me it depends a lot on how much mental processing I want/need to do during the writing (better with longhand) and how much I've already done the processing in my head before I start to write (then enter at computer). The latter may parallel how you write short fiction or biography. Even for book-length pieces, I tend to compose a scene or section at the time by the think-about-it-for-days-then-go-to-computer approach. Lisa, your project sounds ready-made for filling into a chart. Occasionally I try charts on computer but if they're only for my own use, and I don't expect to do a lot of edits or revisions, pen is a whole lot easier. Pencil? Convenient for erasing, but I have an aversion to it, perhaps because you have to press a little harder than with the right kind of pen where the ink flows painlessly. Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin. Archives
September 2023
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