handwriting is always better...

Handwriting is Always Better:

An exhortation to those who still prefer handwriting.

Firstly, I must note- that only writers ever write about writing. Case in point-

Sometimes I feel as though writing by hand has become this convoluted and unthoughtful task for so many people. Considering the reality that handwriting is likely a part of every day for most people (that I know anyway), why, then, is it not even thought of or spoken of after the second grade? Even writing (forget the handwriting for a moment) has been reduced to following these blue lines. What happened to the wonderful sweeping white of a blank, empty page? Handwriting is intimate. It’s visual. It is telling, in its own right. For writers, there can be a lot of words… but then you hit that moment where you don’t have to think anymore, when the pen leads the journey. On a page, you can see that shift- it’s when the words all begin to bleed together in a rushed but beautiful mess, and they become illegible to all except the author. There is a sort of satisfaction in that chaos, though, because you know that these words are the meat, the substance, the climax of the piece. With handwriting, every little detail matters- Do you use pencil or pen— black, blue, green or the awful red? Do you write big or small, with your left or right, in cursive, all in caps, with curly letters, at an angle, forgetting to dot your i’s, with terrible grammar and no spell check to correct it, skipping a line? The list goes on. Grammar can become more of a novelty when writing by hand- should I add a dash here ~a squiggle there, a comma there?—the details hardly matter when it’s formed with your own ink. Do you revise as you write, or wait until you’re finished to begin revising? Do you erase your mistakes, cross them out with a line so that you can read through, scribble them illegible, or do you bring in another element like white out? The saddest loss when it comes to handwriting, which technology has nearly eliminated, is written correspondence. Because of cell phones and the internet, kids would rather send each other texts or instant messages in the middle of class than pass a note back and forth. Now, it is not uncommon to send just one card a year by mail with only a “Happy Birthday, love Mo” handwritten inside. What ever happened to the lengthy letters between families and friends? Writing and receiving letters, snail mail- I mean, is one of the most wonderful treasures that I know; to have something so tangible and telling. Handwriting allows the freedom to doodle and draw, it alleviates the pressure to always follow a subject through in content. You can appreciate the little things when you’re holding a paper that was filled by the writing hand of your correspondent. Anyways, this is really a lot of chatter. I wish that I could post it in my own handwriting, so that you could see the journey I went through creating this… putting letters on the paper in this mess of nothingness. In the end, I still stand by my title- handwriting is always better. So for now, I’m stopping the dance of my fingers on this keyboard, and I’m wrapping them around something real- that I have to sharpen and work with… and the handwriting begins.