45- The Benefits of Writing Longhand

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What role can handwriting play in your writing process? What are the potential benefits?

Benefits:
-Handwriting is linked to creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving.

-Handwriting engages not only cognitive processes, but motor skills and neurosensory experiences.

-Handwriting forces you to slow down and think.

-Handwriting tends to lead you to synthesize and distill information in a way that keyboarding and copy/pasting does not. Consequently, handwriting improves retention and recall of information.


-Handwriting makes it easy to create graphic organizers/mind maps.

-Handwriting can help you avoid the distractions available on a computer or other device.

I use handwriting for:
-Note-taking during research.

-Character creation.

-Brainstorming story ideas.

-Building my "level one" outline.

-Working my way past blocks/difficult plot knots.


Pitfalls:
-Composing by hand is much slower.

-Losing your notebook/pages.

-Can't read my own handwriting.

-Organizing/reorganizing can be problematic.

-Don't use handwriting as an excuse to waste a bunch of money on expensive pens and fancy moleskine notebooks.