Writing by hand

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivq2aGJDxiM&w=475&h=297] This post is #34 in a series of 50 dedicated to the art and life of writing, in support of the 50 for 50 Project to benefit WriteGirl. If you like it, or if you think it could have been improved by a better writing education for its author, please give generously. And pass it on.

You don't need to convince people who use "journal" as a verb of the value of writing things down longhand. (Although some, you must convince of the the value of editing before taking things public.)

The Keyboard People can push back, though. "I can think faster than I can write longhand," they say, or "I can't read my own writing."

Both of these things are true for me, and yet I have filled two cubic feet with chicken-scratchings on paper anyway. Because despite what I carelessly tossed off many years ago, the point of writing a journal by hand is to write a journal by hand. Period. That your journals provide a "map of you" is a kind of bonus-extra, a by-product of the true point, which is spend time quietly with yourself, being exactly where you're at.

What can I say? You live, and hopefully, you learn. But in case it's still not clear, I suggest you spend more time walking, and less time looking at your maps.

xxx c