coffee cup and green notebook with white thermos on a wood dock

The 3 Ways Handwriting Gives Better Results than Typing

If you struggle with letting your first thoughts fly, edit (or worse, delete) while drafting, or need fewer distractions to allow your creativity to flow, handwriting will always give better results than typing. Read on to see why it's best to switch from typing to handwriting as many professional authors have done and watch your work soar!
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by Jenna Kalinsky, Founding Director | One Lit Place

For most people, when we need to compose a piece of writing, we typically reach for the laptop. We’re accustomed to our computers being an extension of us (I consider mine my third (and favorite) child), and it feels natural to see our thoughts form on the screen, which if you’re a skilled typist, they do almost in real time. 

[No, the irony of typing on a computer feeling “natural” is not lost on me.] 

There’s also the ease of having the web at your fingertips if you need resources, and you can easily edit or redefine the original thoughts right away.

Believe it or not though, while those three points all sound great, really positive, not one of them benefits your writing. In fact, they can hold you back or even be downright harmful.

Typing may seem ideal, but the reality is in most cases, and particularly when you’re writing a first draft, handwriting is going to give you far better results than typing—hands down—every time.

Slow and steady (rather than 80 wpm) for the win

One perceived benefit of typing is that it enables you to enjoy “cognitive automaticity,” which is the ability to write as quickly as you think.

“Perceived” is the operative word here. Indeed you do yield not just more writing but you’re able to catch even the thinnest most nascent ideas before they trail off into a thin line of smoke. Being able to capture everything you think is a marvel! 

Why not start and see what happens?

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Yet what happens when you can capture your every thought is … well, you capture every thought. Our brains are very busy, thoughts pinging and ponging across hundreds of topics in a short span of time.

Writing all of them down is a case of “too much of a good thing not being that great.” Because when it comes to having to wade through all of that muck later on, you will be the first to agree that more isn’t merrier. It’s like having to wade through a mental swamp.

What’s so nice about handwriting is because you can’t write nearly as quickly as you think, your brain has time to serve as your first natural editor: pre-processing, filtering, and refining.

Slowing Down the Writing Creates a Meditative Quality to the Process —  and the Product. 

This cognitive action allows for your sentences to arrive to the page more fully formed, and your ideas deeper and not only more thoughtfully presented but more connected to the greater context. This comes from your mind being able to begin making integral connections between concepts.

So, paradoxically, despite appearances, slow and steady wins over speed– and in terms of efficiency, handwriting will save you much more time and emotional energy in the long run.

notebook with handwritten script on wood table

Handwriting Intrinsically Connects You to Your Writing

Furthermore, if you want to feel greater physical and mental connection to what you’re writing, handwriting is the way to go. That muscle-brain action brings about numerous mental benefits such as enhanced memory formation, increased brain connectivity patterns, and the ability to encode new information.

Researchers have long touted handwriting as the most successful way to retain information and foster a stronger relationship with your ideas.

Where typing out all your thoughts is a bit like racing to keep up with your toddler- handwriting connects you to your writing and ideas on an emotional, mental, and embodied level and is far more like having a cup of coffee by a fire with a good friend. 

The work’s development is also stronger on a foundational level because of the connections your brain is able to make during its inception– connections that will pan out exponentially if you’re writing a long-form work such as a book.

woman wearing necklace in front of stone wall
Jennifer Egan
woman in dark sweater with short dark hair in library
Yiyun Li

Many professional writers are well-aware of how handwriting consistently gives better results than typing, particularly for first drafts. 

Novelist Jennifer Egan, as an example, is a consummate hand writer; she wrote her novel Manhattan Beach, winner of the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, over a period of 1.5 years on 28 legal-sized notepads.

Egan and numerous other writers such as Martin Amis, Joyce Carol Oates, Yiyun Li, and JK Rowling write longhand as its forced slower pace helps them acquire “a sense of harmony and balance, with rounded forms.” 

“There is an element of dancing when we write, a melody in the message, which adds emotion to the text. After all that’s why emoticons were invented, to restore a little emotion to text messages.”

~ Roland Jouvent, head of adult psychiatry at Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, Paris.

As the physical movement and cognitive connection coalesce, that brings about a meditative quality in the writing itself. Egan calls it “improv.” 

“I start with a place and a time then find a line or groove and just go with it.”

white paper with handwriting beside dried eucalyptus leaves

She finds the physical act of writing delivers her more deeply to her work and helps her focus. 

“That blindness and the meditative quality combined seem to help me be surprised by what emerges. Those surprises are the only good things I come up with. If I decide to tell a story about X, Y and Z, it won’t be good. I have to find the things I can’t think of and handwriting seems to help me do that.”

blank journal with pencil

Deepen Your Writing by Keeping It Distraction-Free

Egan also writes outside for as much of the year as possible to keep her focus on the writing.

If you’ve tried to concentrate on your writing while working at your computer, you’re familiar with how easy it is to get distracted.

Never mind the constant binging of your notifications, which fracture and damage your attention more than you may be aware; having the world at your fingertips is often just too tempting.

Even the most disciplined writer might check their email, social media accounts, or the news periodically- it is right there after all! And, as you likely know, once you open those physical channels of interruption, it becomes easier and easier to keep doing it.

“I do most of my writing longhand, in lined notebooks. One unquestionable benefit to this approach is that you can take a notebook anywhere, leaving laptop and phone behind, and when you get there your only options will be to write or to stare at a wall.”

Christopher Beha, author of The Index of Self-Destructive Acts (Tin House, 2020)

What About Research?

If your work requires additional research, the best method is to handwrite your first draft based on your ideas alone (which gives the added benefit of your draft being built entirely out of your own meritorious ideas) and leave an “X” and/or a note to yourself in the margin, or use the highlighter feature in Word or Google Docs to indicate where you should plug in further information later.

Ultimately, handwriting’s slower meditative journey, the mental wending, and its integral neurological connections make using pen and paper the far more successful option.

birds in flight

Handwriting Gives Great Results Because You Can't Edit Away Your First Thoughts

If you’re a perfectionist type who pores over every line, typing as opposed to handwriting may do your work the greatest disservice.

Seeing your ideas pour forth in their immature state, and so plentifully, makes it easier to discount them as potentially viable and delete the whole lot before they have a chance to become something.

Ideas need room to bloom and find their footing. Handwriting accommodates for that. But typing with that ready access to the “delete” button does not and makes it easy for you to edit your best chance at a brilliant story, character arc, or thought out of existence before it ever has a chance to prove itself.

Handwriting Helps You Avoid the Downward Spiral of Critique → Negative Emotion → Writer’s Block

Furthermore, by putting yourself into the position of being able to chop up your ideas or delete them, you’re inviting emotions into the first draft process where they absolutely don’t belong.

Shifting into looking at how your work is “performing” when the ideas are first coming to life and finding their way is one of the best ways to invite impostor syndrome and writer’s block. 

And as every writer knows, once writer’s block invades, it’s pretty hard to shake and can even cause you to stop writing altogether. 

“I would never get to the end of the page by typing,” Egan said in her conversation with novelist Yiyun Li during the Associated Writing Programs (AWP) conference in 2021. “I turn off that self-consciousness completely by writing blind.”

Yiyun Li agreed with her. “On the screen, I’m not a writer, I’m an eraser!”

clasped hands

Typing offers a too-easy option to enter into that critical state. It can potentially ruin new ideas from becoming and harm your emotional center by making you evaluate your writing based on unrealistic criteria.

Handwriting however encourages your first draft to flow and in many ways calms your writer’s nervous, or limbic, system.  

Breaking the habit of typing may be a hard one, but it’s a worthwhile exercise to try your hand at … well, handwriting. 

  • The slower more thoughtful approach ultimately serves your ideas as they arrive to the page more fully developed 
  • It’s easier to focus on your work for longer without being distracted by work emails or other websites
  • The temptation to delete your early thoughts and critique them is removed, or at least reduced, forcing you to keep moving forward and ultimately (perhaps even beside yourself) allowing you to more easily enter the flow state, or the state during which the best writing arrives.

Within just a few pages, you’ll see how these 3 ways handwriting gives you better results than typing. Perhaps the act of putting pen to paper will open up whole new avenues for you—and for your writing.

Why not start and see what happens?

Your novel is just 4 months away- click to get our FREE novel preparation notebook and begin your story!
Click Here

8 Responses

  1. I’ve been writing for many years and fall in and out of writers block that stalls the progress of my latest project. It’s very frustrating. I resort to the manual method frequently. Jenna, you are absolutely right when you say that slowing down the writing process by handwriting is what it takes to re-energize and move forward. I read this blog twice because it reminded me that my journal (a spiral bound notebook) is a safe place where I can record my undeveloped story ideas. It works for me. Thank you.

    Reply

    1. Susan, thank you so much for your comment. I love that the article has nudged you back to your notebook- I find if I take even a day away from mine, I get a little antsy, and coming back to it is a relief. Enjoy and please share this with anyone else you think will be similarly inspired! ~ Jenna

      Reply

  3. Thanks for these three confirmations about handwriting she said as she typed on her laptop. I recently started what I hope will be my second novel in a beautiful notebook, feeling little pressure to write X number of words or any words at all. In fact I find myself drawing and notetaking a lot. I now have four big circles which intersect which I think of as worlds in the novel, and bit by bit I’m filling in details and characters. I have the first scene in my head now because I know the landscape of world one. This feels lovley and slow.

    Reply

    1. Kath, thank you for your comment- and congratulations on the beautiful slow and artistic wending of your way into your second book. What a gift to let the ideas come to you in a visual context and show you through this other more tactile lens what they want to become. That’s such a perfect way to see what you want to say-

      Reply

  4. As a former Montessori teacher, she discovered that the key to the brain is through the hand. Most of her materials are purposely made this way so the children learn through their senses. Thanks for the great article!

    Reply

  5. I’m currently working on my first novel and have started on the computer, but I am going to continue by hand. I think I’ll handwrite it, then dictate or type it. I think the hand/brain coordination benefit is useful as is less distractions. My plan is to chill in a Muskoka chair by our fishpond with the waterfall running. It will be an experiment. Wish me luck 🙂

    Reply

    1. Julia, congrats on starting your book! Handwriting is definitely going to be a wonderfully embodied way for you to sink into the story. Here’s to weather that matches your ideal Muskoka writing day (sounds heavenly). Please let me know how your process goes, and if you ever run into questions or could use a boost, please reach out. Happy to help you however would be useful. Wishing you luck and everything else ~ Jenna

      Reply

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Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

8 Responses

  1. I’ve been writing for many years and fall in and out of writers block that stalls the progress of my latest project. It’s very frustrating. I resort to the manual method frequently. Jenna, you are absolutely right when you say that slowing down the writing process by handwriting is what it takes to re-energize and move forward. I read this blog twice because it reminded me that my journal (a spiral bound notebook) is a safe place where I can record my undeveloped story ideas. It works for me. Thank you.

    Reply

    1. Susan, thank you so much for your comment. I love that the article has nudged you back to your notebook- I find if I take even a day away from mine, I get a little antsy, and coming back to it is a relief. Enjoy and please share this with anyone else you think will be similarly inspired! ~ Jenna

      Reply

  3. Thanks for these three confirmations about handwriting she said as she typed on her laptop. I recently started what I hope will be my second novel in a beautiful notebook, feeling little pressure to write X number of words or any words at all. In fact I find myself drawing and notetaking a lot. I now have four big circles which intersect which I think of as worlds in the novel, and bit by bit I’m filling in details and characters. I have the first scene in my head now because I know the landscape of world one. This feels lovley and slow.

    Reply

    1. Kath, thank you for your comment- and congratulations on the beautiful slow and artistic wending of your way into your second book. What a gift to let the ideas come to you in a visual context and show you through this other more tactile lens what they want to become. That’s such a perfect way to see what you want to say-

      Reply

  4. As a former Montessori teacher, she discovered that the key to the brain is through the hand. Most of her materials are purposely made this way so the children learn through their senses. Thanks for the great article!

    Reply

  5. I’m currently working on my first novel and have started on the computer, but I am going to continue by hand. I think I’ll handwrite it, then dictate or type it. I think the hand/brain coordination benefit is useful as is less distractions. My plan is to chill in a Muskoka chair by our fishpond with the waterfall running. It will be an experiment. Wish me luck 🙂

    Reply

    1. Julia, congrats on starting your book! Handwriting is definitely going to be a wonderfully embodied way for you to sink into the story. Here’s to weather that matches your ideal Muskoka writing day (sounds heavenly). Please let me know how your process goes, and if you ever run into questions or could use a boost, please reach out. Happy to help you however would be useful. Wishing you luck and everything else ~ Jenna

      Reply

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