In the beginning, pen and paper were touted as the writer’s best friend. With the advent of the typewriter, writers took up writing by machine, and in the wake of computers, many authors—and the public at large—abandoned handwriting altogether.
Typing has replaced handwriting—to the point where some schools actually stopped teaching cursive handwriting. Only to rethink that decision as study after study revealed that writing in cursive is a neurological process far richer than pecking on a keyboard, more deeply engaging the brain, and thereby enhancing language skills, memory, learning, and critical thinking. Writing cursive also helps you get into the flow, focus, and retain information; it can even improve your motor skills and your spelling.
If you haven’t scribbled a story in ink on paper lately, maybe you should. Buy a pretty notebook and a solid writing instrument—pencil, pen, sharpie—and take it to the beach, to your favorite bar or coffee shop, to your bed. You’ll be doing your writing brain a favor.
If you don’t believe me, check out these endorsements from some very fine writers:
“I like the process of pencil and paper as opposed to a machine. I think the writing is better when it’s done in handwriting.”
–Nelson DeMille
“Poets don’t draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.”
–Jean Cocteau
“I’ve never written any fiction not with a pen. I sit out of doors with very large numbers of very large stones and other objects on top of the pieces of paper that blow away in the wind. I’ve got a cast-iron mermaid and an enormous ammonite that a French ethnologist gave me that came up out of the bed of the road. I put these on the paper and I sit there scribbling in a kind of tempest. It’s great fun.”
–A. S. Byatt
“I always write my first draft in longhand, in lined notebooks. I move around the house, sitting where I like, and watch the words spool out in front of me, actually taking a lot of pleasure in the way they look in my strange handwriting on the page.”
–Sue Miller
“I was filling entire school notebooks with stories by Grade 3. Of course, they were double-spaced, and the handwriting was huge.”
–Linwood Barclay
“Writing with kids is an adventure. It seems like someone always has the flu or pink-eye. I mean, you don’t even have to be in direct contact with anyone to get pink-eye. But for parents who write, flexibility becomes essential, and as long as I have a pad of paper and a pen, I can write anywhere. Starbucks is fine.”
–Claire Messud
“I have more than 100 legal pads filled with handwriting. Eight novels, two books for children, countless stories and essays.”
–Susan Straight
“There’s no such thing as a writer’s block. If you’re having trouble writing, well, pick up the pen and write. No matter what, keep that hand moving. Writing is really a physical activity.”
–Natalie Goldberg
“Somehow I started introducing writing into my drawings, and after a time, the language took over and I started getting very involved with the handwriting and then the look of the handwriting.”
–Patti Smith
“I write my novels longhand. I love the feeling of writing; I love to see pen on paper. It feels more creative than typing, and it’s a more visual process for me – I can picture the entire scene in my head and am merely writing what I see.”
–Cecelia Ahern
“There’s something special about writing by hand, writing with a fountain pen, and there’s something special about writing into a book, to take a blank book and turn it into an actual book.”
–Joe Haldeman
“I used to write exclusively with one particular Montblanc fountain pen, although lately I have had to use a roller-tip fountain pen, because I find it harder and harder to control the fine muscles of my right hand during prolonged periods of work. I buy boxes of Deluxe Uni-ball pens, use them until they start to drag, and then change.”
–Mark Helprin
“I like that original romance of having a pen and a legal pad and going anywhere in the world and being able to write a novel with just those two things.”
–Alice McDermott
“At some point, sitting in the school library, during reading period, I looked up from my leopard print hardcover composition notebook where I was scribbling a derivative [John Ronald Reuel ] Tolkien epic full of purple prose in tiny handwriting and thought to myself, ‘Damn! I am a writer! How did that happen?’.”
–Vera Nazarian
“If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.”
–Paul Auster
“I am violently untidy. My desk is overcrowded. I write my first drafts in longhand in a long notebook using a plastic throwaway fountain pen. Then I work on a word processor using a different desk and a different room.”
–Colm Toibin
“There are five virtues: accuracy, literacy, a strong hand, industriousness, and the perfect writing utensils.”
–Jarod Kintz
“I was writing fantasy as soon as I could hold a pen.”
–Cecilia Dart-Thornton
“A pen is to me as a beak is to a hen.”
–J. R. R. Tolkien
“I don’t use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.”
–Jay Dratler
“My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.”
–Graham Greene
“My writing routine is: get son off to school and sit down at 8 A.M. I read what I wrote the day before, and then write longhand, into a notebook. I prefer paper and pen because it feels closer to my brain.”
–Tracy Chevalier
“For some reason, some of my best solutions and ideas are triggered in those dark theaters, usually totally unrelated to what’s going on onscreen. I also enjoy hiking in the foothills and mountains close to Sacramento. I always have to bring a pen and paper to jot down sudden thoughts and ideas.”
–James Rollins
“My thinking process starts with my pen.”
–Gulzar
“It’s called a pen. It’s like a printer, hooked straight to my brain.”
–Dale Dauten
This post was originally published at Career Authors