Writing by Hand
It’s the difference between store bought cookies and from scratch. Everyone can tell.
In the class where I fast read the first drafts, three stood out. It wasn’t necessarily that they were better (Lauren’s piece was awesome,
As the students were working, I went around the room and asked these three authors—did you write this by hand?
Yes.
Yes.
and
Yes.
100% accuracy. It was wild. I couldn’t believe it. The three stories that stood out (still plenty of things to work on, but they had that total engagement with the present sensory moment we’ve been working so hard to achieve, and the other stories did not have that quality).
So then I asked Lauren and
I stopped the class. “We have to talk,” I said. “Are any of you working on the computer? Drafting your piece there?”
Every single other student in the class raised a hand. All the other pieces—red light pieces—were composed on the computer where it is too easy to rush, too easy to delete, too easy to overwork a passage, to easy to write straight from the head blah blah blah.
Astounding. It was so easy to tell the difference. There was no grey area, there was nowhere to hide.
Related posts:
Hmmm, and I compose 100 percent on the computer. Maybe that’s the problem.
Where does a typewriter fall in this continuum? Like halfway between writing by hand and word processing?
We polled our class of 6 people today:
teacher-by hand
students-4 by hand, 2 computer, and one also uses a white board for story structure and timeline, anything that’s not actually body (he has 3!)
[...] off the computer when writing and write with pen and paper. As author and teacher, Heather Sellers points out, “Writing by hand is the difference between store bought cookies and from scratch. [...]
[...] off the computer when writing and write with pen and paper. As author and teacher, Heather Sellers points out, “Writing by hand is the difference between store bought cookies and from scratch. [...]