That’s the question my friend asked me today. I paused. This is a perfect moment to say the words I always wanted to say. And finally the situation arose.
“I’ll write about it.”
“Well, if you don’t want to answer just say so.” She sounds a bit upset.
“No, I mean it, I’ll write about it, my writing voice is much smarter than my speaking voice.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we all have three voices: the one we think with, the one we speak with and the one we write with. When I write, I’m using a different voice than I’m using with you now. You’ll get a much better answer once I write it.”
So why do I write by hand? Well, there’s the obvious: there is nothing in the digital world that feels as good as writing with an actual pen on a real paper. Nothing compares to that. There’s nothing like flipping through your old journals. When I read though mine I get transported back in time. I speak with the younger me. At times she’s insecure and scared. At times she’s funny. But always bold and honest. Still me. She gives me answers I need today.
The handwriting feels real. Feels like me. Messy.
Digital doesn’t do it for me. Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve tried it all. I really like the idea of fancy pretty apps like Notion. They are so neat. I tried to get into them. But can I say those apps don’t have a soul? Plenty of people write directly in those apps and their writing doesn’t feel soulless.
But it doesn’t work for me. I like when my hand gets tired when I have so many thoughts at once and I try to write them as quickly as I can.
One more thing is editing. When I write by hand, I don’t have a handy backspace key close by. It’s not that easy to just remove an unnecessary word and forget about it. If i want to remove something, i have to cross it. But it’s still there forever. My very raw thoughts. No editing yet.
I used to hate that when I was a kid. I always dreamed to be allowed to write my essays on a computer so that it doesn’t look messy and the teacher will only judge the essay itself, not my handwriting. I always got worse marks because of my handwriting and the amount of crossing words and “messing up the paper”. I hated my own handwriting.
I don’t hate it now. To me it has a certain charm to it. It’s as messy as the thoughts in my head. Yeah, I’d love it to иe more readable but most of the times I’m too focused on the meaning behind the words rather than the shape of them.
So analog all the way for me. Messy handwriting rocks.