Writing by Hand is Good for your Brain - Here's how to do it
nealstephenson.substack.com
Because I am known to write using a fountain pen on paper, a number of people have pointed me to this post and its underlying research. I won’t rehash what is said in those sources, but the gist of it is that when you write things down by hand you’re recruiting more of your brain, which is a good thing.

About twenty-five years ago I stopped composing at the keyboard and switched over to fountain pen on paper. Since then I have written many thousands of pages that way. The manuscript of The Baroque Cycle was a stack of handwritten pages 42 inches high, which for a time was on display at the Museum of Science Fiction in Seattle. With the exception of The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., which I co-wrote with Nicole Galland by emailing Word files back and forth, every book I’ve written since then has been composed with fountain pen on paper.

  • A_norny_mousse@piefed.zipEnglish
    5·
    5 days ago

    write on paper just to have to type it into a computer anyway.

    I don’t think he does that himself.

    Stories often don’t end where you think they will, and a lot of that probably comes from being forced to live with what you wrote 5 chapters ago instead of being able to go back and edit it in Word.

    Um. That’s not how writing by hand works - it’s not meant to look good. You can scratch out, squeeze in, re-number pages, add asterisks, even cut into pieces, as the story requires.