Summary

The author has transitioned from typing to writing by hand due to increased screen time from virtual teaching and the pandemic.

Abstract

The author describes a significant shift in their writing practice in 2020, moving away from digital methods to a more traditional approach of writing by hand. This change was precipitated by an overwhelming increase in screen time due to virtual teaching during the pandemic. Despite initial resistance and a sense of slow progress, the author has found a new rhythm and appreciation for the tactile experience of writing with pen and paper, drawing inspiration from historical writers and personal family history.

Opinions

The author views the technological saturation of daily life as a negative influence, particularly in the context of their writing practice.
There is a sense of nostalgia and connection to the past in the act of writing by hand.
The author initially struggled with the slow pace of handwriting but has come to appreciate its meditative quality and potential for deeper creativity.
The author expresses doubt about the quality of their handwritten work but remains committed to the process.
The author finds solace and inspiration in the physical act of writing, as well as in the legacy of their great-grandmother's quilting, which symbolizes perseverance and craftsmanship.

Writing Roots

The transformative experience of writing by hand

2020 has brought so many changes, adjustments, work-arounds and reinventions. Many include technological solutions, and it seems that remote everything is King.

With this technological take-over of our daily existence, I never expected one are of my life would move in the opposite direction.

But that’s what’s happened to my writing practice.

As a teacher I have had a computer in front of me, a keyboard at my fingertips, daily for a couple of decades now. In the classroom, the computer is always open, on, ready to project something, print something, search a grade, email a parent, and if I’m not using my computer I’m just as likely to be working with a student on her own machine.

As a writer I began using a desktop computer for composition the summer of 1991, when I was awarded a writing grant for 3 months to create an anthology of short stories, and needed to work fast. The habit stuck, and I’ve composed on a computer ever since.

But this year has doubled-down on my normal tech use. Teaching is now 100% on-screen, virtual, computer dependent. Work days that used to be merely facilitated by my laptop are now dominated by its use, shackled to it.

Seven or more hours a day in front of the little screen, mousing and keying around in the virtual classroom, wrestling with ornery software and mercurial wifi.

Pre-pandemic, I claimed an hour or two after my teaching day, whether at home or in a quiet cafe, during which I wrote. Fingers flying across they keyboard, I could type as fast as I could think, and I cranked out novels, short stories, poems, essays.

But I no longer have it in me to sit another two hours with a laptop, even to do the thing I love, even when words are crying to be written.

I tried to fix the situation by creating a new writing place for myself. I set up a card table in front of large windows, looking out into the trees behind my house. I put books, a candle, flowers there. I thought perhaps if I could stare out the windows at the natural world while I typed….

Even that was too much. Any more time spent sitting at a computer was too much.

And so I faced facts: if I was going to keep writing, I was going to have to do it by hand.

I bought a large spiral notebook, with pages lined the way I like them — not too wide, but big enough for handwriting to still be legible. I bought a set of three very nice ball point pens. I set some ground rules for myself: it was okay to cross things out, scribble, and interrupt one narrative with another when inspiration strikes. Then I rolled up my shirt sleeves and began a new novel.

By hand.

I have been doing this for several weeks now. I don’t know how many words I’ve written, because there is no wordcount in my notebook, but it feels like a pitifully small amount. Twice I’ve had to interrupt the novel for a poem, and once for a short story. I struggle with dismay at the snail’s pace of this work, and an unsettling suspicion that the writing is crap.

But I keep doing it anyway.

Most writers in human history did it this way, after all. I imagine myself amidst all that good company, and square my shoulders each day as I pick up my pen and my notebook, and scribble out a few more pages.

It does not feel normal yet. I don’t know if it ever will. When I become discouraged (which is almost daily), I keep in mind my great-grandmother’s quilts, one of which I have wrapped around me on the sofa as I work: thousands upon thousands of tiny stitches, and she had to do them one at a time, with a single needle and her own two hands. If she could persevere and create works of folk art that have warmed her family for generations, then I can write my novel, and what ever else comes along, by hand.

And who knows? Perhaps, as so often happens, there will be an unlooked-for gift in this. A slower pace may result in deeper thought, a better book eventually.

In the meantime, I cherish the feel of a pen in my hand, paper smooth and creamy and scribble-filled. I’m enjoying the physical movement of writing letters and words.

And blessing every moment away from the screen.