Writing By Hand Is an Act of Creative Rebellion

Writing by hand elicits creativity in a way that typing on a keyboard can never replicate.

I have to write every day — this I’ve come to know. Even a simple sentence such as this is necessary in the grand scheme of it all. Even more specific than this is writing by hand.

There’s a release that takes place in the simple act of gripping an ink pen between my thumb and forefinger and pressing it against a notebook and forming

letters
into words
into paragraphs
into pages and pages
of letters into words into sentences into paragraphs.

Writing by hand is different than, say, being hunched over a laptop pecking away at the keys — the computer itself punching out the already formed letters.

In “Why creative writing is better with a pen,” Lee Rourke, author and contributor to The Guardian and self-confessed ink pen/notebook lover, likens writing on a laptop computer to the displeasure and mundaneness of keying invoices in an office environment.

Writing by hand is more than the physical act of shaping thoughts into legible symbols learned in grade school.

Writing by hand is an act of creativity, lighting up dormant areas in the brain like some magnificent summer lightning storm reaching its hands down from sky to earth and rippling across the horizon.

Kapow!

In “The Simple Joy of Writing by Hand,” Barbara Bash considers this near-lost art form being rapidly replaced by technology a meditative practice in itself.

Pen to paper has become somewhat of a rebellious act of creativity in the sterile wiped world of modern technology and word processing.

I find great pleasure in writing by hand, as it opens up a treasure chest of ideas in the process, slinging out good for nothing dirty socks and old t-shirts from high school long stored away and smelling of moth balls, and uncovering tiny green army men fending off giant robots intent on destroying mankind.

How about you?

Thanks for reading.