why i write longhand essay

A Summary and Analysis of George Orwell’s ‘Why I Write’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Why I Write’ is an essay by George Orwell, published in 1946 after the publication of his novella Animal Farm and before he wrote his final novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four . The essay is an insightful piece of memoir about Orwell’s early years and how he developed as a writer, from harbouring ambitions to write self-consciously literary works to developing, in the 1930s, into the author of sharp political commentary in both fiction and non-fiction.

You can read ‘Why I Write’ here before proceeding to our summary and analysis of Orwell’s essay below.

‘Why I Write’: summary

Orwell begins by observing that he knew he should be a writer from a very young age. Although in early adulthood he tried to ‘abandon’ the idea, he knew it was his true calling and that he would eventually ‘settle down and write books’.

He tells us that he was a lonely child who would make up stories and hold conversations with imaginary people, and that his own desire to write is linked to this childhood loneliness. During the First World War, when Orwell was still a child, he had two poems published in the local newspaper, and that was the beginning of his publishing career.

In his youth, he continued to think like a writer, making up a ‘continuous “story” about myself’, but never writing it down. When he was in his twenties, he had ambitions of writing ‘enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their sound’. Orwell calls his first novel, Burmese Days (1934), this kind of book.

Orwell then outlines what he sees as four chief motives for anyone becoming a writer: 1) egoism; 2) aesthetic enthusiasm; 3) historical impulse; and 4) political purpose.

Egoism is the desire to be thought clever, be talked about when alive, and remembered after death. Aesthetic enthusiasm is the perception of beauty in the world around the writer, as well as the beauty of language. The historical impulse is a desire to see things as they are and present the facts to readers. Political purpose is the urge to change people’s views of the kind of society they want to live in.

This last one is a matter of degree, because Orwell argues that every writer adopts some kind of political position: ‘Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.’

Perhaps surprisingly given he is principally known for ‘political’ writing, Orwell confides that by nature he is someone for whom the first three motives would usually outweigh the fourth. But when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Orwell knew where he stood. As he famously declares: ‘Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.’

Orwell concludes ‘Why I Write’ by stating that in the decade since 1936 he has tried to turn political writing ‘into an art’. Although he acknowledges that his impulse has not been entirely public-spirited but just as egoistic and ‘vain’ as it is in most writers, he knows that ‘one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality.’ The political scene has helped Orwell to sharpen his own writing.

‘Why I Write’: analysis

Orwell’s essay is of interest as a piece of autobiography, but Orwell extrapolates from his own personal background and literary trajectory to make more universal statements about good writing, and the reasons why all writers choose to write for a living (if they’re indeed lucky enough to do it for a living: in his ‘ Confessions of a Book Reviewer ’, also from 1946, he brilliantly outlines the absurd and stressful existence of struggling writers surviving on hackwork for newspapers and magazines, just to pay that month’s rent).

One of the key insights in ‘Why I Write’ is the link Orwell makes between his own efforts to become a successful writer and the broader political scene in Europe (and beyond) at the time. The Spanish Civil War, and the rise of Nazism, fascism, and Stalinism, all gave him a clear sense of what he should write about. As he puts it, all of his serious work written since has been ‘ against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism’.

We find this even in an essay like ‘ Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver’s Travels ’ (which, along with his analysis of Dickens’s art, shows what a fine and sensitive literary critic Orwell was), another 1946 essay, in which Orwell argues that in Book IV of Gulliver’s Travels , Jonathan Swift depicts what we would now call a totalitarian society. But because Gulliver (and, presumably, by extension, Swift himself) approves of the Houyhnhnms’ society, Swift admires the idea of a totalitarian state in which dissident opinion is unacceptable.

The point is that when he lacked a clear motivation for writing fiction, he churned out ‘lifeless’ work (much of which, such as his novel A Clergyman’s Daughter , a kind of Joycean work in many ways, he later disowned, calling it ‘tripe’).

But once he realised what his subject-matter should be, this new-found ‘political purpose’ sharpened his prose. In a sense, the fourth of Orwell’s listed motives brought the other three into a new perspective. His clearest and most detailed account of what constitutes good political writing is his essay ‘ Politics and the English Language ’ (also from 1946), which we have analysed here .

In 1976, Joan Didion wrote her own essay called ‘ Why I Write ’, in which she acknowledged that she had taken her title from George Orwell. She also drew attention to the triple-assonance in Orwell’s title, the long I sounds of ‘Why I Write’.

Even Orwell’s title is itself an example of the clear-minded simplicity which he identifies as the chief feature of good writing at the end of ‘Why I Write’: ‘Good prose is like a window pane.’ But as so often with Orwell’s work, he is not just writing about himself, but drawing attention to far more widespread truths about what motivates an author to devote their lives to writing.

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Why I Write

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From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.

I was the middle child of three, but there was a gap of five years on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely child’s habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life. Nevertheless the volume of serious – i.e. seriously intended – writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation. I cannot remember anything about it except that it was about a tiger and the tiger had ‘chair-like teeth’ – a good enough phrase, but I fancy the poem was a plagiarism of Blake’s ‘Tiger, Tiger’. At eleven, when the war or 1914-18 broke out, I wrote a patriotic poem which was printed in the local newspaper, as was another, two years later, on the death of Kitchener. From time to time, when I was a bit older, I wrote bad and usually unfinished ‘nature poems’ in the Georgian style. I also, about twice, attempted a short story which was a ghastly failure. That was the total of the would-be serious work that I actually set down on paper during all those years.

However, throughout this time I did in a sense engage in literary activities. To begin with there was the made-to-order stuff which I produced quickly, easily and without much pleasure to myself. Apart from school work, I wrote vers d’occasion , semi-comic poems which I could turn out at what now seems to me astonishing speed – at fourteen I wrote a whole rhyming play, in imitation of Aristophanes, in about a week – and helped to edit school magazines, both printed and in manuscript. These magazines were the most pitiful burlesque stuff that you could imagine, and I took far less trouble with them than I now would with the cheapest journalism. But side by side with all this, for fifteen years or more, I was carrying out a literary exercise of a quite different kind: this was the making up of a continuous “story” about myself, a sort of diary existing only in the mind. I believe this is a common habit of children and adolescents. As a very small child I used to imagine that I was, say, Robin Hood, and picture myself as the hero of thrilling adventures, but quite soon my “story” ceased to be narcissistic in a crude way and became more and more a mere description of what I was doing and the things I saw. For minutes at a time this kind of thing would be running through my head: ‘He pushed the door open and entered the room. A yellow beam of sunlight, filtering through the muslin curtains, slanted on to the table, where a matchbox, half-open, lay beside the inkpot. With his right hand in his pocket he moved across to the window. Down in the street a tortoiseshell cat was chasing a dead leaf,’ etc., etc. This habit continued until I was about twenty-five, right through my non-literary years. Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside. The ‘story’ must, I suppose, have reflected the styles of the various writers I admired at different ages, but so far as I remember it always had the same meticulous descriptive quality.

When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words, i.e. the sounds and associations of words. The lines from Paradise Lost –

So hee with difficulty and labour hard Moved on: with difficulty and labour hee,

which do not now seem to me so very wonderful, sent shivers down my backbone; and the spelling ‘hee’ for ‘he’ was an added pleasure. As for the need to describe things, I knew all about it already. So it is clear what kind of books I wanted to write, in so far as I could be said to want to write books at that time. I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their sound. And in fact my first completed novel, Burmese Days , which I wrote when I was thirty but projected much earlier, is rather that kind of book.

I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer’s motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject-matter will be determined by the age he lives in – at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own – but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, or in some perverse mood: but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful business men – in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition – in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all – and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

(iv) Political purpose – using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time. By nature – taking your ‘nature’ to be the state you have attained when you are first adult – I am a person in whom the first three motives would outweigh the fourth. In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer. First I spent five years in an unsuitable profession (the Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I underwent poverty and the sense of failure. This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware of the existence of the working classes, and the job in Burma had given me some understanding of the nature of imperialism: but these experiences were not enough to give me an accurate political orientation. Then came Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, etc. By the end of 1935 I had still failed to reach a firm decision. I remember a little poem that I wrote at that date, expressing my dilemma:

A happy vicar I might have been Two hundred years ago, To preach upon eternal doom And watch my walnuts grow But born, alas, in an evil time, I missed that pleasant haven, For the hair has grown on my upper lip And the clergy are all clean-shaven. And later still the times were good, We were so easy to please, We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep On the bosoms of the trees. All ignorant we dared to own The joys we now dissemble; The greenfinch on the apple bough Could make my enemies tremble. But girls’ bellies and apricots, Roach in a shaded stream, Horses, ducks in flight at dawn, All these are a dream. It is forbidden to dream again; We maim our joys or hide them; Horses are made of chromium steel And little fat men shall ride them. I am the worm who never turned, The eunuch without a harem; Between the priest and the commissar I walk like Eugene Aram; And the commissar is telling my fortune While the radio plays, But the priest has promised an Austin Seven, For Duggie always pays. I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls, And woke to find it true; I wasn’t born for an age like this; Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?

The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one’s political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one’s aesthetic and intellectual integrity.

What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.

It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness. Let me give just one example of the cruder kind of difficulty that arises. My book about the Spanish civil war, Homage to Catalonia , is of course a frankly political book, but in the main it is written with a certain detachment and regard for form. I did try very hard in it to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. But among other things it contains a long chapter, full of newspaper quotations and the like, defending the Trotskyists who were accused of plotting with Franco. Clearly such a chapter, which after a year or two would lose its interest for any ordinary reader, must ruin the book. A critic whom I respect read me a lecture about it. ‘Why did you put in all that stuff?’ he said. ‘You’ve turned what might have been a good book into journalism.’ What he said was true, but I could not have done otherwise. I happened to know, what very few people in England had been allowed to know, that innocent men were being falsely accused. If I had not been angry about that I should never have written the book.

In one form or another this problem comes up again. The problem of language is subtler and would take too long to discuss. I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it. Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole. I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.

Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don’t want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist or understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.

Gangrel , No. 4, Summer 1946

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8 Ways Writing Longhand Amps Your Muse

Without doubt, our 21st-century technologic additions are a decided blessing. But we’ve also lost some things along the road to the future. We’ve amped up distractions and made it far too easy to stifle creativity by editing and tweaking before a thought is even half-formed.

Returning to the caveman technology of pen and paper can have a surprisingly freeing effect on your muse. Although I write my first drafts on the computer , I’ve learned to free my imagination in the first rush of creation by writing my outlines longhand in a notebook.

In the process, I’ve gained a number of benefits. Here are eight!

My outline using the awesome WriteMind Planner .

1. Writing Longhand Discourages Censorship

Removing the temptation to glance up at a previous paragraph and switch out words and phrases allows my raw thoughts to flow onto the page. I don’t judge them, I don’t edit them, I don’t censor them. I just pour them out.

2. Writing Longhand Brings Writing to a Primal Level

There’s something about the tactile experience of ink on paper that is inimitable. It presents a return to writing in a purer, more instinctive form, without the intercession of complicated electric tools.

3. Writing Longhand Removes You From Your Notes

Moving your writing away from the computer also means removing yourself from your notes. Instead of relying on old scraps of inspiration, you’re able to produce what the story needs as it needs it from the well of your subconscious . The results are often startlingly cohesive and powerful.

4. Writing Longhand Provides a Change of Pace

When you’re stumped by a tough story problem or even general burnout, changing your location and your methods can sometimes be just the trick for jump-starting your creativity.

5. Writing Longhand Frees Your Imagination by Allowing Sloppiness

Something about the near illegibility of my handwriting seems to break down my need for perfection. Instead of toiling over word choice, I’m able to dash down my thoughts as quickly as they come to me. I find this particularly vital in the early creative stages.

6. Writing Longhand Frees You From Distractions

Writing longhand physically removes you from the computer and all its distractions, including the siren song of the Internet.

7. Writing Longhand Allows Editing During Transcription

The necessity of transcribing our notes onto the computer allows us the opportunity to apply a critical eye to what we’ve written, once the first rush of creativity is past.

8. Writing Longhand Gives You an Instant Hard Copy

Unless your house burns down, your handwritten hard copies aren’t likely to randomly self-destruct as computer files are known to do. Even if you lose your notes after you’ve typed them up, you’ll always have a hard copy as backup.

I love my technology. I love typing. I love the clean look of Times New Roman letters appearing on the virginal white of my screen. Sometimes I even love the taunting blink of the cursor (sometimes). But writing longhand is an invaluable technique my writing would suffer without. In a recent Writer’s Digest article, freelance author Dick Dickinson agreed:

In today’s stream-of-consciousness world of e-mail, text, Facebook and Twitter, initials become sentences and words take flight before thoughts are well-formed. What to do? Well, are you ready to turn the clock back, oh, a few centuries? To hone concentration and put consideration back into your writing, and for a striking change of pace, try using a … pen. Consider the advantages: There is no insert, spell check, cut and paste, or delete; just your words drawn on paper with an ancient technique.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! Have you ever tried writing longhand for your fiction? Did it help or hinder your process? Tell me in the comments!

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K.M. Weiland is the award-winning and internationally-published author of the acclaimed writing guides Outlining Your Novel , Structuring Your Novel , and Creating Character Arcs . A native of western Nebraska, she writes historical and fantasy novels and mentors authors on her award-winning website Helping Writers Become Authors.

This is a very individual choice. I can use longhand for brainstorming out a chapter or an idea, but writing actual prose–I actually do worse! This might have to do with the chaotic way I write. Even typing on a typewriter was just as bad as writing longhand. Computer is more friendly for me because it gives me to hop around at will, which the other two options do not. I can’t go back and add a sentence I thought of easily; if I scratch a paragraph I’ve thought better of it, it looks more discouraging than like the story is taking shape.

I’m also a lousy typist to start with. My fingers can fly over the keyboard, but I’m also in a constant state of backspace this, backspace that, and I still make a ton of mistakes. Never the same mistake. If I were to take something longhand, I would make three times as many mistakes than if I just typed in straight. So that also adds to the feeling that writing by hand is more work than it’s worth.

I think this is so true! I’m not about to give up my computer, however, I think it’s true that we put words on a electronic page so quickly that we don’t take time to think about what we’re actually writing. And it’s so easy to go back and change a word here and a sentence there while we’re actually in the process of getting words down, that it’s distracting sometimes.

I’m definitely going to think about this the next time I’m stuck in my writing. Thank you!

I used to love sitting down with a pad and pen. My handwriting stinks, but somehow it just felt good. There is a different kind of connection with our words when we hand write them. Love this idea and will try it – that is if my arthritis will allow. I especially like the editing advantage while you transcribe. 🙂

I used to only be able to write stories longhand. Now I can do either. But reasons 1 – 6 don’t really apply: I still edit, I still stare blankly at the empty page, I still get distracted, I still look at my notes (usually on scraps of paper), I still worry over word choice…

But I did hear that the main difference about writing longhand and typing is the parts of the brain. Because you use both hands to type (hopefully), you use both sides of your brain; but writing longhand only uses the creative side.

P.S. The numbers are off in the poll. I voted for #9 assuming it was supposed to be #7 – a definite advantage when moving the story to the computer.

@Linda: I have to type my drafts as well. I actually value the urge for perfectionism during the actual writing phase. Not being able to go back and correct myself ad I write would drive me crazy.

@Andria: Writing longhand wad something I discovered as the result of a minor bout of writer’s block years ago. It’s been one of my mist valued tool ever since.

@Jan: There’s something very special about pen on paper. I love just flipping back through the inky pages.

@Jenn: How interesting about the different sides the brain becoming involved during typing vs. handwriting. I hadn’t heard that before, but it makes sense. You’re absolutely right about the poll! That’s what happens when I do these things late at night, I guess. I’ll get that fixed. Thanks for pointing it out!

Great post. I discovered writing longhand works better for me. I don’t sit there staring blankly at the screen, nor do I worry about misspellings or if something looks right. I sit down and start writing, letting the thoughts flow. It’s very freeing. Plus when a thought comes to mind about something else in the story, I can jot it down in the side margin.

Plus, like you said, when typing it up, I find myself expanding upon and adding to what I’ve written. Yes, some minor editing comes into play, but I try not to get into major editing since it is a draft.

And I can write anywhere versus being tied to my computer inside. Love sitting outside on my patio, listening to nature, while I write.

I think the magic of writing longhand, for me, is that allows me to make mistakes. My handwriting is so atrocious anyway that I don’t have to worry about keeping the page looking nice. I can cross out lines, write all over the margins, even doodle if I want. And, you’re right, it is very freeing!

Even though I use a laptop, there are sometimes when it’s impractical to haul a laptop around. That’s why when I was doing the first draft of my first sci-fi-ish project, I handwrote the whole thing. I could take it on the boat, I could do it easily in a car (no matter how much you turn the brightness up, my laptop cannot seem to get bright enough on battery power in direct sunshine!) The only thing that was tough was trying to find something I’d referenced earlier! 🙂

As long as you’ve got a good pen (I prefer Uniball’s Signo pens) and a decently hard surface to write on, you’re good to go. I like that about writing by hand.

But, I’m still doing my next projects on the laptop.

I like the balance of using both pen and computer. My brain works well when I categorize its tasks, so dividing certain stages of the writing process into longhand and typing is beneficial for my process. And I’ll agree that the Signo is a great pen!

I occasionally do the pen and paper thing, but my thoughts tend to flow faster than I can write, then I get frustrated. If I type, I can usually get the idea down before it vaporizes.

But I agree that it is freeing and writing in a fresh way with a different background tends to shake the muse awake.

Just sitting on my porch with pen and paper or taking my notebook into places where my computer can’t come (don’t have a laptop)has been very helpful.

BTW: my favorite pen is Dr. Grip by Pilot. It’s supposed to be good for arthritis and bad wrists. It costs about $8, but you can buy refills for it instead of tossing it when the ink runs out. 🙂

What you mentioned is exactly why I’ve never tried to do my actual writing longhand. But I like the fact that writing longhand forces me to slow down during the early stages. At that point it’s more about developing the idea than capturing it perfectly on paper.

It’s interesting you would post this, because during NaNoWriMo last year, I tried both ways. Handwriting was great when I couldn’t access the computer, but this one online program named “Write or Die” really had me churning out the words. I can pump the words either way, I guess.

Adaptability is a good trait for writers. If we lock ourselves into a certain routine and think that’s the *only* way we can write, we’re severely limiting ourselves.

I was about to say I lean more toward the computer–I type faster than I write and fear losing the thought. But then I read Jenn’s comment about how writing longhand only uses the creative side. I’m sold! I want the creative side to win out, hands down, so I will do more writing with pen and notebook first.

And to think this post has offered up suggestions for good pens, too. Can’t wait now to get to Office Max!

You may decide writing longhand isn’t for you. But it’s definitely worth a try, in my opinion!

I love to write longhand. The only problem is now I have notebooks upon notebooks that need transcribing. But it is refreshing for the muse, as you say.

Admittedly, all that transcribing that be hard on your wrists. I try to get my notes transcribed as soon as I’m finished with them, both because the material is fresh in my mind and because I don’t want to let it pile up.

I love it because I can do longhand anywhere..the local cafe, on a picnic, on the couch. It frees up my imagination, forces me to keep going without editing.

Portability is a big plus. I don’t often take advantage of it, though, just because I often have a difficult time concentrating in hectic or noisy atmospheres.

I had been struggling recently with writing scripts. The idea of typing it on the blank comp screen actually scared me! Then I remembered, I used to always handwrite first.

In Jr. High, I had a teacher that required us to write rough drafts with pencil and paper. Didn’t like it then, but I think it actually works best for me. I’m able to just get it all out without worrying about how it looks and format issues because it isn’t what I’m gong to be showing anyone else! Then I naturally edit as I type it into the computer. I usually don;t do too much editing afterwards. It’s cool. 🙂

Anyways, I spat out a scene in just a few minutes with handwriting yesterday. I’m definitely going to be doing that more often. It’s also healthier than letting the computer waves get ya even more!

What is it about that big white computer screen that can be so terrifying? Eliminating the need to format is definitely a benefit of writing by hand. Nothing breaks your flow of inspiration faster than having to stop and look for the right button.

lol it’s the fact that on the screen, it looks done, but I know it’s not. and I really don’t like writing it unless I’m sure it’s pretty much the way I want it. I know, something I got to get over. 😉 lol. Oh well, more paper and pen for me!

I prefer to know where I’m going with the story as well, which is why I outline. Writing blind – and making many false starts as a result – is something I relegate to longhand writing, not typing.

I love the tactile experience of writing with a pencil and/or the look of the script on the page (especially when I use different color pens). The scratching against the paper is musical. However, I use *that* as a launching point to writing my fiction on the computer.

When I freewrite or brainstorm, I prefer the old fashioned method, but my hand starts to cramp up after awhile and it’s frustrating not to be able to put those thoughts down! I actually wrote a rough draft novel (editing now) that started with the question of whether Shakespeare would have been such a literary genius if he hadn’t been forced to handwrite, if he’d had access to computers, etc.

Your article was very insightful and informative. I very much enjoyed reading it.

Sounds like a great premise! I would dearly love to know how the great classics might have differed had they been written using modern tools – and vice versa for the modern greats.

I discovered something similar while taking a revision course. The teacher had us write all the scenes we wanted to add to our ms by hand and then type them up.

I thought this would be a total waste of time, but as it turned out, I got so much more emotion, conflict, and setting into each of those scenes because my brain and muse and time to connect and communicate as I was writing.

I will always revise longhand from now on.

There’s a lot to be said for the speed of typing, but there’s also a lot to be said for the slowness of writing by hand. Both sides of the coin have their benefits.

Dear K.M. “Automatic handwriting” is what got me started as a writer, no really. Used by the Dadaïsts as stream of conscious writing and coined as Writing down the Bones (what the hell is that I asked at the first ever writing group I attended in the U.S.), oh, automatic handwriting I deducted after the wary glances of the other writers and a reluctant (what is she doing here) explanation of the group’s hostess. Imagine my distress when my right arm no longer wished to perform the way it ought to for handwriting. Typing is what is left for me, and while I’ve overcome my sorrow, and found a way to get down my stream of consciousness, I still miss handwriting for every aspect you mention in your post.

I can scribble notes, possible plot points or character traits. I can make lists of brainstorm ideas. I write scene summaries on post-it notes and stick them on my tracking board.

But I can’t write a scene–or much of anything in longhand. I can’t write fast enough–I can type about as fast as I think. And then I can’t read what I’ve written.

I hate workshops where they give prompts and make you write longhand. I need a pen with cut and paste.

K.M. On another note, your name works associative. How fun to read about you chasing Billy the Kid and Jesse James on horseback. Before my eye caught your “sandy hills” I imagined the sand paths leading through the forests and meadow(s) (“weiland” = meadow in Dutch) of my childhood.

@Carla, Transcription can be tedious, especially when you’ve left decades of notebooks unattended. However, I do remember what happened roughly in which years, and often draw material from the notebooks on my shelves. I’m considering to get a voice recognition program to use for transcribing certain sections of my notebooks. With ‘stream of consciousness writing” there’s a lot that doesn’t need to be transcribed anyway.

@Judith: Sorry you’re no longer able to pursue handwriting. But at least you’re still able to type! If I ever get to the point where I have to dictate my work, I’ll probably have to throw in the towel. Not many forests in western Nebraska, but lots of meadowlands/prairie. Wide open spaces are our specialty!

@Terry: Sounds like a worthy invention! I can think of several authors who would probably fork over their cash for a pen with cut and paste.

I enjoyed this post. 🙂 I really prefer writing with pen and paper but have been forced to turn to my computer for time’s sake. I still use a notebook for my brainstorming and notes though, which I think keeps me grounded.

There’s something special about pen and paper. Always makes me feel like a “real” writer. 😉

I love that I can doodle and brainstorm and cluster by hand. And I used to write on notebook paper that I stored in a 3-ring leather notebook. Not the best way, I’ve been told because of the tendency to rip out pages, though I don’t think I ever did that. I used to use one of those fountain pens with the cartridges, too. Made me feel so writerly. Wonder if they still make those?

Somebody gave me a calligraphy pen and bottle of ink once. I never did any serious writing with it, but it was lots of fun!

I still enjoy writing small parts of scenes and ideas in a notebook. I like to jot little thoughts/notes in the margins, scribbles about characters, etc…but the bulk of my writing is on my MacBook. I’ll always have a soft spot for paper and pen, though.

At the end of the day, I’m a computer girl. But I’d be loathe to entirely surrender my trusty pad and pen!

I love this post. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately (and trying to do more of it). In fact, your post inspired the post on my blog today!

Better crack out those pens then! 🙂

I enjoy writing longhand when brainstorming, working out something that has me stuck, or writing poetry. The journal in my purse is a lot smaller than my laptop and doesn’t require a battery or other electrical power, so I can break it out anywhere (and often do).

However, having lost almost all my possessions to a certain hurricane in ’05, I will never again be without a laptop and a portable hard drive as backup. The only writing that survived that catastrophe was what I had mixed in with the files I packed for the evacuation. I lost a lot of my poetry and a few stories I’d written (none publication worthy, but still…), and I determined that would never happen again.

Now, I realize I could lose my electronic files too, but the laptop and PHD are a lot easier to evacuate than piles of notebooks, so I’ll chance it.

Besides, I generally produce more with my laptop than my notebook. I think it’s because my hand falls asleep if I grip my pen too long…

Whenever I try to figure out what I’ll grab first should my house ever catch fire in the middle of the night, my writing is always on top of the list. So sorry you lost your poems. That sort of thing is irreplaceable!

I journal and I have tons of journals going back to the 80’s. There is something about a blank piece of paper and a pen that gets me going. However, if I’m writing speech or material to be published I use pen and paper to mind map (have several notebooks of them too) as opposed to writing a formal outline or prose. Handwriting works well with creating poetry I’ve found. I started back writing poetry last year and have already taken up two journals of mind-maps and rough drafts.

I’ve noted this before: it is interesting how ebooks are becoming popular but journals (of all shapes and sizes) and pens are becoming just as popular, if not more so.

Interesting comment about poetry and longhand writing. I hadn’t thought about it before, but I’d have to agree. I think it’s because poetry is such an organic process. Writing it by hand brings you closer to the words.

VERY well said! I personally find myself more creative and less editor mode every time I write long-hand. I often write my best stuff when I am on the recumbant bike exercising away while writing with pen and paper. I previously thought that was perhaps due to more blood going to my brain…but maybe its just the act of writing with pen by itself. What I have found crucial to this process, however, is having a really nice smooth-flowing ball point pen. I wonder what it was like writing 800 pages with quill and ink well…

As a rabid multi-tasker, it’s often been my goal to somehow fuse my exercising with some other task. For a while, I managed to get some reading done on the Nordic Trac, but I switched to skipping rope, and my hands became too busy!

I discovered my love of writing at an early age, and while my family did have a computer I was allowed to use, I wrote all of my stories in notebooks and stray sheets of paper (I still have some of them!). There was something about holding a copy of my stories, the scratching sound of the pen or pencil, and my messy handwriting (which I’m ashamed to admit is just as messy years later) that brought out the creativity in me.

Now, I write all stories, blog posts, etc. on my computer, because it’s easier, faster, and more convenient, and I personally like it better. Still, I like to write notes about my book longhand. Hm, you’ve inspired me. Maybe I’ll actually write something on paper tonight with a… what are those things called? Pencils? Yeah, that’s the word 😉

My mother despaired over my handwriting. I always told her that sloppy handwriting was a sign of genius. 😉

I can never think of a time when I’m not writing something down, either via my laptop or in the writing journal/dream journal I keep by my nightstand when I feel inspired to keep track of things in my head, among other places. I use a balance of both writing electronically and traditionally. Notably, when I’m on the go, I can’t haul my laptop with me, and sometimes I don’t feel like jotting down things via my Ipod Touch (though it does come in handy in some measures), so I carry my favorite ink pen and pad and I’m ready to go. Another advantage to writing with pen and paper: the pretty ink pens. 🙂 Something about writing with my favorite pen gives a little extra step in my day, especially when a good idea comes to mind.

I love my iTouch for portability, but, I agree, it can be a pain to use in typing out long notes. Sometimes writing something out by hand is just plain faster and easier.

Actually, Dickens was a professional shorthand reporter. It’s still a feat, but not as hard on the hand as long-hand. Shorthand was considered a useful gentlemanly skill in that era.

I prefer paper for lists and offline research, even some online research. Copying links or chunks of text is easiest online. For writing, though, I’ve lost the feel for paper. I’m too used to being able to throw something down, then edit it. Also, I type faster than I write (assuming I want to read it again). Sometimes I even type notes to the kids’ teachers, edit, then handwrite them!

I believe it. Before the advent of the typewriter, I’m sure people used every shortcut they had at their disposal to lessen the physical stress of longhand writing.

I always have to brainstorm longhand. SInce no matter how much I try, I simply can’t ignore my internal editor in computer. It will jump wherever it likes and destroy all my tempo. But I like to write my drafts in computer and save them on skydrive. So I won’t lost them. Since writing them longhand is hard on my hands :/ And it would mean having to keep lots of notebooks with you and for a traveler like me, it is hard to even keep the brainstorming notebook always available 🙁

That’s the beauty of the Internet – we can store our stuff in the Cloud and access it wherever we like.

Yeah! True 🙂 And this is too, we are here, one from Nebraska and one from Malaysia, easily discussing our ways to write. 🙂

Gotta love it!

Being a poet I find pen and paper indispensable. I can jot down verses, rhymes and sometimes full poems while waiting for medical/dental appointments or at intermissions during performances I attend. Nothing is more distressing to me than to have perfect words pop into my head and then try to remember them until I get to my computer.

And yes there is a freedom in putting ink on paper the old way. It is slower and gives the muse a slight break in her harried life.

I’ve been wanting to try my hand at poetry more. Even bought a special notebook for it! But, alas, I haven’t made time for it yet. Must try to do that this year!

I always use pen and paper when brainstorming and outlining, it just seems to be more natural to me. Then I transpose those thoughts to the screen, and as I’m doing so it sparks further inspiration. If I’m stuck while writing a novel I resort to pen and paper to write down my thoughts and invariably I find the answer to my dilemma.

However as my handwriting is atrocious I have to be careful to make sure I can read my writing, unlike my shopping lists when I get to the supermarket and can’t make out what on earth I’ve written. 🙂

Hah. I could have written this comment word for word right down to the last sentence. 😉

I agree! My first draft is always in longhand.

Plus, it gives you an excuse to use fun notebooks. 🙂

THANK YOU!!!! I literally only came to this realization for myself yesterday. What a waste of a year I’ve had. I was working on a project on my laptop, only to dread and hate my story for everything it was. Last night, I sat down preparing to strap myself in and found myself jotting down ideas for the next portion of this story. Before I realized what had actually happened, I was almost a chapter in and loved every word.

I love writing in longhand because it helps me to slow down and get my thoughts out in a more organized way. It also helps me to stay focused on the task at hand and to think more deeply about what I’m writing. Plus, it’s a nice break from typing on my computer all day!

[…] started doing some trusty Googling and sure enough, there is quite a bit out there about the perks (and some drawbacks) of writing longhand – specifically writing first and even second drafts […]

[…] Why creative writing is better with a pen Writers Who Don’t Use Modern Technology The Mighty Pen – The Benefits of Writing Longhand Write or type? Writers Writing Longhand 8 Ways Writing Longhand Frees Your Muse […]

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[…] 8 Ways Writing Longhand Amps Your Muse […]

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Times Insider

The Case for Writing Longhand: ‘It’s About Trying to Create That Little Space of Freedom’

Two New York Times journalists who write their drafts by hand sing the praises of pen and paper.

By Sarah Bahr

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

Sam Anderson’s home office in Beacon, N.Y., is a palace of longhand. There are paragraphs scrawled inside the covers of books. Words are wedged into the corners of ripped-open envelopes. His looping script snakes its way down notepads — and there are piles of filled ones.

On nearly every scrawlable surface, there’s Mr. Anderson’s handwriting. And often, those scraps are the start of a story.

Mr. Anderson, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, is one of at least two writers at The Times who draft stories by hand, a time-consuming process that reporters operating on daily deadlines might consider impractical.

“It definitely carries a certain amount of privilege,” said Mr. Anderson, who, as a long-form writer free from the pressure of daily deadlines, writes an average of three 5,000- to 10,000-word pieces for the magazine each year.

Mr. Anderson, 44, said he grew up writing by hand, before the computer was common in American households. He likes that the process slows him down and puts him in touch with his thoughts. Drafting by hand lowers the stakes, he said, because it doesn’t feel like “official” writing yet, which helps him avoid writer’s block.

“You write by hand the same way you make a sweater by hand,” he said. “There’s a kind of folk craftiness to it. The first step is a very personal thing — drawing yourself out of your mind and body. Then, later, you translate that into impersonal print.”

Composing on a laptop, he said, also presents endless opportunities for procrastination. “It’s hard to get truly quiet or focused,” he said. “Writing by hand takes away 17 million options for distraction.”

He begins all his stories by free-writing on paper with an extra fine black Pilot Vball pen — or, sometimes, with a stylus on a reMarkable 2 digital tablet — though he never writes an article in order from beginning to end. He writes scenes in chunks and then spends hours trying to arrange them.

“I can’t see the structure; I can’t see the big picture, but I can feel my way through the little parts,” he said. “Then, when I have enough little pieces, I can think about the larger shape.”

The unorthodox, yet clever, beginning of his profile of Kevin Durant in the magazine in June, which spent the first five paragraphs chronicling an asteroid crashing into the Earth 35 million years ago, started that way.

“I don’t surprise myself typing,” he said. “But I do all the time writing by hand.”

After those first stages of writing, his draft — by then, beginning to congeal into cohesive narrative — goes to the magazine’s culture editor, Sasha Weiss. The two have come up with names for each of the many drafts in his editing process: Chunk Mayhem (“It’s exactly what it sounds like”), Fusion Town (“When the chunks start to fuse together”), Fusion City, then a typed Through-Draft. Ms. Weiss will then send him typed drafts, called proofs, with her edits; he’ll mark those up on his digital tablet with a stylus. (Ms. Weiss will input any changes into the digital file.)

“The quality of the thinking and writing feels higher to me when revising by hand,” he said. “The trade-off is worth it, even with the time I lose.”

Surprisingly, he’s not the only Times writer who hand-writes stories. A.O. Scott, a co-chief film critic, said he started drafting by hand six years ago when he was writing a 304-page book on the role of critics and criticism in modern culture.

“With how online we are now, it’s easy to lose productive hours to Twitter,” said Mr. Scott, 55. “I needed a fairly radical method to get away.”

In 2014, he began leaving his phone and his laptop at home to spend two hours every day writing in parks and coffee shops — using only a 5-by-8-inch Moleskine notebook and a pen. Later, he would add any quotes and facts he had needed to look up or double-check against his interview recordings or on the internet.

“You can’t go hunt around online for things when you don’t have your laptop,” Mr. Scott said. “So there’s something very clean about it, and the prose has more clarity.”

Mr. Scott says that he is generally a single-draft writer and that he takes three or four days to write a first draft of a 4,000- or 5,000-word piece (sometimes from his bathtub, he admits) before typing up and revising his article on his laptop. He then submits that draft to his editor, and the two work on edits digitally.

Unlike Mr. Anderson, Mr. Scott writes in chronological fashion. “I need to write in order, and I need to edit as I go,” Mr. Scott said. “I tend not to do a lot of major revision — it feels like building a Lego house, and it has to all be there as you go.”

Mr. Scott says he sees handwriting as a means to — just for a moment — forget the pressures of writing for a publication with over a hundred million monthly readers.

“It’s just me and the writing,” he said. “You’re free of ‘What will editors think?’ or ‘What will readers think?’ or ‘How will this look in the paper or on The Times website?’ ”

While Mr. Anderson says every piece he publishes begins as a scrawled draft, Mr. Scott says he doesn’t hand-write every film review — when he is on a deadline, typing is faster. But while the two writers might have different methods, Mr. Anderson and Mr. Scott both hold onto their scribbles, even after a piece is published.

“They feel like little pieces of me,” Mr. Anderson said.

Summary and Analysis of George Orwell’s Why I Write

Why do authors write? What is their purpose behind writing? Do they want recognition, money or something else? Is there anything common among writers? Orwell answers such several questions about writers and reading that boggle readers’ minds in his ‘Why I Write’. Starting from his early childhood to the time he became a mature writer, Orwell tells readers about things that fuelled his creativity. According to him childhood emotions and taste play a central role in the making of a writer. Orwell was a democratic socialist. His strong distaste for totalitarianism is visible in most of his works. However, there are several more beautiful things about the essay including imagery, clarity, and flow. He also provides a simplified account of his life and career and the strong drive he felt since his childhood to write.

Why I Write by George Orwell: A Summary and Analysis

George Orwell’s ‘Why I Write’ is an autobiographical journey from his childhood to the time he became a mature writer. It records the influences and motivations behind his career as an author. Apart from a brief glimpse of his troubled childhood, the piece sums up his career and youth and how he returned to an old and forgotten art after a long stint as a police officer in his life. Orwell’s connection with literature and word-craft was old. As a child, it was his favorite escapade from loneliness and boredom. Orwell’s life had taken several turns till finally, he started voicing his concern against totalitarianism. As a child, he was influenced by characters like Robinhood that fascinate almost every young kid. Before he became a full-fledged author, he had tried various forms of compositions including poems. Orwell’s writing keeps you spellbound by its lucidity and depth. While very modest on the one hand, it is bold and penetrating on the other.

There are several motivations for any author to write. Orwell starts from his childhood to explain the motivations that directed him towards writing. He was the second child of his parents. Orwell had two siblings; one was five years older than him and another five years younger. The writer inside him had started taking shape when he was just five or six years old. He tried to find a career in other fields and to lose the idea of being an author in adolescence. As he grew older, the dream became difficult to abandon. A lonely childhood and lack of father’s care had made Orwell cultivate ill manners. At school, his schoolmates hated him. He remained an odd creature and even in youth struggled to find a stable life and career. Serving the Indian Imperial Police did not bring him any satisfaction but churned the writer inside him. There were ghosts and goblins in his life too as a kid and he too talked to imaginary friends to overcome his loneliness. His isolation and loss of self-esteem may have hindered his literary ambitions at first. Orwell had no one to lean upon but himself when he felt undervalued and overcome by a sense of failure. Despite these things, Orwell did not miss to appreciate his spectacular knack to face reality even if unpleasant. This made him the king of his private world where he could think in peace and meditate over his private failures.

Orwell did not write much as a kid except trying to find inspiration in works of writers like William Blake. The poem he wrote at the age of five was still a good one and the tiger he described in the poem had ‘chair-like’ teeth. He wrote patriotic poems during the First World War and on the death of Herbert Kitchener, both of which were printed in the local newspaper. Orwell admits that his initial works were no major successes. Between eleven and fifteen years of age, he attempted a few poems which were just a poor imitation of Georgian nature poems and tried to write a short story which was again incomplete. The author remained engaged in literary activities throughout this period. He would write comic poems and help edit the school magazine which was an uninteresting work according to George Orwell and which he compared with cheap journalism. While all this was taking place, the thinker and author inside Orwell was also taking form. He analyzed his private life and kept noting things in his mind as in a diary. Hero of his own story, he made stories about himself. All the chaos around him could not reduce his respect for himself. He believed he too was a Robinhood.

As he grew up and became more aware of the contemporary scenario, he too could not remain disconnected from reality. Orwell’s struggle with literature continued and inside his mind, he would keep trying to perfect his grasp. By the time Orwell grew sixteen, his association with words grew stronger. Everything he had read inspired him and he wanted to write just as well as the authors he had read. In his own words,” I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound .”

One can feel Orwell’s restlessness and how difficult he might have found to control his excitement until he was mature. His dream came true with his writing of ‘Burmese Days’ which was the kind of book he dreamt of writing. Through his own account, Orwell shows the association between an author’s works and his personal life. He also shows how the political, social and economic environment of his times can affect an author’s works. The author’s account of himself is highly engaging and lets us have a peep into his mind and heart to show how someone becomes an author. An author is also shaped by the conditions around him and the road is not as straight as mostly described. There are twists and turns that keep bringing you back to your purpose till you have grown mature, serious and steady. It took Orwell a lot of time to find his focus.

Do childhood emotions affect your writing? Yes, they do. Orwell shows that before he had become a writer he had acquired an emotional attitude which would last till the end. This is true about every writer. The emotional attitude he cultivates in his early age remains with him forever. Orwell lived in a tumultuous era and political environment which had certainly affected all the writers of his age. Self-training is a writer’s job and he must train himself, but to escape his emotional attitude completely will remove the motivation to write. Orwell’s lucidity captivates at every stage. He clearly explains how he nurtured the dream of writing since his early childhood and with growing maturity grew bound by his dream. Having explained his childhood and how his dream grew, Orwell clarifies the motives that inspire someone to write. Except for a desire to earn, there can be four different motivations to write. These four motivations are bound to be found within a writer and even if the proportion of each varies, it is because the writers are working in different environments. So, what are the motivations that keep a writer going?

Sheer Egoism:

Recognition is a great motivator and Orwell recognizes it in his work that every writer writes for recognition. It’s a writer’s method to fight against identity crisis and to build an identity so strong through his writing that others can find light in it. It is useless to pretend that a writer does not want recognition. This is not just a writer’s motive but the entire top crust of humanity finds a strange delight in it including businessmen, leaders, lawyers, soldiers, and even scientists. A large number of human beings are not so selfish but live for others having abandoned their sense of individuality once they have crossed thirty. Otherwise, they suffocate themselves under the weight of menial work. Writers, on the other hand, are hardbound animals who live their own life from the first page to the last. This is strongly true about the serious writers who are even strongly bound by their identity or what Orwell calls emotional attitude. Less motivated by money than the journalists, they are truly motivated by their own truth. Most imminent writers are misunderstood to be highly vain or utterly simplistic but to peep into their hearts is no easy exercise for they are like walls with a strong foundation that grows stronger as they mature.

Aesthetic Enthusiasm:

It is also a writer’s job to appreciate the beauty and to define the beauty he sees around him in his words. The firmness of prose and rhythm in a story gives him a different pleasure. A strong desire to portray beautiful experiences in words and share its pleasure with others also keeps a writer going. Aesthetic beauty may not be a strong concern for most writers but still, even a pamphleteer finds satisfaction in ornamentation. So, apart from your Yellow pages and rail chart, there is hardly a book free from these aesthetic concerns.

Historical Impulse:

Why do you think the authors have kept writing for generations? Do you think it was because they could not find another job? Their motivation was to record the facts as they saw them so the coming generations could also have an original account of events. It was an impulse to record history as they witnessed it and keep the records for coming generations.

Political Purpose:

Being rid of political bias is not a writer’s duty. He continuously pushes society to become what it should be. An author desires to push his world in a certain direction where it can find meaning and light. So, he cannot remain politically uninfluenced. To say that art must not relate to politics is a highly biased claim. Art and politics cannot remain disengaged.

So, these are the main motives behind being an author according to Orwell. The proportion may differ from author to author and one of these impulses may strongly resist another. Time and era can also cause variations. Orwell notes that political purpose was not a strong force within him, at least not as strong as the first of the four. Had he lived in a peaceful age unlike one ravaged by the world war, his writing might have been more ornate or descriptive. Might be he would have liked to write romance novels but the time he lived in was not romantic at all. Orwell’s dissatisfaction at the political crisis of his time is evident in his work and had it not been for the war, he would have remained unaware of his political loyalties. As he notes in the later parts of the essay he is a democratic socialist and the political situation of his time had given birth to a staunch distaste for totalitarianism against which most of his fury remained directed all his life. His works speak against totalitarian rule and in the favor of democratic socialism. Orwell had found his job as an ‘Imperial Police Officer’ absolutely detestable which led to growing disillusionment followed by poverty and failing morale. Orwell had felt the political chaos of his time creeping into his personal life. His job in Imperial Police made him loathe imperialism and every form of authority that tried to reduce his freedom. While he had gained some understanding of Imperialism from his job in Burma, he could still not gain a clear political orientation. Facing a dilemma, he felt lost as more chaos spread around the world with the arrival of Hitler and the Spanish Civil War. Orwell quotes a poem he had written then to record his dilemma. The poem basically records his anguish and disgust over how nations were willing to sacrifice peace to exert power and authority. The poem records the same distortion brought by war.

A happy vicar I might have been Two hundred years ago To preach upon eternal doom And watch my walnuts grow;……… (You can read the entire poem on orwell.ru website)

I wasn’t born for an age like this; Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?

The poem records the pain Orwell felt at how fast times had changed and how the beauty of the world vanished with war. The happiness and peace he cherished eternally vanished and he could not expect to find them back. It was an era of fear when dreams were killed. He was not born to live in such an era and neither anyone else. No one deserved what totalitarianism had given the world but had to bear it all out of fear.

Things changed in Orwell’s life after the Spanish war and every piece he wrote since then was against totalitarianism. It was difficult to avoid it in his age and everyone was writing about it in one way or another. Orwell notes, “ And the more one is conscious of one’s political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one’s aesthetic and intellectual integrity” . He knew one could maintain his aesthetic and intellectual integrity and still act politically if he was conscious of his political bias. Since the early 1940s, Orwell had been trying to perfect political writing into an art. What inspired him to write was the injustice and partisanship in his society. He did not write since he wanted to produce a work of art but because he wanted to expose a lie or bring some facts to light. His main concern was to bring some issues to public attention and doing that while also creating an aesthetic experience. Even when he was writing downright propaganda, there would be a lot that was irrelevant to a full-time politician. As Orwell had already explained it was difficult for him to shake off the taste he had acquired in his early childhood. Even with all the war, chaos and instability around him, he could not abandon what was truly his. To find a balance between the political and the personal is difficult. It is difficult because apart from language and construction, you have to care for truthfulness.

Orwell quotes his book about the Spanish civil war “ Homage to Catalonia”. Even with its political focus, this book was written with a concern for literary form. Orwell had tried his best to tell the entire truth without freeing himself of his literary boundaries. This book had a major chapter with quotations from a newspaper to defend the Trotskyists who had been accused of having plotted with Franco. Once the purpose is solved, such chapters lose their relevance for any ordinary reader and grow obsolete within one to two years. So, a critic friend lectured Orwell over why he had ruined the flavor and turned a great book into journalism. The critic’s words were true but there was no meaning in writing the book if Orwell had not put forth the truth he knew. He knew the innocent people were being targeted and accused falsely. It was natural for him to bring the truth before the public. There was no other reason to have written that book. This problem raises its head again and again. Writing is not as simple and Orwell tried to strike a balance between the political and the artistic in his ‘Animal Farm’. The author had tried to remain more precise and less picturesque in the latter part of his career. Orwell notes that by the time you have perfected a form you have outgrown it but then a writer would stop writing if he has grown satisfied.

Orwell’s ‘The Road To Wigan Pier’ came in 1937 and seven years later he published his ‘Animal Farm’. He worked on propaganda for the BBC between 1941 and 1943 and became literary editor of the Tribune in 1943. Before the publication of his Animal Farm, Orwell had become a prolific journalist and was writing articles, reviews and books. His most incredible ‘1984’ came four years later than the publication of Animal Farm and became a major hit (BBC). The author’s health had started failing by now and a year later he expired of Tuberculosis. ‘Why I Write’ was first published in 1946. In this essay, Orwell recalls his previous writings have made him look like an angel who writes for others. However, that is not the case and neither would he want to let that remain his final impression. Orwell thought writers were vain and selfish and under their selfishness lay a kind of mystery. Writing is like cancer and unless you are possessed by the spirit, you would not undertake this exercise. It’s the same drive that is stronger in the writers. However, you cannot write anything unless you are willing to peel off the layers of your own personality. Good prose is like windscreen and keeps you safe from the blowing wind. In the end, Orwell asserts he could not discover which one of his motives was the strongest but he knew the ones worth following. At last, he shows that while the first three of his motives were the stronger ones, it was still the last – political purpose – that helped him inject meaning and life into his books. The political purpose was something that added soul to his writing which would otherwise be filled with purple passages and humbug.

In this way, Orwell constructs a full picture of himself as a writer. Despite the political crisis of his times and a zigzag course of life, the writer inside him remained strong. With time, he found his focus back and grew into the writer, the world remembers him as. Orwell does not hide his motivations and it proves writing was his best means of expressing himself. With time, his writing kept growing more and more perfect. Now, as we read Orwell, his works are also a great scale to weigh history upon. He has connected the various dots to create a strong picture of an ideal writer. Orwell does not lay bare only the core of the writer but also his brain and limbs.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904106704576580793316645866
https://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/orwell_george.shtml
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4 Benefits of Writing By Hand for National Handwriting Day

By the week | jan 23, 2015.

By Chris Gayomali

Today is National Handwriting Day! Although we don't write like we used to, here are four ways handwriting is still helpful.

1. It's better for learning

One of the most effective ways to study and retain new information is to rewrite your notes by hand. That's because putting ink to paper stimulates a part of the brain called the Reticular Activating System, or the RAS. According to Lifehacker , "The RAS acts as a filter for everything your brain needs to process, giving more importance to the stuff that you're actively focusing on that moment — something that the physical act of writing brings to the forefront." One study from 2010 found that the brain areas associated with learning "lit up" much more when kids were asked to write words like "spaceship" by hand versus just studying the word closely.

2. It makes you a better writer

Many famous authors opt for the meticulousness of writing by hand over the utility of a typewriter or computer. In a 1995 interview with the Paris Review , writer Susan Sontag said that she penned her first drafts the analog way before typing them up for editing later. "I write with a felt-tip pen, or sometimes a pencil, on yellow or white legal pads, that fetish of American writers," she said . "I like the slowness of writing by hand." Novelist Truman Capote insisted on a similar process, although his involved lying down with a coffee and cigarette nearby. "No, I don't use a typewriter," he said in an interview . "Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand." A 2009 study from the University of Washington seems to support Sontag, Capote, and many other writers' preference for writing by hand: Elementary school students who wrote essays with a pen not only wrote more than their keyboard-tapping peers, but they also wrote faster and in more complete sentences.

3. It will prevent you from being distracted

The computer in front of you is a time-sucking portal to puppy videos and ex-boyfriend/girlfriend stalking. That's why self-imposed lockout programs like Facebook Limiter and Minutes Please exist in the first place. Of course, the internet isn't all bad. In 2012, neuroscientists even suggested that taking five-minute breaks to browse Tumblr or BuzzFeed could make you a more productive worker . On the other hand, when you're all GIF'd-out and it's time to work on that dissertation, there's something to be said for the elegant simplicity of having only a pen and paper in front of you... especially since that paper probably isn't plugged into the distraction-laden internet. Try writing with laser-like focus for short 20-minute stretches at a time.

4. It keeps your brain sharp as you get older

Writing longhand is a workout. No, not necessarily for your wrist, but for your brain. According to The Wall Street Journal, some physicians claim that the act of writing — which engages your motor-skills, memory, and more — is good cognitive exercise for baby boomers who want to keep their minds sharp as they age. And if you're looking to pick up a new skill, a 2008 study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience found that adults had an easier time recognizing new characters — like Chinese, math symbols, or music notes — that were written by hand over characters generated by a computer.

Why I Write Longhand / Paper Calendars Endure Despite the Digital Age

Description This is a practice activity for the newly redesigned STAAR test for English I that incorporates new question types.

Selections There are two selections in this activity. They are entitled "Why I Write Longhand / Paper Calendars Endure Despite the Digital Age” and are intended for the high school course English I, but can be used with any high school reading level.

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Is It Better to Write By Hand or Computer?

Studies show writing by hand may help your brain..

Posted October 2, 2017 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

Usually, I write drafts on a computer because I type faster than I write, and because I can name the document, file it on my computer, and find it afterward.

But in class, when I give a freewrite prompt and ask people to write for 10 minutes, I write by hand, and I see differences between writing on the computer and writing by hand. For one thing, there’s the heart/hand connection. When I do a freewrite by hand, I may end up writing a piece that wouldn’t have come out after I stared at the computer screen for hours. However, if I like the piece and want to type it up, name it and file it, it can be a tedious process.

Many studies suggest that there are brain-friendly benefits of writing out letters, notes, essays, or journal entries by hand that you can’t get from typing.

Writing by hand connects you with the words and allows your brain to focus on them, understand them and learn from them. Other studies suggest that writing longhand is a workout for your brain. According to a Wall Street Journal article, some physicians claim that the act of writing—which engages your motor skills, memory , and more—is a good cognitive exercise for baby boomers who want to keep their minds sharp as they age. (See website, Mental Floss. ) Writing by hand helps people remember information and thus retain their memories as they age.

Writing by hand activates more parts of the brain than typing, says the website “Little Things.” It requires writers to use more motor skills and a collection of links around the brain called the “reading circuit.”

Writing by hand can be rhythmic, therapeutic, and calming. It can also jumpstart creativity . Like walking and swimming, writing by hand is usually a surefire way for me to sort things out and it inspires creativity.

I will continue to write on the computer and by hand, but I am aware that writing by hand makes me feel better in some ways than writing on the computer.

Writing prompt: Write about an activity that calms you. Write for seven minutes by hand.

Laura Deutsch is a San Francisco-based writer. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times , San Francisco Chronicle , and More magazine, among others.

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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Jonathan Lambert

A close-up of a woman's hand writing in a notebook.

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

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In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

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"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning.

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

Your brain on handwriting

"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

That's not true for typing.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

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Why Paper Planners Still Matter In The Age Of Digital Calendars

The long-term planning is said to be nothing more than a well-educated guessing. However, no one is likely to deny that the short-term planning is the strong prerequisite of high productivity and success. Its value is hard to overestimate because it is all about the efficient use of your most precious asset — time.

In the present reality when the time is as valuable as never before, planning is crucial.

Indeed, those who had managed to master their time appeared to adapt quickly to the new challenges of the contemporary world. Meanwhile, those who have never learned how to manage the time, prove to be left behind.

The rapid technological progress has already made a profound impact on the way we think, act, and work. It’s going to keep changing the way we live.

Moreover, the widespread adoption of the digital devices made people gradually migrate from the obsolete tools to the modern and advanced instruments of the 21st century.

We live in the world of mobile applications, digital calendars, and keyboards. Planning your time and making notes on laptops and smartphones rather than in longhand is increasingly common today. It’s no surprise, though. The simplicity, convenience, and functionality the digital devices provide us with made the old-fashioned pen and paper take second place.

Does it mean that classic paper notebooks are over and it’s all about the digital calendars now? Not so fast.

The physical planners have a number of significant advantages that are not going to be substituted by the mobile apps anytime soon.

Here are 5 reasons why paper planners are more efficient than digital devices when it comes to planning:

1. Handwriting Ensures Better Decision Making Process

Writing with a pen is an excellent way to absorb information and keep your mind sharp. Studies showed that taking notes and writing your plans down by hand helps people organize information and recall details better than while typing on your laptop or smartphone.

Unlike the regular typing, the writing with pen and paper requires the active involvement of your brain that is focused on processing information and reframing it in your own words.

The result? Paper notetakers’ brains are working to digest, summarize, and capture the heart of the information. This, in turn, promotes understanding and retention that are crucial when it comes to making important decisions.

2. Paper Planners Let You Focus On What Matters Most

Unlike digital devices, paper planners don’t have any sources of distraction.

One of the greatest benefits of paper notebooks, as opposed to mobile apps, is the reduction of internet-related distractions. People who use a computer to take notes or engage in planning face a plethora of distractions. Often, the things that kill a person’s concentration are:

Incoming email messages, alerts, notifications.
The temptation to surf the internet.
The arrival of chat messages.
Technical difficulties.

Handwriting eliminates these distractions and allows you to devote increased attention to thinking and planning as the writing process unfolds.

3. Paper Planners Add Importance To Your Notes.

Computers may dominate our lives, but mastery of penmanship brings us important cognitive benefits, the research suggests.

Improved memory, enhanced creativity and better comprehension of the consumed information. These are all the benefits of the simple handwriting.

The reason for that is your brain is designed differently. The handwriting was employed long ago and remained the main way of capturing any kind of information for centuries now. The old habits cannot be replaced this fast. Therefore, they still matter. Apparently, this is why the human’s brain performs better when the handwriting comes into play.

Besides, since the longhand indeed involves different cognitive processes, it allows you to pay more attention to what you’re going to write and focus more on the thoughts you jot down, instead of mindlessly typing them.

Ultimately, it makes your plans and notes feel more important. Put another way, you are less likely to forget what you’ve written down— appointments, events, tasks, ideas and any kind of lists. Moreover, the thoughts and ideas written by hand are going to stick with you longer, thereby making you developing them in your mind faster and more efficiently.

4. Custom Fit

Paper planners are all about personalization.

Although every planner comes off the printing press identical, the similarities evaporate when it reaches your hand. The way you use sticky notes and color coding, the highlighting and personal notes all reflect you as an individual.

Your planner becomes a creative footprint of who you are as a person and how you plan to get where you’re going. And the best planning system is one that you adapt yourself to work for you.

A paper planner gives you the flexibility to mold it into your own personal planning system without the limitations of some app programmed by computer experts rather than designed by planning professionals.

5. Convenience And Speed

It might seem counterintuitive but the paper planners indeed appear to be faster and more convenient than their digital counterparts.

Think about it for a moment. It takes two seconds to flip the planner open to today’s date and definitely a bit longer to get your device out of its case. Not to mention you have to turn it on, enter a password, find the app, launch it etc.

And you are likely to spend much more time doing all these steps than it would take for you to jot down your ideas or quickly schedule your appointment and close the notebook.

A paper planner is designed to help you do one thing — plan. And it does it very well!

2 comments on “ Why Paper Planners Still Matter In The Age Of Digital Calendars ”

I am so curious about this planner. Is there room for monthly and weekly overviews? What happens if I color on it with watercolor? I love the creative side of paper planning – and am completely in love with the idea of this magical app.

Thanks! Yes, there is a monthly view. Unfortunately, there is no weekly layout. The paper in this planner is thick, 90 gsm. You can try. However, to be honest I doubt that the watercolor is the right thing to use with this paper. I think you won’t avoid bleeding and ghosting. When it comes to regular pens, this paper is indeed fantastic. Give it a try and you won’t ever regret this choice. 😉

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Pay only $10 for the second hardcover notebook.

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) 'Why I Write' is an essay by George Orwell, published in 1946 after the publication of his novella Animal Farm and before he wrote his final novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.The essay is an insightful piece of memoir about Orwell's early years and how he developed as a writer, from harbouring ambitions to write self-consciously literary works to ...
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DescriptionThis is a practice activity for the newly redesigned STAAR test for English I that incorporates new question types.SelectionsThere are two selections in this activity. They are entitled "Why I Write Longhand / Paper Calendars Endure Despite the Digital Age" and are intended for the high school course English I, but can be used with any high school reading level.GenreThe genre of ...
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It turns out that some of the most productive and successful people I know still write longhand. Friends who are screenwriters write on index cards and big rolls of paper, the way I did in elementary school. One dictates his first drafts out loud and has an assistant transcribe them. Game designers and directors scribble on whiteboards and in ...
Is It Better to Write By Hand or Computer?
Writing by hand activates more parts of the brain than typing, says the website "Little Things.". It requires writers to use more motor skills and a collection of links around the brain called ...
Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning
"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.
George Orwell: Why I Write
Why I Write. From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books. I ...
George Orwell's Essays: 'Why I Write' Flashcards
1. Everybody writes for different reasons - he is unique. 2. He has to write for a political purpose, otherwise his writing appears empty and full of 'purple prose'. 3. Writing is instinctive (uses this idea to start and end his essay - circular structure) and has control of him. 4.
Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning
Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material. "There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand ...
Why Paper Planners Still Matter In The Age Of Digital Calendars
The physical planners have a number of significant advantages that are not going to be substituted by the mobile apps anytime soon. Here are 5 reasons why paper planners are more efficient than digital devices when it comes to planning: 1. Handwriting Ensures Better Decision Making Process. Writing with a pen is an excellent way to absorb ...
Read the articles "Why I Write Longhand" and "Paper Calendars Endure
In "Why I Write Longhand," the author notes that digital tools like computers and smartphones have made it easy to write quickly and efficiently, but argues that there is still value in writing by hand. ... Imagine that you are writing an essay about why you believe that students should be able to graduate from high school as early as the end ...

A Summary and Analysis of George Orwell’s ‘Why I Write’

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The Orwell Foundation

Why I Write

Helping Writers Become Authors

8 Ways Writing Longhand Amps Your Muse

1. Writing Longhand Discourages Censorship

2. Writing Longhand Brings Writing to a Primal Level

3. Writing Longhand Removes You From Your Notes

4. Writing Longhand Provides a Change of Pace

5. Writing Longhand Frees Your Imagination by Allowing Sloppiness

6. Writing Longhand Frees You From Distractions

7. Writing Longhand Allows Editing During Transcription

8. Writing Longhand Gives You an Instant Hard Copy

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! Have you ever tried writing longhand for your fiction? Did it help or hinder your process? Tell me in the comments!

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The Case for Writing Longhand: ‘It’s About Trying to Create That Little Space of Freedom’

Summary and Analysis of George Orwell’s Why I Write

Why I Write by George Orwell: A Summary and Analysis

Sheer Egoism:

Aesthetic Enthusiasm:

Historical Impulse:

Political Purpose:

4 Benefits of Writing By Hand for National Handwriting Day

1. It's better for learning

2. It makes you a better writer

3. It will prevent you from being distracted

4. It keeps your brain sharp as you get older

Why I Write Longhand / Paper Calendars Endure Despite the Digital Age

Is It Better to Write By Hand or Computer?

Your Health

Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Is this some kind of joke? A school facing shortages starts teaching standup comedy

Your brain on handwriting

Shots - Health News

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

Slowing down and processing information

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Your brain on handwriting

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

Slowing down and processing information

Why Paper Planners Still Matter In The Age Of Digital Calendars

In the present reality when the time is as valuable as never before, planning is crucial.

1. Handwriting Ensures Better Decision Making Process

2. Paper Planners Let You Focus On What Matters Most

3. Paper Planners Add Importance To Your Notes.

4. Custom Fit

5. Convenience And Speed

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