Handwriting and the creative process

There is an interesting essay in yesterday's Wall Street Journal: The Powers That Flow From a Pen, in which writer Paul Theroux explains why writing with pen and paper is an essential part of his creative process. His advice to a woman who sought his comments on her typewritten novel is telling. He only got through the first 50 pages:

In the pages I read of the woman's novel I did not discern any close attention to a word or phrase. "How can I make it better?" she asked. I had the answer. I advised her to put her computer away and to get a pen and a good pad of paper, and then to sit down and copy the 50 pages in her own handwriting—slowly, studying each word.

This advice is unquestionably based on his own creative process. He notes, "The speed at which I write with a pen seems to be the speed at which my imagination finds the best forms of words." Granted, not everyone's mind works the same way, but there is something to be said about the theory that reliance on computers can result in users focusing more on the process than on the content.

Sometimes my mind is racing with so many ideas that I feel I must use a computer to capture them all. When I do, capturing the ideas and expressing them becomes a single step, but not necessarily for the better. Perhaps it would be better for me to brainstorm my ideas on paper, then make the attempt to express them in words a distinct second step. I have a feeling it will be much easier to keep these tasks separated, and to do a better job on the second, by using pen and paper.

It's a short essay, so I won't post any more of it here. Just go read the whole thing. It makes me think there might be hope for me to write something worthwhile.

Handwriting and the creative process

The motivations of digital-to-paper converts (updated)

When I started this blog around five months ago, I planned to write more about . . . planning. Specifically, planning with paper. Even on an anonymous blog, however, I find myself reluctant to get very personal about it, because that means covering the failures as well as the successes. Besides, I found my interests unexpectedly hijacked by fountain pens and inks.

Today, I ran across a blog post that's making me think about writing more on planning and organizing. As I read it, I said "Yes! Yes!" over and over, because the point of the post is so in sync with the tagline of my blog — "A technophile attorney rediscovers the joys of pen and paper — especially notebooks!"

The post I'm talking about is Why techies are leading the back-to-paper movement, a guest post at Communication Nation by Douglas Johnston of D*I*Y Planner. As the title implies, it makes the point that those who advocate and practice paper planning are not limited to a few stray luddite holdouts resisting technology they don't want to learn, like those lawyers who refused even to have a computer on their desks when I started practice nearly 20 years ago. There is an entire movement of people returning to paper from digital, driven in part by how Johnston describes "the trouble with technology":

While I would carefully set up my list of 50-odd next actions, prioritising them, categorising them, setting alarms, and syncing between all the technology tools I had at my fingertips, Bettina would just glance at her book and get things done. This is not to say I was a slacker -- on the contrary, I did manage to plough through an extraordinary amount of work and training-- but a certain needless percentage of my time was spent tweaking my productivity system and trying to make it all work smoothly as a whole, mostly after-hours.

That said, I'm here to tell you first hand that converting to paper doesn't automatically cure the problem Johnston cites. It's possible to tinker with paper planning as much as with digital, with the same adverse effects. Paper advocacy online is a huge irony generally, but a more specific one in my case is that the tinkering I hoped to avoid by converting to paper has followed me to my new medium. I could spend days exploring around the D*I*Y Planner Forums looking for all the components of my perfect paper solution. (Grabbing that link just now, I was tempted to linger there!)

I'd like to expand on the point, and give my take on some other points raised in Johnston's post, but I'll leave that for future posts. Right now (again, somewhat ironically), I'm headed to an L.A. stationery store to check out some notebooks!

Thanks to Paper Notes in a Digital World for leading me to Communication Nation, and to The Pen Addict, whose weekly Ink Links post led me to Paper Notes. Hey, digital isn't all bad!

Update (7/25/10): Well, this is a little embarrassing, but that Communication Nation post is 5 years old! I assumed it was newer because Paper Notes said, in a post dated five days ago, that the article was about a month old. But the Paper Notes post was a apparently a repost from the archives.

Interesting, though, that there was nothing in the content to make it obvious that the post was five years old.  This tug-of-war between digital and paper doesn't really change.

The motivations of digital-to-paper converts (updated)

Monsters! Monsters, I say!

What possible motive could someone have for hacking the Fountain Pen Network? What malice! Fortunately, it looks like FPN is back up and running.

Monsters! Monsters, I say!

Multitasking, Shmultitasking!

I feel bad for multitaskers. Really, I do. I've been there. Tried to be one, anyway. Still there, sometimes. Closing the laptop just as I take a cell call and my desktop computer chimes to announce another email.

I just don't think its very effective. Sure, there might be some small sliver of the population that operates most effectively by using every tech gadget known to man, but I think that technology overuse probably makes most people irritable at best and anti-social at worst.

At the New York Times article "Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price," which reports on the consequences of overuse of technology, the picture of the husband and wife at the breakfast table, each absorbed in their own iPad, reminds me of the time I took a group picture of 5 or 6 family members on Christmas Day. Well, kind of a group picture. They were all sitting next to each other, several on the couch, one on each side in a flanking chair. But each barely noticed the others were there, for each person was staring intensely at the tiny screen of the handheld game he or she had pulled out of his or her stocking a few hours ago.

It was a posed shot, but we only got the idea because we came damn close to it without trying.

Multitasking, Shmultitasking!

Anna Quindlen on "The Future of Paper and Pen"

Or so says the cover of this week's (April 5) Newsweek (If you look below the giant picture of the iPad that dominates the cover). Her column is not so much about the future of pen and paper as it is about the future of reading in light of continuing technological development and the popularity of digital formats. This comment, in particular, should give some comfort to those of us who like to feel the book in our hands:

The book is dead, I keep hearing as I sit writing yet another in a room lined with them. Technology has killed it. The libraries of the world are doomed to become museums, storage facilities for a form as antediluvian as cave paintings. Americans, however, tend to bring an either-or mentality to most things, from politics to prose. The invention of television led to predictions about the demise of radio. The making of movies was to be the death knell of live theater; recorded music, the end of concerts. All these forms still exist—sometimes overshadowed by their siblings, but not smothered by them. And despite the direst predictions, reading continues to be part of the life of the mind, even as computers replace pencils, and books fly into handhelds as well as onto store shelves. Anton Chekhov, meet Steve Jobs.

I am still in a love-hate relationship with technology. Still love my iPhone and my Mac, but moving more and more toward paper. And I never did like reading newspapers or other extended reading on screen. (Blogs, of course, are fine!)  Everything digital just seems like it must be hurried. It's hard to imagine relaxing with a Kindle the way I can with a book.

Anna Quindlen on "The Future of Paper and Pen"

Notetaking is notetaking — don't let the laptop lead you astray

Laptop computers have lost some of their classroom lustre. In "Wide Web of diversions gets laptops evicted from lecture halls" at The Washington Post, the writer notes that web-surfing and other distractions have led some professors to ban laptops from their classrooms. Such distractions are not the only problem, however. The other is one of the reasons I started this blog (emphasis mine):

Cole has banned laptops from his classes, compelling students to take notes the way their parents did: on paper.

***

Cole surveyed one of his Georgetown classes anonymously after six weeks of laptop-free lectures. Four-fifths said they were more engaged in class discussion. Ninety-five percent admitted that they had used their laptops for "purposes other than taking notes."

Even when used as glorified typewriters, laptops can turn students into witless stenographers, typing a lecture verbatim without listening or understanding.

The point about laptops removing students (at least partially) from classroom discussion and turning students into "witless stenographers" is a perfect illustration of how I think the speed of our communication technology can encourage people to stop thinking. In nearly all of my law school classes — and I know this might not be true for other academic disciplines — you could go for minutes at a time without writing anythng down, and still take great notes.

The learning came in the give-and-take between professors and students, and the time to write something  down was at the "ah-ha moment" — the point where that give-and-take caused the light bulb to light up over your head, and you got the point. You're likely to miss that if you're trying to capture every word along the way. That's true whether you're taking notes with a Macintosh or a Montblanc.

But because it's easier for many students to capture every word with a computer than with a pen, the mere fact that they have a computer in front of them tempts them to do it.  A student with pen knows he's not going to get every word (unless he knows shorthand), so I believe he has a greater tendency to listen and think, writing down only those things that will help him remember the key points.

This general problem — substituting speed for thought — extends far beyond the classroom, though, and I'll be writing more about it in the future.

Notetaking is notetaking — don't let the laptop lead you astray