The Value of Writing by Hand: Q&A with Heather Sellers
In response to a recent post on this blog, MFA student Faye Rapoport DesPres asked,
The rhythms of my sentences seem stronger and better when I write longhand, and so does the precision of my word choice. Since my hand is slower on the page than both hands are on the keyboard, my brain has time to try out alternative versions of a line before putting down the one my inner ear likes best and settles on.
I know that people say that writing by hand is too slow--that their pen can't keep up with their thoughts the way that typing can--and this is true for me, too, but I find it to be a good thing, since I can try out and discard weaker possibilities before they even make it to the page. Also, the extra step of typing up the handwritten work builds in an additional opportunity to let the words cool for a while and revise. Lastly, I'm a geek for slow food and organic, handmade stuff; I just generally prefer the intimacy and the sensuous, embodied feeling of writing by hand.
This is just my gut response to Faye's good question; I haven't done any research about it.
But writer Heather Sellers has given this issue a lot of thought for a long time now. A wildly productive, lovely, funny writer in multiple genres, she's the author of the award-winning short story collection Georgia Under Water, two collections and a chapbook of poetry, an illuminating college-level creative writing textbook that I just love (esp. the section about leaps), and two wonderful books about the writing process, Page after Page and Chapter after Chapter. Face First, her memoir about face blindness, is forthcoming from Riverhead, and she's a dedicated and beloved professor of creative writing at Hope College in Michigan. I got to hear her read her hilarious, blistering, sad, knockout essay, "Sails with Good People," in the forthcoming collection An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on their Poor and Working Class Roots, and she blew the room away. Check out Heather's blog about the writing process, Word after Word. She was kind enough to share her thoughts with us about writing by hand.
Me: Can you talk about your own reasons for writing by hand?
Heather: When I write by hand, I have to revise less. The work is more true, more fresh, more strange, more pure. Whenever I write by hand, the work comes out better. Thoughts are so so so useless, I think, when it comes to writing. The brain comes up with all these ideas, these notions and suggestions. They're TERRIBLE. It's the stuff that comes from under the brain, some place where the heart meets the soul in the land of the unconscious--the same place DREAMS come from--that's the place we want to get to when we make art. And, the hand, writing by hand, it lulls me into that place. My pen can't keep up with my thoughts. Perfect! I have a chance to really really write. Not vent. Not pour out words. But when the hand takes over, and the body and the brain are working together—this is always my best work.
Me: Do you see a difference in your students' work when they write by hand?
Heather: I do. It's amazing. They see it too. I can tell, when they bring their final manuscripts (typed up) to workshop who is writing by hand and who isn't. It's like looking at scarves made by machine, and scarves knit by hand by a dear dear friend. Two different beasts.
There's proof. It is wild. I have my advanced students submit a story in advance of the spring workshop, in December. On the first day of class, in January, this past year, I laid the stories out in three piles. One pile was Great Stories. They were so, so, so good. On the next pile, stories that just had a long way to go. They felt pat,
familiar, kind of "phoned in." Earnest writers, trying hard, but they didn't have that....ineffable spark. That thing. In the the third pile I put stories that didn't fit in either category. They were... a mixed bag. Some great parts. Some flat parts. I turned to each of the authors of the stories in pile one. "How do you compose," I said. I really wanted to know. This wasn't set up. Each author said, in turn, "By hand. I write by hand." Each author. I didn't single out the authors of the more beginning-ish stories. I just asked in general, "Do you write on the computer?" They all nodded. OR not. Which I took as a "yes." No shame. No blame. Just learning here. Okay, I said. "What about you three? These stories. I can't tell. Are you hand writers or computer writers?" Each of those students said the same thing. Some of the story was written by hand. Some was on the computer. After class, I sat with two of these writers, and I pointed out the passages I felt were hand, and the ones I suspected were computer. I'm not bragging here, I'm really not. But I got it 100% accurate. I really did. Now, I know these students, and I adore them, so maybe this is too unscientific to be of use or interest. But we were all pretty blown away that day.
I have not yet had a student who writes by hand say, "Yeah, I am really going to try the computer and see how that goes." Once they start (or return) to hand, they never, ever go back.
I remind them of all the great books that were written by hand. For example, all the works of Jane Austen. All the works of Shakespeare. All Sappho. All of the Bible. All done ... by hand.
Me: Are there kinds of writing that you deliberately choose not to do by hand? If so, why?
Heather: Letters to ex-boyfriends. Letters to my lawyer. Anything where I need my critical faculties in hyperdrive. Creative writing is the opposite--it requires that part of the brain to be off, or idling in the distance. Interesting--I'm just thinking of this now--I almost always write my class plans by hand, at breakfast, on printer paper...the work is always more alive, more mutable, more "real" when it's coming from the fingers.
Me: What would you say to an aspiring writer who's worried about the amount of time that writing by hand will take?
Heather: It will be faster if you do it by hand. Remember your mother saying how you should "do it right the first time"? You get better results and have to revise less. It is true. But if you have time to draft and draft and draft, by all means! Use the computer!
Robert Olen Butler is really good at explaining this in his book with Janet Burroway, From Where you Dream. And Lynda Barry, who teaches this method, explains it in One Hundred Demons.
I love this topic and have been happy all day having a chance to think about it. Thank you for letting me weigh in.
You've mentioned in a few blog entries that you write by hand before typing. I'd be very interested in your thoughts on that in a future blog entry...is there an advantage to writing your first drafts long hand, and do you think there is value in that process for any writer? Or is it a personal thing?It's a wonderful question. Thank you, Faye! Alas, I have only the most instinctual response, and here it is.
The rhythms of my sentences seem stronger and better when I write longhand, and so does the precision of my word choice. Since my hand is slower on the page than both hands are on the keyboard, my brain has time to try out alternative versions of a line before putting down the one my inner ear likes best and settles on.
I know that people say that writing by hand is too slow--that their pen can't keep up with their thoughts the way that typing can--and this is true for me, too, but I find it to be a good thing, since I can try out and discard weaker possibilities before they even make it to the page. Also, the extra step of typing up the handwritten work builds in an additional opportunity to let the words cool for a while and revise. Lastly, I'm a geek for slow food and organic, handmade stuff; I just generally prefer the intimacy and the sensuous, embodied feeling of writing by hand.
This is just my gut response to Faye's good question; I haven't done any research about it.
But writer Heather Sellers has given this issue a lot of thought for a long time now. A wildly productive, lovely, funny writer in multiple genres, she's the author of the award-winning short story collection Georgia Under Water, two collections and a chapbook of poetry, an illuminating college-level creative writing textbook that I just love (esp. the section about leaps), and two wonderful books about the writing process, Page after Page and Chapter after Chapter. Face First, her memoir about face blindness, is forthcoming from Riverhead, and she's a dedicated and beloved professor of creative writing at Hope College in Michigan. I got to hear her read her hilarious, blistering, sad, knockout essay, "Sails with Good People," in the forthcoming collection An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on their Poor and Working Class Roots, and she blew the room away. Check out Heather's blog about the writing process, Word after Word. She was kind enough to share her thoughts with us about writing by hand.Me: Can you talk about your own reasons for writing by hand?
Heather: When I write by hand, I have to revise less. The work is more true, more fresh, more strange, more pure. Whenever I write by hand, the work comes out better. Thoughts are so so so useless, I think, when it comes to writing. The brain comes up with all these ideas, these notions and suggestions. They're TERRIBLE. It's the stuff that comes from under the brain, some place where the heart meets the soul in the land of the unconscious--the same place DREAMS come from--that's the place we want to get to when we make art. And, the hand, writing by hand, it lulls me into that place. My pen can't keep up with my thoughts. Perfect! I have a chance to really really write. Not vent. Not pour out words. But when the hand takes over, and the body and the brain are working together—this is always my best work.
Me: Do you see a difference in your students' work when they write by hand?
Heather: I do. It's amazing. They see it too. I can tell, when they bring their final manuscripts (typed up) to workshop who is writing by hand and who isn't. It's like looking at scarves made by machine, and scarves knit by hand by a dear dear friend. Two different beasts.
There's proof. It is wild. I have my advanced students submit a story in advance of the spring workshop, in December. On the first day of class, in January, this past year, I laid the stories out in three piles. One pile was Great Stories. They were so, so, so good. On the next pile, stories that just had a long way to go. They felt pat,
familiar, kind of "phoned in." Earnest writers, trying hard, but they didn't have that....ineffable spark. That thing. In the the third pile I put stories that didn't fit in either category. They were... a mixed bag. Some great parts. Some flat parts. I turned to each of the authors of the stories in pile one. "How do you compose," I said. I really wanted to know. This wasn't set up. Each author said, in turn, "By hand. I write by hand." Each author. I didn't single out the authors of the more beginning-ish stories. I just asked in general, "Do you write on the computer?" They all nodded. OR not. Which I took as a "yes." No shame. No blame. Just learning here. Okay, I said. "What about you three? These stories. I can't tell. Are you hand writers or computer writers?" Each of those students said the same thing. Some of the story was written by hand. Some was on the computer. After class, I sat with two of these writers, and I pointed out the passages I felt were hand, and the ones I suspected were computer. I'm not bragging here, I'm really not. But I got it 100% accurate. I really did. Now, I know these students, and I adore them, so maybe this is too unscientific to be of use or interest. But we were all pretty blown away that day.I have not yet had a student who writes by hand say, "Yeah, I am really going to try the computer and see how that goes." Once they start (or return) to hand, they never, ever go back.
I remind them of all the great books that were written by hand. For example, all the works of Jane Austen. All the works of Shakespeare. All Sappho. All of the Bible. All done ... by hand.
Me: Are there kinds of writing that you deliberately choose not to do by hand? If so, why?
Heather: Letters to ex-boyfriends. Letters to my lawyer. Anything where I need my critical faculties in hyperdrive. Creative writing is the opposite--it requires that part of the brain to be off, or idling in the distance. Interesting--I'm just thinking of this now--I almost always write my class plans by hand, at breakfast, on printer paper...the work is always more alive, more mutable, more "real" when it's coming from the fingers.
Me: What would you say to an aspiring writer who's worried about the amount of time that writing by hand will take?
Heather: It will be faster if you do it by hand. Remember your mother saying how you should "do it right the first time"? You get better results and have to revise less. It is true. But if you have time to draft and draft and draft, by all means! Use the computer!
Robert Olen Butler is really good at explaining this in his book with Janet Burroway, From Where you Dream. And Lynda Barry, who teaches this method, explains it in One Hundred Demons.
I love this topic and have been happy all day having a chance to think about it. Thank you for letting me weigh in.
Faye said:
Thank you for this. I'm sure I will read it many times as I think about this topic...and test out the idea of writing more by hand. Thank you!
June 14, 2009 2:26 AMfayepoet said:
This is such an intriguing subject. I can totally relate to your experience, Joy- that writing by hand tends to slow one down and thus to feel or sense the rhythm of the words and sentence structure more deeply. I certainly began writing poetry by hand and recall the switch to an adorable ten inch screen that was perfect for re-writes.
June 14, 2009 3:32 PMNow I write both prose and poetry mainly on a large screen but always print out & edit very slowly by hand. Often, I speak aloud as I write and certainly as I edit.Does it help with the mind and body connection? It certainly keeps my auditory sense engaged.
When I'm immersed in the midst of creating a piece, a sentence or idea can spontaneously arrive in the middle of the night or any time during the day when I reach for a pencil. First chance I get, I go back to the words and mine them— sometimes by hand, sometimes on the computer. Always, they make a difference and I am grateful for their arrival.
When I put this together with Heather Sellers' articulation, I wonder about individual differences— age, setting, experience and what one is writing as well as its stage of development. Years ago, I was a member of a group that practiced proprioceptive writing. It's a process that teaches the mind/body connection through writing and has evolved into trainings. I recall writing for 25 minutes non stop then circling evocative or unexpected adjectives or phrases that I later developed in poems or essays.That experience— the structure of a free write followed by a careful re-read still informs my process.
Like I said, this is so intriguing and now, I'm wondering how does the fact that I type with two fingers (self taught in junior high) affect my writing? It's impossible for me to write automatically... could be a good thing.