How I rediscovered hand-writing

“Can I ask about that pencil in your hair?” Roth tried again.

“Of course,” she said. “It’s a number-two pencil. ‘Two’ signifies the lead hardness, although pencils don’t actually contain lead. They contain graphite, which is a carbon allotrope.”

“No, I meant why a—”

“A pencil instead of a pen? Because unlike ink, graphite is erasable. People make mistakes, Mr. Roth. A pencil allows one to clear the mistake and move on. Scientists expect mistakes, and because of it, we embrace failure.”

Then she eyed his pen disapprovingly.”

Garmus, B. (2022). Lessons in chemistry: A Novel. National Geographic Books.

Why I disliked hand-writing

For over a decade, I mostly did a kind of digital writing:

1. emails,
2. text-messages,
3. notes,
4. specifications,
5. diaries,
6. presentations,
7. etc.

In the childhood, I had no choice. Parents and teachers demanded it. The technology forced it. The hand-writing was the only option.

I was happy with the fact I could switch to digital writing. There were reasons for that.

1. When I made a mistake while writing, I couldn’t have cleared it easily.
2. I had to do the work twice.
3. I had an ugly style of hand-writing.

Ad 1, clearing the mistakes

My attitude was, my writing had to be close to perfect. In hand-writing once it was written, it was done. You either could have accepted it or corrected it. Usually, my inner need for perfectionism is called. Doodled, crossed out or rewritten text wasn’t perfect.

Stroking ‘Backspace’ on your keyboard was just an easier way out. I don’t like a word or a sentence? Delete. I misspelled? Delete. Simple, isn’t it?

Ad 2, doing the work twice

1. In my childhood, when I wrote an essay for my classes, I had to write a draft, correct it and rewrite it.
2. While rewriting, I had to be super cautious not to make mistakes. That was the final paper.
3. Rewriting meant doing the work twice. What a waste of my time!

Ad 3, having an ugly style

At the end of the story of my hand-writing, it was, well, rather useless. It was illegible even for me. My style had been changing steadily from pretty legible at the beginning of my education to scribble in the end. I wanted and had to write fast (taking notes, writing essays), so I cared less. The final was sad. My writing was poor.

What I wanted to hand-write again

1. Couple of months ago, I started journaling using pen and paper.
2. I had done journalling occasionally before, usually using a word processor or note-taking app.
3. The major disadvantage with digital writing had been, I easily had got distracted. BTW. getting distracted easily has been the reason I co-created Difree.
4. I discovered I could easily focus on my pen and notebook.

Okay, but how to conquer my dislike for hand-writing?

How I liked hand-writing again

• I started using erasable pens and pencils. Just write, erase, write again.
• Since I hand-wrote only for pleasure (e.g. journalling) the problem with rewriting disappeared.
• I started investigating how an adult person can improve the style of the writing. I wasn’t the only one with that problem.

Here are my findings:

1. Writing (again) can improve the style.
2. Writing in a slower manner (= more carefully) can improve the style.
3. Writing in italic (a style dedicated for hand-writing) can improve the readability and the speed of writing. 

More about italic: https://handwritingsuccess.com/why-italic/

Written in Difree | Graphics thanks to #dalle