The (Handi)craft of Writing

Hello, friends and lovers of handwriting. Shirley, here. I'm a student living in Chicago, and am excited about this blog (thanks, Jess!). I look forward to reading and learning more about all of your hand-written worlds!

So. For the past 4.5 years, I have been working on a thesis. The project has taken up a lot of mental, emotional, and (if the paper and book-clutter around the apartment is any indication) physical space. This long road of writing is only walk-able, for me, because writing has always been my dream. Writing, every day, in some form, allows me to live that dream — albeit in complicated but pleasurable ways.

One thing I’ve come to love about my writing process has been thinking about all the ways that writing intersects with art and hand-crafting. As a knitter, crocheter and lover of the handmade, it seems that my crafting sensibilities have insisted on invading my written work. This has not always been the case! Like most students, I have relied heavily on my laptop to make and share words. But the deeper I go into a draft, the more I find myself reverting back to my hand-writing holy trinity: 2HB pencil, paper, and Staedtler eraser. Oh, and scissors. And tape. Lots of tape.

The work desk on a good day.

Why I hand write

Word processors are excellent for editing and revision. But when it comes to brainstorming and generating a very first draft — that initial, vulnerable leap from nothing to something — handwriting fits the bill, for me, for several reasons:

- It’s a slower pace of composition that puts no pressure for speed on word-recall. A slower hand, decelerated by the friction of pencil lead, gives my mind time to perform its internal word search. Ideas are so fragile at this first stage, and with the pencil, they get time and space to ripen and coalesce. There’s time, too, to pay attention to rhythm and sound; form fights less with content, and the work reads better for being made more slowly. Handwriting has eased me through stale periods back into a sustainable pace of work (even if it was slow and sputtering at first. Or always. Did I mention that sloths are my spirit animal?).

A little pal drawn in Copic Multiliner.

- The hand-written page feels very low commitment, and that’s good. To me, paper is the writer's equivalent of a laundry-hamper: no one needs to ever see the unspeakable state of the things that go in there! This makes the page a space of freedom and possibility and privacy.

- Also, tactility. It's interesting how a lot of Word processor functions mimic things habitually done on paper. Whether bolding text, writing comments in the margins, cutting and pasting, or adding a strategic strikethrough, underline or highlight, these are all imitations of the ways we commonly touch words in their making. Wrangling with the tactility of text — restoring words and meaning to their material state — reminds me that working with words is a craft. Messiness is ok.

- Finally, I love paper. My life is always filled with too much of it. Specifically, there’s something magic and special to me about the humble yellow legal pad — the one with the blue lines and pink margin.

This stuff is like chicken soup for the writer’s soul (a fitting metaphor, it’s about the same chickeny broth colour). In pad form, the paper feels soft and smooth and cushioned and kind — as inviting as a newly made bed in clean, striped yellow linens. “Lay your words here,” the pad seems to say and, bit by bit, the words come, wanting to find a resting place. The paper itself is thin, dismally rip-able, and bordering on translucent, evoking the flimsiness of newsprint. I love this. I find that flimsiness comforting; it reminds me that, like newsprint, this writing is entirely disposable, chuck-able in the trash bin (better yet, recyclable). And, like the daily paper, whatever gets crumpled up today will be replaced by more ink and more words the next day. The paper evokes regularity and is gentle in its ordinariness. I no longer fear a trash bin full of words, but see it as part of the process (all crafters generate scraps, don't we?). 

So much of writing fluency, I’m learning, lies in managing the state of constantly being confronted with the unknown, which can range from mild but productive uneasiness to full-on paralysis. Anything that helps me recover a bit of ease and promise is nothing short of miraculous. Writing on legal pads gets me there; it's my secret sauce.

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Thanks for reading my writing ramblings. My crafter’s brain is always looking to stitch up the connections between writing and other forms of creative practice. 

What role does writing play in your non-written creative work?

(an original version of this post appears here)