In Defense of Writing Longhand
My best friend, Stacey, and I have known each other since we were in 4th grade. We love telling people our origin story, how she and I were both new to the school—me moving in from another city, her transferring from her Hebrew school— and how she sat in front of me on the first day, whipped her chestnut hair around and said, “Hi, I’m Stacey, I’m new.”
In the decades that have passed since then, we’ve shared at least five million memories, one of which we made a few years ago on a cold Saturday morning in February. She was in town for an obstetrics conference and happened to be free the morning of my 45th birthday.
I took her to a little French restaurant with an excellent brunch, and we both immediately ordered fancy coffee, fancy drinks, and fancy pastries. We sat and talked for two hours straight. I told her everything too hard to say over the phone. She listened and made me laugh, then updated me on her life: from her oldest looking at colleges to the jerk of a colleague making every interaction contentious.
Eventually, we paid the bill, got back in the car, and drove to the Library of Congress. It’s a short ride, neither of us have been there before and she still had some time to kill before she could check into her hotel. We entered at the ground floor, flowed through security, and spent the next hour meandering, talking, and taking pictures.
Around one corner, a wood and glass booth showcases a large Gutenberg bible, one of three perfect vellum copies in existence. Stacey stood there, looked for a few minutes, then said something like, “I don’t get it. What’s so special about this Bible?”
Surrounded by marble and words, I told her what I know: Gutenberg invented the first printing press, meaning anyone who could read could have what was formerly private and protected property. With the ability to mass produce books, knowledge became democratized. Faith became personal. The Bible — this one specifically — was one of the first to ever be printed by the typeset press. She looked at me with her head tilted and, in the way long-time friends do, I wondered if she was wondering what I think she was wondering.
“It’s not like a Torah scroll,” I told her. “They’re all hand written, right?”
She looked at me and laughed, “How do you know that?”
*
In his book, Anatomy of the Soul, psychiatrist and author Curt Thompson writes, “Writing… on a piece of paper requires focused attention and enables you to think more slowly and deliberately than you would if you were typing.”
He goes on to explain how writing with a pen and paper activates your brain’s right hemisphere, the biological location “correlated with nonverbal and implicit memory—feelings, sensations, images, and perceptions.” Writing by hand also naturally activates the logical left brain. And what’s truly fascinating, he writes, is that when neurons from both sides of the brain work together, they “synapse more robustly.”
Meaning: when we write longhand, there’s a kinesthetic and psychologic synergy that deepens our ability to make connections. Hand written words summon both implicit and explicit memories layered throughout our mind, body, and spirit.
My very non-scientific summary? When we write out our words, something like magic happens.
*
Many years ago, my dad and step-mom were in town and they wanted to see the newly opened Bible Museum. It’s set up for you to start at the top, on the fourth floor, and work your way down to the ground. My dad is the kind of guy who likes to read every plaque, take in every morsel of information, and—this will give you an insight into my upbringing—doesn’t really concern himself all that much if the party he’s there with is ready to move on. I, on the other hand, am the type of person who has a bunch of kids I need to make sure don’t knock anything over.
Somewhere on the third floor, when the distance between the engrossed grandparents and the over-it grandkids began to widen into an irreparable chasm, I stood in the middle of a gallery of bibles and gave my husband the we need to get out of here the kids are never going to last eyes. He quickly finishes reading about Gutenberg’s printing press, there’s a lifesize replica of it, and collects the kids from me. I trail them slowly, trying to see what I’ve missed on my way towards the central staircase.
Just before the exit, though, I pass a video playing on a large TV and stop. A man’s hand is writing Hebrew letters, right to left, with what looks like a quill. In the video, he’s talking about how every synagogue has Torah scrolls, the first five books of the bible, which are all written by hand. Something inside my stomach flutters.
I’ve long been a champion of writing longhand. But what I stand and watch offers me words I will never forget. Despite my family waiting, I can’t move. I’m awestruck. About why the scrolls are written out, the scribe says, “they are copied by hand to this day … copied by hand with intent, which is what infuses it with soul, and gives it its power.”
Whether it brings spiritual connection or psychological integration, when pen meets paper (or ink meets parchment), we participate in the divine act of creating something out of nothing, a blank page to full, and there is no doubt—we are left changed.
Go forth, and write. (By hand.)
Or no prompts.
Commit to writing longhand every day for a set time period for a week. Write whatever you want. Just see what happens. Write without expectations.
Additional exercises:
Dig out your old journal. And write something new.
Re-read a draft you have sitting in your Google drive. Now close your computer and write out what you remember, allowing your mind to create a new draft with any other memories or ideas, reflections or connections that come up.
Take a paragraph, poem, or vignette that’s unfinished or isn’t “working” and write it out by hand. Circle words, ideas, or phrases you like the most. Make a list, draw arrows to, and/or write in the margins anything those circled words make you think of. Repeat, crossing out what doesn't need to be there anymore, adding in new ideas that make it work.
Some people may wonder: why was the light of God given in the form of language? How is it conceivable that the divine should be contained in such brittle vessels as consonants and vowels? This question betrays the sin of our age: to treat lightly the ether which carries the light-waves of the spirit. What else in the world is capable of bringing man and man together over the distances in space and in time? Of all the things on earth, words alone never die. They have so little matter and so much meaning . . . God took these Hebrew words and breathed into them of His power, and the words became a live wire charged with His spirit. To this very day they are hyphens between heaven and earth. What other medium could have been employed to convey the divine? - Abraham Heschel
