Spirited Quill

I recently listened to an interview with my two favorite teacher-writers, Natalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron; they were asked about writing methods and whether longhand was a requisite for a full writing experience, or if writing on a keypad was acceptable. As I expected, they were both partial to handwriting, but they acknowledged that writing on a laptop worked for many people. They believe that it is usually more difficult to achieve the same level of spiritual connection with your writing if you are not using a pen and paper; somehow by typing on a keypad the whole activity becomes more cerebral, and less intuitive. I agree wholeheartedly with that. I LOVE writing by hand; it feels intimate; it allows me to truly switch off and float. It is not the same thing when I write on my laptop. I keep re-editing what I write; there is no flow. Not for me, anyway. However, if you want to write a lot, and you want to be able to edit, and produce something you can work from, nothing beats the laptop. I hugely admire those writers that are able to write whole books by hand, with very little editing. When I think of Dickens, Victor Hugo, writing masterpieces on paper, and then think of modern writers complaining about writer’s block… maybe it is because now we can start a story many times over and then edit it a thousand times without having to re-write the entire thing…maybe we have too many options when using a laptop; too many directions our stories can take…

I thought that it would be interesting to do a poll about this…