Writing by Hand

Mr. Anderson, said he grew up writing by hand, before the computer was common in American households. He likes that the process slows him down and puts him in touch with his thoughts. Drafting by hand lowers the stakes, he said, because it doesn’t feel like “official” writing yet, which helps him avoid writer’s block.

“You write by hand the same way you make a sweater by hand,” he said. “There’s a kind of folk craftiness to it. The first step is a very personal thing — drawing yourself out of your mind and body. Then, later, you translate that into impersonal print.”

Composing on a laptop, he said, also presents endless opportunities for procrastination. “It’s hard to get truly quiet or focused,” he said. “Writing by hand takes away 17 million options for distraction.”

He begins all his stories by free-writing on paper with an extra fine black Pilot Vball pen — or, sometimes, with a stylus on a reMarkable 2 digital tablet — though he never writes an article in order from beginning to end. He writes scenes in chunks and then spends hours trying to arrange them.

“I can’t see the structure; I can’t see the big picture, but I can feel my way through the little parts,” he said. “Then, when I have enough little pieces, I can think about the larger shape.”

The unorthodox, yet clever, beginning of his profile of Kevin Durant in the magazine in June, which spent the first five paragraphs chronicling an asteroid crashing into the Earth 35 million years ago, started that way.

“I don’t surprise myself typing,” he said. “But I do all the time writing by hand.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/insider/the-case-for-writing-longhand-its-about-trying-to-create-that-little-space-of-freedom.html