This was inspired by this wonderful inquiry and is meant as a reply to it. http://www.thinqon.com/topic/pencils_or_pens

With all of the modern technology and new digital forms of communication, I am one of those people who laments the loss of the handwriting. I am surprised at the number of people I encounter who have horrible penmanship both in print and cursive. With tweets, email, facebook, blogs and so forth, is it any wonder if people know how to handwrite anymore? Strangers and friends alike comment on the quality of my writing and I just say just nod and say thank-you, neglecting to tell them that I was taught cursive when I was 7 and if they want to see more impressive handwriting to just look at my mother's signature. 


I compose and edit my poetry with pen and paper and carry a little black notebook around where I jot down my ideas. Ever since I started this practice I have mulled over the symbolism of handwriting and the significance of having something on paper that you can feel with your own hands instead of something on the screen. I handwrite because it allows me to think better and more clearly than when typing. When I jot down lines to a poem, I can see as they flow from my pen and feel the motion of the strokes in my arm. I see it on the paper and I can clearly affirm "I wrote that." The signature of my handwriting style makes my work a thousand times more personal than if would input it on a screen because it also divulges my personality. I can see where I paused in thought, where I rushed to complete a sentence, stumbled on a word, or where my pen never left the paper because I was too excited and didn't want to loose my idea. I can also even tell what mood I was in. And it's not just when writing, all artists who work with their hands have the same feeling. The end product is proof of and symbolizes all of the physical and mental energy put into what you created. (Similar to learning to an instrument but that's a whole other topic for discussion.)


It's a reason I love reading handwritten letters. Email and texts are so cold, but writing a letter to someone is a very personal gesture. Holding something such as a letter in your hand carries all of the weight of the person's physical and emotion effort to write it aside from the meaning carried in the words. It might not seem like much, but in an age where almost everything are words on a screen, here is something that isn't. It's concrete and material.


Beyond the personal and emotional attachment to something that is handwritten, it is also proof. When writing something on a computer it is vulnerable as it runs the risk of being copied and pasted. If someone posts a poem online, there is very little to do to protect it from someone selecting the text, copying and pasting it and writing their own name on it. With handwriting, unless someone takes the time to forge what you have written, there is very little chance that they will be able to copy your hand exactly. There is also the chance of it being lost. The reason I have my compositions handwritten down, is because I know that if for some reason my computer breaks or my hard-drive malfunctions and all my data is lost, my writing isn't. It's all safe inside a little black book that cannot be destroyed unless it's set on fire or shredded to pieces. I don't even trust my sky-drive because I'll never know if one day someone will break the internet. 


Then there is also the issue of effort. I prefer pens over pencil because a pen is permanent, and I prefer a pen to a computer because data on a computer can be deleted forever. I design graphics on Photoshop and I am entirely too reliant on the Control+Z function. If I make a mistake while I'm designing, Control+Z takes care of it. Same thing when I'm writing on the computer. I can select blocks of text and erase it or press the key combination and leave the screen blank. When handwriting, especially with pen, there is no such key combination to leave the paper blank. You cross something out and keep on going. I recently edited a poem and had scratch marks all over the paper and it left me with a very giddy feeling of accomplishment. There was the proof of my effort, something I could not show on the computer.