These are some thoughts generated from a reading of Ian Bogost’s 2016 book Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, The Uses of Boredom, & The Secret of Games.

I rarely write by hand, because most of my writing activities are generally consumed quickly by others and so must be immediately shared. No, I am not thinking that my email messages to my mother about the wonderful progress of her garden seedlings must be important and shared, but I do write a lot of process documentation for my work. Writing by hand is fast and simple, and clearly messy = less consumable by others. What makes this writing task difficult for me is that the idea generation is destined for the recycling bin nearly immediately. Had I typed the thoughts and saved them in a document, they would have a longer life and could at some point become something. Like seventeen of the songs on the Golden Record, I will summarily kill these thoughts for the salvation of others.

There were mistakes. Does use of shorthand constitute a mistake in handwritten text? I often use an alpha, Greek letter A, to represent and. Could just as easily type with an ampersand &. But I do not use alpha or and consistently. Typos receive a strikeout. I did not start over, just scribbled. These types of character assassinations make manuscripts from interesting people interesting, but in my case the erasure by desktop software makes it easier on the reader who will understand there were no lost gems. Which makes the act of editing rather simple with this method. A line or scribble is much faster and simple than reflecting on the spelling and grammar accuracy of mechanical editors before taking action of any sort.

Perhaps the most significant difference between writing by hand and typing is that I write very quickly by hand with ideas flowing easily and with fewer regrets about malformed sentences or inadequate clauses to support an argument. I prefer to type thoughts, mainly because I am slower, take the time to reflect, and can wipe out offending articles without thinking about them again. With handwriting, the failed thoughts sit on the page as a reminder and that is distracting.