Manual Script:

I have always been someone who enjoyed writing and I used to faithfully write a few sentences about my day in a daily journal. As an adult, this has proven to be a difficult task as I often fall asleep on the couch before I ever even get the chance to think about writing to recount my day. Yet, somewhere along the line, I began learning how to type. I distinctly remember having a “Computers” class growing up where we learned about word processors, spreadsheets and powerpoint. In addition, we spent a great deal of time practicing typing and playing electronic typing games to improve our speed. I don’t know when exactly I became a fast typer, but by the time I graduated high school, I could type way more words a minute than I could ever even think about writing. As a result, I began almost exclusively writing on a device because I could write more lengthy pieces in the same amount of time.

Now, when I sit down to write creatively, I still brainstorm ideas manually. This is because I’m a very visual person and I like to be able to spread ideas out on various pieces of paper and see everything at once. Yet, once I begin writing I always choose to type rather than write by hand. Part of this is still because of the speed at which I can type, but the other part is the ease of editing. When I write by hand I can cross out words here or there, but to go back and change the formats of sentences or re-order paragraphs is a lot more challenging and often requires multiple hand-written drafts. Whereas on a device, I can simply highlight a whole paragraph, hit a couple of keys on the keyboard and suddenly my piece is in the “final draft” format.