I find that whether I type  or write by hand depends on the task. While I do write the odd sticky note or reminder to myself, anything more than a few words gets typed. The difficulty in this task was more figuring out what I wanted to write about.  It has been a long time since I wrote any compositions or essays by hand. Growing up, writing by hand was the norm in school. I was fully expecting my hand to cramp as it did during exams, though that did not happen. Typing was reserved for final drafts and transcribing handwritten work into a more legible form. It also forced us to re-read and edit our draft one last time, allowing us to fix awkward wording and easy mistakes.

Thinking about not being able to edit in the moment, I chose to write in pencil. I found myself erasing often to fix a minor error here or there. But once I wrote something, I left it and did not go back to edit. Not being able to quickly delete, move text, or clarify ideas made me write it and leave it. I think I re-read it once and fixed only a couple of minor mistakes that just did not make sense: an extra word from where I changed my mind type of errors. Otherwise, it is a first draft write, and it will stay that way.

I found it difficult to organize the ideas as I wrote them. My paragraph structure is not good. I would like to be able to reorganize some of the ideas and ensure that it keeps a continuous tone throughout. I think that I moved between different styles as I was figuring out what exactly the piece was going to be. While planning can always improve writing, I wanted a handwritten piece to be spontaneous and not perfected prior to writing it. There is no spell check or drag and drop ability to re-organize thoughts. The media certainly influenced how I engaged with the process.

I prefer typing over writing. Not only do I feel that I can type faster than I can write, but being able to go back and edit with ease has become a necessity. Word processing has become so refined that even common typos get autocorrected without the need to go back. Just in that last sentence I wrote “the” as “hte” accidentally. In fact, the autocorrect is so powerful that when I tried to demonstrate my error, it corrected that too. I had to manually force it to accept my mistake! Writing by hand affords no such luxury.

While I did not receive the hand cramp that past experiences made me anticipate, I have never really had an issue typing for long periods of time. I’ve only ever had a small case of carpal tunnel syndrome from a job that required being on a computer for entire shifts. It only lasted a few days and was corrected when I practiced better typing posture. However, I have vivid memories of hand cramps from writing in school and university. The ease at which long pieces can be typed compared to the handwritten counterpart makes it my preferred choice.