Writing longhand does not make you a better writer. You may feel as though you can think things through more thoroughly, or that the feeling of scribbling your crayon across the page helps you better tap into the muse, but that is the difference between opinion and universal law.

Last week I attended a reading where the two featured authors slipped into a sidetrack exposition on the virtues of writing longhand. They told us how applying pen to paper and writing slowly gives the work a depth that pecking away at a keyboard just can’t provide. The two technophobic old farts also explained how the new generation is in too much of a rush to write these days. I was told that we don’t like to write bridge scenes anymore, and that our work is always rushing towards action and conclusion, never taking the time to slow down and smell the flowers.

One of the authors put it like this:

“It seems that people don’t want to write long anymore, but strangely enough a lot of people still want to read long.”

I think the author is confusing what writers want to do with what the general reading public is looking for. Looking at books on my shelf published in the last five years I see short poppy contemporary literature, sitting next to long and intricately woven narratives. Shorter books are indeed popular, but is this more because a certain demographic chooses to be distracted by myriad other activities instead of reading, or is because writers are just getting lazy with their keyboards? I’ll let you chew on that one for a bit.

While I’m on the rant, I’d also like to mention that Mrs. Longhand’s book barely tipped 200 pages of wide margin and large fonts. Not having read the book, I can’t comment on the writing, but the snippets she read to us gave the impression of a fast moving book that didn’t sound nearly as interesting as the research that went into it. Maybe if she’d used a computer she might have been able to put a few more words on the page before finishing each writing day, and ultimately put a little more flesh on the bones of her story.

This whole writing long hand is The One True Way argument would be a lot more powerful if it wasn’t always pushed on my by people who look like they still own a VCR continuously blinking 12:00.

Write however you damn well want, it’s all just words when it’s rolling off the press.