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Writing by hand is good for your brain

nealstephenson.substack.com

221–230 of 708 posts

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marginalia is the best! I have a handwritten note about Ayn Rand in my 27 year old copy of Enchridion, a great reminder that she is like chicken pox, better catch her as early as possible. And several books such as I Claudius held together with duct tape. And soy sauce stains in Gargantua and Pantagruel from the place my grad school gf worked. Those count. A bit of irony, going through old stuff I found a copy of Nea…

Geez, if she is like chicken pox, what do we get that is like shingles later? :/

The current administration

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#222
post #209

today I posted a show HN that got insta-flagged by an AI detector. I had written the post then gone back and forth with claude, getting to a refined version I thought was much better. claude said it would hit way better with hn (me?). after getting flagged I found the original, reposted, and it is actually so much better. not polished, not a masterpiece, I'm nowhere close to a professional writer. But it's like a hum…

Your brain _is_ getting smoothed by this behavior. Don't use AI for writing or your thinking will suffer.

Of course Claude told you its version would land better, that's what how it is trained, but that doesn't make it true.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#223
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But please, do not ruin the book for me by scribbling all over it. How would someone writing in their copy of a book impact your ability to enjoy your own copy? Relax, it's their property and it's not criminal, so let them do what they want instead of trying to dictate rules.

Because I inherited the copy, maybe as a gift or bought at a used books shop? It's obvious from context I'm speaking of books that ended up with me, otherwise how would I even know they scribbled all over them?

> Because I inherited the copy, maybe as a gift or bought at a used books shop?

If it's from a book shop, you can thumb through it and choose to not buy it. If it's inherited or a gift, then what's the harm? Just discard it if it's been "ruined" or shelve it if there's some sentimental reason to keep it, and get a clean copy to read.

> It's obvious from context I'm speaking of books that ended up with me,

I doubt any of my books will end up with you nor will the books of the vast majority of HN readers and commenters, so why should any of us care about your peculiarities and avoid doing something that works for us and that we want to do?

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#224
Perhaps there is a balance to be struck? I have thought long and hard about this, and I have settled on taking notes by typing on my laptop. The benefits are far too many: I do not have to carry my notes around to read them on the commute; I do not have to worry about losing them; I can rewrite them to my heart’s content without messing up the layout; and I feel that I type faster than I can write.

I do partly agree, though. When I am studying a new concept or reviewing old ones, I tend to scribble my thoughts down. I have not been able to replicate brainstorming while scribbling and doodling on an electronic device. The friction of my pen on paper seems to actually wire the pathways in my brain.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#225
post #34

I switched from an Obsidian fanboy to only writing by hand, and I'm never going back. It seemed preposterous to put notes in something I can't back up or "CTRL+F" search, but I've found that yes, sometimes I spend two minutes looking for a note, but when I do I generally never have to look up that information again... as opposed to things I'd search Obsidian for constantly that seemed to never get stored in my brain.

Writing by hand has some advantages and writing by keyboard also has some advantages. Using note-taking app or similar software is very convenient and useful in some situations.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#226
I always wrote by hand - probably because I spent over a decade in academia dealing with equations. I always have a pen in my pocket (without a pocket protector!)

About a decade ago I went back to writing with fountain pens after a nearly two decade hiatus. Oh, the joy!

But very sad he has no (real) tips on dealing with hand fatigue - other than to write in cursive. I always had hand fatigue for writing long stretches of prose - even back in my school days. A few years ago, I simply had to change how I grip the pen to reduce the pain, but I still can't write many pages without significant pain and the need for breaks. I can't imagine writing a whole novel that way.

Also, I wish he told us how he gets that handwritten stuff into digital form. Does he just mail handwritten stuff to the publishers?

In the past, I'd write twice: Once by hand, and then I'd type up anything worth saving to get it in digital form. A royal pain!

Then with Whisper and LLMs, life got a lot better. I would simply read what I'd handwritten, and get an LLM to clean it up. I only occasionally needed to fix it up after that.

Now LLMs are so good at it that I simply take a picture and send it to the LLM for transcribing.

I don't care how much people hate AI - for me it has quite literally reduced physical pain in my life.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#227

I'm a convert to the idea of just having a cup full of Bic Cristal (cheap, ubiquitous, reliable, replaceable, 76 year old design) ball point pens. Whenever I temporarily misplace one, I just grab another from the cup as I find them. When I'm cleaning up, they all go back to the cup. However, his point about how hard you have to push to write is making me reconsider. On the other hand, I'm also not writing 42 inch hig…

The modern version of this is the Pilot G2. Scatter 'em around everywhere! 80% as good as fountain pens at 1% of the fussiness. I have a Lamy 2000 (well, more than one...) that I adore for writing anything with any actual length. But I still scatter those G2s around.

I used to be a fan of Zebra Sarasa (retractable, not one of the variations) which I thought was better than the G2, but it wasn't always reliable (maybe they changed something), was more expensive, hard to find in stores (G2 are everywhere though), and accumulates a glob of ink when you draw a line across the page, which ends up wherever you next write something. I happen to have a G2 next to me so I'm testing it for the same problem now, and ended up with a glob somewhere along the long line. I cross things off of todo lists a lot or draw dividers between sections of the page so that happens all the time. Still, it might be a good compromise for the pressure issue for writing sentences.

Not that I'm that price sensitive, it is kind of nice: Sarasa ($2+ each, if you can find it), G2 (~1.25 each), Cristal ($0.10-$0.25 each)

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#229

A corollary to this is, when reading books, mark them up! Don’t be precious with them. Destroy the spine so it’s easier to read, fold pages, write the important stuff inside the front cover of the book. Cross out stuff you disagree with, draw a big circles around the stuff that resonates. Not only does it make consumption a lot more engaging, it makes a revisit of that book extremely rewarding. Don’t get caught up tr…

> Cross out stuff you disagree with, draw a big circles around the stuff that resonates. > Not only does it make consumption a lot more engaging, it makes a revisit of that book extremely rewarding This is actually the biggest reason I own a Remarkable 2/Kindle Scribe, let's me "destroy" the book while also not having to worry about losing my notes.

Honest question: How confident are you that you'll have access to those notes on your Remarkable/Kindle 20 years from now?

I love my Kobo. I highlight stuff with it. But for anything really important, I then go to my computer, go through each highlight, and make notes in my org file.

(I probably should automate it - I know tools exist to extract all that metadata from the Kobo).

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#230

I always wrote by hand - probably because I spent over a decade in academia dealing with equations. I always have a pen in my pocket (without a pocket protector!) About a decade ago I went back to writing with fountain pens after a nearly two decade hiatus. Oh, the joy! But very sad he has no (real) tips on dealing with hand fatigue - other than to write in cursive. I always had hand fatigue for writing long stretche…

I also write with fountain pens these days. Do you have a favorite model?
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