Austin Kleon — Clive Thompson, “The Pencil and the Keyboard: How...

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

Clive Thompson, “The Pencil and the Keyboard: How The Way You Write Changes the Way You Think

My friend Clive talks about his research into when you should write by hand and when you should type on a keyboard. 

Handwriting is great for note taking and big picture thinking. So, when you’re at lectures, in meetings, or you’re brainstorming ideas, scribble or doodle in your notebook. (Always carry a pencil.)

Typing is great for producing knowledge for other people, say, writing an article. The faster you type, the better your ideas will be. There’s a thing called transcription fluency, which boils down to: “when your fingers can’t move as fast as your thoughts, your ideas suffer.” If you help people increase their typing speed, their thoughts improve. (Learn to type faster.)

One thing I would add: sometimes, particularly when writing fiction, a writer’s goal is to NOT think faster than the pen. Take all the novelists who write in longhand, or someone like Lynda Barry, who writes the first drafts of her novels very slowly with a paintbrush: 

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My goal was to not think about things at all. To dream it out instead, trying very hard not to edit at all as I went. The first draft really took shape when I found that I needed to slow way down and distract myself at the same time so I used a paintbrush and Tuscan red watercolor and painted the manuscript on legal paper, trying to concentrate on the calligraphic aspect of writing rather than trying to craft beautiful sentences. I figured as long as the sentences looked beautiful, the rest would take care of itself.

Anyways, this talk was so up my alley it felt like he wrote it for me. Be sure to check out his book, Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better.

Filed under: handwriting 

Source: youtube.com handwriting clive thompson pencils keyboards typing technology creativity writing

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