Writing has never been more abundant. But at the same time, quality writing has never been harder to come by.
AI can generate a thousand words in seconds. Anyone can publish anything instantly with a few prompts. The barrier to entry has virtually disappeared. And because of that, the value of writing – real writing, the kind that takes patience and cultivation – has significantly depreciated.
This isn’t new anxiety. The last few generations have nervously bitten their knuckles, worried about the advent of new technology and how it might dilute the craft. But what we’re facing now is different in degree, not in kind. When a tool can do all the work for you, the temptation isn’t to write faster. It’s to stop writing, and, by extension, to stop thinking altogether.
And handwriting, of all things, could be part of the solution.
The Science Behind Handwriting
According to a study published in Frontiers in Psychology, researchers monitoring brain activity in students found that those writing by hand showed substantially higher electrical activity across brain regions involved in vision, movement, sensory processing, and memory. Typing, by contrast, produced minimal activity in those same regions.
Why? The answer is engagement. When someone types, the same simple movement of the fingers produces letters, numbers, and special characters on the keyboard. But when someone writes by hand, the physical exercise of forming an “A” is distinct from forming the letter “B.” The motor system and cognitive system aren’t separate. They communicate with one another. When someone writes by hand, they’re activating thought, and, as a result, the process of thinking.
These findings have sparked conversation across disciplines, from education to neuroscience. Sophia Vinci-Booher, an assistant professor of educational neuroscience, said of the findings:
I think there’s a very strong case for engaging children in drawing and handwriting activities, especially in preschool and kindergarten when they’re first learning about letters…. There’s something about engaging the fine motor system and production activities that really impacts learning.
There’s also something to be said for the writing itself. When taking notes by hand, it’s often unrealistic to record everything – which forces active engagement with incoming information, requiring the writer to prioritize, consolidate, and connect ideas to what they already know. Typing tends toward transcription; handwriting necessitates thought, engagement, and decision-making.
What About Creative Writing?
Creative work isn’t a throughput problem. A poem isn’t better because it was put to paper faster. To this day, the greatest poets in history – Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Keats, Yeats, Dickinson – labored over their work. That’s to say, it likely took them days or weeks, in most cases, to arrive at the polished drafts we recognize today.
The keyboard, by design, is optimized for speed. That’s useful for emails, but it’s not ideal for the production of literature.
Writing by hand asks something of the writer. It demands mindfulness, clarity, and patience. Without the luxury of a “delete” button, it forces the writer to slow down and deliberately engage with their thoughts before writing them.
I maintain that, across most professional and creative fields, we’ve conflated the optimization of production with the improvement of quality. We’ve mistaken “more” for “better.” The unfortunate result is that there’s more written content than anyone could ever hope to read – most of which is forgettable because it was generated without genuine thought and care.
Sadly, AI has accelerated this trend to its logical conclusion. Most writing doesn’t move people. Most writing doesn’t make us think. Most writing is dead.
What We Take From This
None of this means abandoning technology entirely. The research isn’t anti-keyboard. Laptops and other devices are more efficient for drafting long documents and offer broader access to research resources. The case for handwriting isn’t that typing is wrong. It’s that something is lost when handwriting disappears from creative practice entirely. This is why I’m writing the first draft of my third novel by hand. Yes, it’s slower. And I’m okay with that. It’s more engaging and rewarding than typing a draft ever could be.
I’m concerned that more and more people are abandoning their deep thinking skills to digital tools. Researchers literally refer to this as cognitive offloading. I even see myself doing this at times. Instead of sitting with a challenging creative issue, I feel the pull to just “ChatGPT it.” The scary part about this is the more we offload, the less work the brain does on its own. Over time, those capacities weaken.
Writing is one of the last acts of sustained thought most people engage in. If writers hand even that over to the keyboard – and then, gradually, to AI – something structural is lost. Not just a skill. A habit of mind. And it may be harder to get back than we thought.
Collin Jones holds a BA in Film and an MFA in prose writing. Before transitioning into marketing, he worked as an editor at Blaze Media. He is the author of the novel "Project: Sleepless Dream" and a short story collection called "The Desertianists." In his free time, he writes on "Concordant Student."
This culture article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News. To comment on this article, please email [email protected]. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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