The novelist James McBride explains why he begins his novels by writing with a pencil and yellow legal pad:
When you handwrite, you edit. The first thirty to fifty pages of all my books are handwritten, and I do that because if you work on a computer, you end up going forwards and backwards and end up inserting entire chapters. Writing by hand forces you to edit before you edit – the act of moving a pen or a pencil across the page is a form of editing that cuts the fat from your work. It makes you a lean writer, and you really have to be lean in our time. Nowadays, writing is just covered in fat and icing. Everyone is a blogger writing in the first person, twittering about going to the store — I wouldn’t do that if my life depended on it.
So handwriting, especially today, is precious, and forces you to edit your work immediately. It moves you to clean your characters and content, it pushes your story forward, and it makes you identify what is important right away. Typing at a computer is like going to an all-you-can-eat restaurant. It’s too much. Stay lean.
Previous Dish on the topic here.
The Dish 