Writing by Hand

Don’t laugh.  I know computers are an essential fact of life.  It’s just that my soul longs for a quill pen.

It’s not a matter of age, so don’t let me hear any of that luddite-old-fogey drivel kids use to silence anyone who dares to criticize the digital world that’s all they’ve ever known.  I longed for a quill pen when I was four!

It’s the style and flourish of handwritten words that seduces me.  The idea of centuries of deathless words consigned by brilliant minds to a page that will last forever is so romantic!  The notion of scribes laboring in Scriptoria to preserve humankind’s best knowledge… the awesomeness of libraries that safeguard millennia of wisdom….  it’s hard to imagine all that constrained to 140 characters or a blinking plastic screen, isn’t it?

So I use the computer, Kindle, Nook, iPad, iPhone as necessities of life, but I write by hand to keep my heart happy.

Next Gen

My 27 year old daughter understands, thank goodness.  She worries that her children may be stuck with only emails and tweets to carry profound messages between generations, beautiful handwritten messages in ink and paper having become a dim memory by the time they’re old enough to read (especially, inasmuch as they haven’t been born yet!)  “How will the next generations ever know if the wisdom of the past has been altered by hackers?” she asks only half in jest.

Mind you, if you’d like to write and tell me your thoughts on this subject (or any other?), by all means use the computer to do it!  That’s the convenience-magic computers impart.

Future World

Maybe in the future we quill-people be like the book people in Fahrenheit 451 and live in secret enclaves to protect the wisdom of the word.  Or maybe the demise of script being taught in schools means that all of us born before 1990 will be able to use handwriting as our encryption secret in days to come.

Sounds like a plan to me!

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