A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-One-Hundred-And-Eighty-Nine

How do I write about a gesture that I know is intended as loving and positive, that so many people whom I respect find touching, but that causes me pain?  Today, several times, I have seen a post from a woman writing letters of love to strangers.  The first time I noticed it, I didn’t really think much about it, even gave it a like from my Twitter account, but it kept appearing before me, posted and retweeted by various people I know or follow, and something was nagging me about it, some unspoken upset that I could not yet name.  Why would it bother me?  Was I so calloused and unkind as to be harmed by the notion of such a gesture?

But, no, there was a reason, one hidden in a detail I had, perhaps with some unconscious understanding, not recalled: the letters are handwritten.  

It may seem odd to be upset by this, to be pained by it, as I find myself to be, but, as a person whose neurology diverges in ways that make handwriting painful and difficult, I feel a sting at the inclusion of this detail.  Why?  It suggests that it matters whether the letters were written by hand.

If you heard about a handicapped individual who was raising money for charity by traveling cross country only using their wheelchair, would you find it unimpressive, since they aren’t doing it on foot?  Why should it matter at all, even as a detail to include in her post, that these letters are being handwritten?  It is what I have termed, The Cult of The Handwritten, and I have often felt as if I were a sacrifice to it.

More than a few times, I have attended a writing workshop with an instructor who bans using any kind of keyboard device for writing, often stating with the certainty of any faith, that writing by hand is superior, has a special quality that renders all other methods of marking letters down mere imitators incapable of manifesting the greatest resources of the writer’s ability.  “The process of writing by hand is the most natural,” they may say, “the one we evolved with, which works best with our neurology.”  They will tell me that the ideas flow best when they go directly to the pen and are not distributed to the keyboard.  I’ve had some cite that it is “neurologically sound,” and be completely dismissive of the reality that my brain is wired in ways that, even if it were true that this had a neurological basis (dubious at best), it would be irrelevant.  I do not work that way, even if others do.  Indeed, I am most at home with the notion that such processes are personal, that what works best for some will never be right for others.  I do not scoff at a writer who tells me they can only write a first draft by hand, it is merely that I don’t find that handwritten draft to be significant because it was handwritten.

So often, though, I hear others discussing handwriting as if it is sacred.  I see it in writers discussing pens, for example.  I know that one may have a practical fondness for an object, especially a tool one uses in so intimate an act as creation, and I am not speaking of that.  I have attachments to keyboards that are quite similar.  What I find upsetting, though, is that the few times I have attempted to express the way I feel about those keyboards inside conversation, it is always seen as illegitimate, as not the same as using a pen.  The keyboard is less authentic.  Writing by hand is the genuine article, the holy relic of The Cult of The Handwritten, and only a pen or pencil may serve as a sanctified implement.  I may appreciate my keyboard, but it does not belong, I am told.  My feelings about it are not important, do not deserve to be voiced, let alone heard, do not correlate to what a pen means.  

Often, I find myself unable to engage with workbooks on writing that present as notebooks, where the only way to truly engage is by filling out the pages, or by advice from other books that demand daily journaling by hand, arguing (indeed spawning) many of the same points teachers have incanted.  Even outside the sphere of writers, these ideas persist.  I had a professor in college who yelled at me in front of the classroom that I had to improve my handwriting, “or you will never get anywhere.  No one will hire a person with handwriting like this.”  He had coerced me into doing the work by hand for his convenience.   He was teaching a class on Buddhism.

Perhaps you are thinking it is not fair of me to express all this in response to this woman who is doing something to bring positivity and joy to strangers, and I can see the point you are making, but, can you imagine the feeling of being othered by such a gesture?  The specific detail that each letter is being written by hand is intended to make it clear these letters are special, are unique and made with tender care.  Those attributes are ascribed, not to taking the time to write a person, not to the actual process of putting thoughts into words, crafting a physical vehicle to carry that message, and then sending it out to the intended recipient.  What is highlighted as the evidence of that personal touch is the handwritten nature of these notes.  It should be irrelevant, though.  To say it matters is, for me, deeply troubling and ableist.  There are many people who cannot, for one reason or another, write by hand, and what does it mean to say that we do not have the capacity to use our words in such a personal and direct way because of our inability to write by hand?  

As a writer, I often imagine what it would be to have my first book in print.  It is, of course, a dream for most any writer, and I do imagine it, but often, the dream I have is, quickly, a nightmare.  I consider the joy of having the book, of it being in the world, and of the privilege of meeting enthusiastic readers of my work.  As a poet, I am very much a fan of public readings, and I have had the thrill of meeting writers whose work touched me, many who have signed copies of books for me.  And there it is.  I do not know how I can sign books.  I can certainly put my signature on a piece of paper, but I doubt I could do so again and again for any length, and, even more, I would not be able to provide any kind of legible transcription.  It scares me that any gesture I am capable of might be taken as inferior, in a world where so many hold the handwritten as sacred, no other effort can be its equal.  This is a real fear, a struggle I face inside myself, wondering what I can provide that the world will accept.  If I live in a world where the detail of letters being handwritten is relevant, I live in a world that is telling me what I am capable of is lesser and will never be the real thing.  My identity is heretical and can never be accepted so long as the Cult of The Handwritten holds enough sway that that detail is worth including.