Margaret Atwood is 86 years old, a two-time Booker Prize winner, and one of the most celebrated writers alive. She still handwrites every draft. When asked why, she said it simply:

“I tend to handwrite my drafts because that is how I get the best flow from brain to hand to the page.”

Natalie Goldberg is 78. She has been saying the same thing for decades, ever since her book Writing Down the Bones changed the way an entire generation thought about writing. Over two million copies sold. Her first rule has never changed:

“Keep your hand moving.” And she knows why — “Handwriting is more connected to the movement of the heart.”

Science now tells us why both women were right all along.

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology confirmed that writing by hand increases brain connectivity in ways that typing simply cannot replicate. The moving hand activates memory, language, fine motor control, and thought structure simultaneously — engaging far more of the brain than a keyboard ever does.

These neural connections build and strengthen over time. A systematic review published in Frontiers in Neurology found that sustaining language involvement through regular writing is directly linked to a reduced risk of dementia and enhanced cognitive performance. Handwriting does not just record thought. It generates it. It protects it. It extends it.

(Study: Van der Weel & Van der Meer, Frontiers in Psychology, 2024)

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1219945/full 

Writing Down the Bones changed my life. It deepened my writing and shaped the career that followed — including my award-winning book The Next Act. And somewhere in that truth I found what I now recognize as a Vintage Practice. I am 74. For over six years, more than 2,200 consecutive daily posts, every one has begun the same way. By hand. On paper. Before a single word reaches the screen.

I did not know then that I was building my brain. I knew only that something true happened when the pen moved.

Pick up the pen. Keep your hand moving.

Your mind is waiting to meet you there.

You are not declining. You are deepening. — Sagerism

Thanks – Michael (he, him)

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