However, I’ve come up with some funny speeches working with paper and pencil at Starbucks. I have no problem editing my draft at my computer, but I have to do the creative work somewhere else.

Would love to see more details about these studies.

Words on a computer can be edited with relative ease: deleting is a few keystrokes away, rearranging can be as simple as dragging and dropping, and multiple versions of the same document (or sentence, or paragraph) can exist without much effort at all. Text on a computer can live in a perpetual state of partly-done for a very long time.

On the other hand, words on paper have a sort of permanence, in that there are actual physical resources being consumed in their creation. We wouldn’t want to waste paper or ink, or make our pencils dull, for something that isn’t worthwhile. When we get to the end of a page, we have a tangible chunk of content that exists “for real”, instead of the virtual existence on a computer screen (though of course we can print a document in order to give it some permanence, but then we are likely to turn it into a paper canvas on which we make hand-written notes). The changes possible on paper are quite limited: we can’t add much more to it, and removing content by scribbling it out or using whiteout or an eraser is just as permanent-feeling as putting the content there to begin with. There is no undo, only redo. But these are not disadvantages when we really need to focus on creating instead of getting bogged down in modifying!

There are other aspects to this, of course, but I bet this is one that is big enough to really change how our brain tends to work while using each of these media for writing. The subconscious mind takes into account all aspects of the activity, and will guide our consciously-creative thoughts accordingly.

I tend to use paper for brainstorming, as a way to tap into my thoughts with less judgement getting in the way. I also like using paper to write about my feelings or other thoughts intended for my own eyes only, or for personal and heartfelt notes to people I care about. When it comes to actually crafting of sentences and paragraphs for more general public consumption, I prefer the flexibility of using a computer and the tools therein. However, I could probably benefit from remembering to turn to paper more often when writing feels like a struggle against my brain instead of a tapping into it!