The Pain of Typing Up A Handwritten Draft

Have you ever had to type up a whole draft that you wrote by hand?

It’s tedious, right?

It feels like unnecessary work, lost time. You’ve already written your draft, now you just need to get it all typed up in order to continue.

But there’s another way to look at it.

There is a reason why you wrote your draft by hand in the first place. Maybe it helps you thinking, maybe you just prefer to work with pen and paper first before going digital,… Whatever the reason you made a choice about that. This is your process.

And the fact that you chose that process over another shows that you hope to get more out of it. So why get all frustrated and the next step? The next step, the typing, is also part of your process. A part that you can choose to love or hate.

What if, next time you’re typing up your handwritten draft, don’t see it as lost time, but instead leave your frustration aside and see it as an opportunity to go over it one more time with a new perspective? If your creativity is not blocked by frustration, in the midst of typing you might get new insights and new ideas or even new breakthroughs about what you’ve written by hand.

This converts a task that felt tedious and unnecessary before into something valuable and into an important step that gets you closer to your goal.

Try to find other tasks in your writing process that frustrate you and become aware that each and every one of them is getting you closer to being a pro. And why not try to feel the joy of being a writer while you’re at it?

Frustration blocks your creativity. Don’t let it do that.

Reconnect to the joy of being a writer: