Tag: writing

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Can cursive writing solve your plot problem?

 

I’m a fast typer and giv­en a choice, that’s the meth­od of get­ting words on pa­per I’ll al­ways choose. But when I’m stuck and don’t know how to get a char­ac­ter from point A to B or ex­press my protagonist’s emo­tion­al state in an in­nov­at­ive way, I in­vari­ably get a piece of pa­per and a pen to sort things out.

Jotting down my thoughts by hand seems to spark a mul­ti­tude of ran­dom ideas. It might take a bit of time but even­tu­ally, my scribbles pave the way to a solution.

In the past, I thought I was just be­ing old school, fall­ing back on what I’d learned as a child. But google “hand­writ­ing versus typ­ing” and you’ll find sci­ence-based arti­cles pub­lished by Scientific American, PubMed Central, and the Swiss-based MDPI, as well as nu­mer­ous oth­er on­line peri­od­ic­als dis­cuss­ing the difference.

Studies con­duc­ted world-wide con­sist­ently re­veal that hand­writ­ing beats typ­ing when it comes to learn­ing, memory, prob­lem solv­ing, and cre­ativ­ity. Using brain scans while people were typ­ing or writ­ing by hand, sci­ent­ists no­ticed that sig­ni­fic­antly more areas of the brain lit up when a per­son was us­ing a pen or pen­cil on paper.

And when it comes to curs­ive versus print­ing, curs­ive leads every time. The broad­er spec­trum of cog­nit­ive activ­ity while writ­ing longhand, in­dic­ates deep­er thought and en­gage­ment with the ma­ter­i­al, which in turn, pro­motes ana­lyt­ic­al think­ing and cre­ativ­ity. And hope­fully more “Aha!” mo­ments when it comes to prob­lem solving.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to start writ­ing books or blogs in longhand. Typing is a valu­able skill, es­pe­cially for writers. And today’s tech­no­logy makes it in­cred­ibly easy to cor­rect spelling, punc­tu­ation, and gram­mar, as well as move, change, or de­lete text.

But I do plan to reach for pen and pa­per more quickly the next time I’m stuck. And this makes me won­der how wise it is for schools to drop curs­ive from their curriculums.

 

 

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A different way to start the New Year

Sometime in October I got scooped up in a so­cial whirl that kept me go­ing from birth­day parties to con­certs, dinner’s out and more day after day. That ended in mid-December when I headed south to spend two weeks cel­eb­rat­ing the hol­i­days with family.

So much fun! So much good food! And it was won­der­ful to spend time with fam­ily and friends! But, of course, the busier I got, the less time I had for writ­ing. Each week I thought that would change but it didn’t. By the time I flew home on the last day of 2025, I was ready to get back to work.

The last leg of my jour­ney was delayed for hours due to a thick shroud of fog draped over Vancouver Island. When the plane fi­nally touched down in Comox, I was giddy with re­lief. I just wanted to get home and back to “my real life.”

The cab dropped me off at 12:10 a.m. on New Year’s Day. As I stepped into the near black­out of my front door, I felt some­thing sub­stan­tial, yet squishy, un­der my feet. My im­me­di­ate thought was dead an­im­al.

I fumbled for the small flash­light I’d at­tached to my keyring. I didn’t find it but did man­age to open the car trunk and ac­tiv­ate the car alarm. Looking around at all the dark win­dows in my com­plex, I giggled and called out “Happy New Year!”

When I fi­nally got in­side and was able to shed some light on the mat­ter, the dead an­im­al turned out to be a large wreath someone had left on my door­stop. What a relief!

I love the New Year and the op­por­tun­ity it of­fers for big dreams and in­tro­spec­tion. I usu­ally spend about an hour plot­ting out what I want to ac­com­plish in the up­com­ing months.

I fully in­ten­ded to do that when I woke up the first morn­ing of 2026. But both my body and brains said no. I was tired, so de­cided to wait a day be­fore dash­ing off a list of projects.

The next day’s re­peat re­bel­lion of body and brain made me real­ize my en­ergy bank was empty. I de­cided to give my­self a couple of days to recover…which stretched into a week!

I ate and slept when I wanted, puttered, went for sol­it­ary walks in the woods and, aside from a few short emails and texts, com­mu­nic­ated with no one.  I was sur­prised to find it not bor­ing but relaxing.

When I did sit down to form­al­ize what I want to ac­com­plish this year, I spent a few minutes con­sid­er­ing what gave me en­ergy in 2025 and what drained it.

The an­swers were ob­vi­ous: en­ergy and joy came from writ­ing, tai chi, mu­sic, and spend­ing time in nature and with fam­ily and friends. The drains: too many ap­point­ments and too much socializing.

I love hav­ing fun with friends and fam­ily but, as a writer — and in­tro­vert — I alsoPaula and Shannon Bailey at Nuchatlitz Provincial Park. Photo by Dodie Eyer need alone time. I ad­ded “fix the teetertot­ter” to my 2026 list. I’m not cut­ting any so­cial activ­it­ies out, just mak­ing sure there’s more balance.

And you know what? I found my mini-re­treat so be­ne­fi­cial, I ad­ded it to the list too.

Top photo by Rick James

Bottom photo by Dodie Eyer 

 

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My favorite part of writing a book – it’s not what you think

A laptop in the woods, waiting for a writer.

 

Writing a book can be a lot of fun but it also re­quires a lot of hard work and dis­cip­line. And each au­thor has their fa­vor­ite as­pect of the task, which may shift over time.

I’ve usu­ally thought about a top­ic for a long time be­fore mak­ing a com­mit­ment to write 60,000+ words about it. So, that gen­er­ally means I have a good idea of how the be­gin­ning and end will be shaped.

These sec­tions are ex­cit­ing and fun to de­vel­op. I also really like in­ter­view­ing people, tap­ping into their ex­pert­ise and learn­ing about their ex­per­i­ences and perspectives.

But then there’s the muddled middle, which seems to quickly turn into a bog of en­nui that is im­possible to es­cape. I have clear point A and C but where oh where is the all-im­port­ant point B to join them in a co­hes­ive man­ner? This is my least fa­vor­ite part of writ­ing a book. Inevitably, there are many false starts, gnash­ing of teeth and mut­ter­ing or worse be­fore this sec­tion comes together.

And then there’s the edit­ing. My fa­vor­ite part of writing!

Why? Because I have a frame­work to build on, adding, de­let­ing, re­fin­ing and mov­ing text as needed. It is cre­at­ive, fun, and a re­lief to fi­nally be on semi-sol­id ground.

A page edited with red ink.My edit­ing takes place in a vari­ety of ways. I usu­ally be­gin re­view­ing the text on my com­puter, then shift to hard copy as the eye picks up dif­fer­ent glitches in dif­fer­ent me­di­ums. Reading the story aloud is an­oth­er way to make sure every sen­tence is up to par and cre­ates a co­hes­ive, dy­nam­ic whole.

I will re­view the ma­nu­script many times, hope­fully mak­ing few­er changes as I pro­gress. When I think the story is as good as I can pos­sibly make it, I send it to my publisher.

Then things get even bet­ter as the pub­lish­er as­signs one or more ed­it­ors to go over the ma­nu­script with me. People ask if I get up­set when someone sug­gests chan­ging, adding to or even de­let­ing parts of some­thing I’ve worked on for years.

The an­swer is a re­sound­ing no! By this time, I’m so im­mersed in the story, I can no longer tell what its strengths and weak­nesses are. I need a pro­fes­sion­al to look at the ma­ter­i­al with fresh eyes. This is a vi­tal com­pon­ent of a good book, so if I was go­ing to self-pub­lish, I would hire an editor.

Now back to the cur­rent muddled middle….

 

 

 

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Light on the Serengeti

 

A few people have asked why I have a pic­ture of the Serengeti plains on the bio page of my website.

The an­swer is simple: this is my fa­vour­ite photo from a trip to Tanzania. In fact, I like it so much, I re­cently had it en­larged into an 18 x 36-inch can­vas wrap that now hangs in my house.

It was taken when our two sa­fari jeeps stopped lit­er­ally in the middle of nowhere, away from the kopjes where ex­tens­ive lion prides lolled and the life and death drama of wilde­beest and cro­codiles along the Mara River. I wasn’t the only per­son struck by the raw, open beauty; our little herd of thir­teen hu­mans was mostly si­lent, ex­cept for a few whispers.

Some people ask why I didn’t choose a pho­to­graph with an­im­als. Believe me, I have tons of pho­tos fea­tur­ing ele­phants, leo­pards, mon­keys and more. But, to me, the Serengeti im­age goes deep­er. It’s about the land and sky, the smell and feel of Africa, and the way the sun touches it all. It’s a place, once vis­ited, that is nev­er forgotten.

The im­mens­ity of this land­scape that can stretch be­yond hu­man sight vi­brates with a si­lence that is palp­able. Eyes scan the ho­ri­zon while ears feel wide open, hear­ing only the gentle rust­ing of golden grasses.

There was a sense of won­der and an­ti­cip­a­tion, know­ing that even though the land ap­peared bare of life, there was the pos­sib­il­ity that at any mo­ment, a lion, chee­tah, zebra or buf­falo could set paw or hoof in our viewscape.

Even though it’s hanging in the hall, I can see the Serengeti im­age from my bed. If I wake up at the right time, the sun shines in through a win­dow, high­light­ing only the sky por­tion of the pic­ture. It looks like the sun is rising in the Serengeti.

While the morn­ing light works its ma­gic, I of­ten con­sider the vast land­scape of my life – some be­hind me, some yet to come — and all the pos­sib­il­it­ies there are to explore.

As a writer, these of­ten re­volve around my cur­rent pro­ject. Will I fin­ish the chapter I’m work­ing on today? The en­tire book by the end of the year? Or will the story sud­denly fol­low a dif­fer­ent tan­gent, tak­ing me on a new journey?

The end­less po­ten­tial for com­bin­ing ideas and words is an as­pect of writ­ing that I’m par­tic­u­larly fond of. And now the Serengeti re­minds me of that every day.

Copyright on all pho­tos Paula Wild