Why a NY Times economics reporter writes stories longhand

Conor Dougherty, an economics reporter at The New York Times, talks about why he writes his stories longhand.

Here is an excerpt:

Writing is all about getting started and keeping going, so whatever system helps you do that is the best system for you. In my case that’s paper, preferably yellow, but I can be flexible on that one.

When I’m typing on a keyboard, I have that thing that a lot of people have where they compulsively backspace and correct things until each sentence is clean, which is great in editing but messes up the flow of first draft composition. Word processors are sort of paralyzing to me. Whenever those squiggly green and red lines pop up to remind me to check grammar and spelling, I find myself sitting there and fiddling until the marks go away and I can begin a clean new sentence.

At one point I looked into getting the Freewrite keyboard, but it seemed a little expensive, and at this point I’ve gotten so used to writing my first drafts longhand that I feel that typing would mess up my rhythm.

Read more here.