Have we lost something?

My handwriting is shit. Let’s just get that fact out of the way first. It’s shit, and it’s my own fault. I use the computer far too much these days for my handwriting to be anything other than a looping scrawl of incoherence.

This week a colleague and friend asked me to sign the first draft of A World of Night (a yet unpublished and unfinished children’s novel that I’ve been tinkering with since 2004). The draft was read by his daughter way back in 2005, and should the book find a publisher in the future, A World of Night will have a shared dedication to both his daughter, Charlie, and my god-daughter, Isabella. So it was nice to be asked to write a short note on the first page of the first draft that Chris has kept since 2005.
Nice, except that my handwriting is shit.
It took me all day to think of a good enough note and then to write it, careful not to make a mess and to ensure the note was legible.

On Chris and Charlie’s advice I’ve changed my signature. Not the signature I use to pay cheques etc (having an incoherent scrawl in this case is a blessing when it comes to fraudsters), but to autograph and sign books. It’s similar to my last signature so hopefully that won’t annoy collectors who have bought 1st editions of The Secret War; the new signature looks more like “MFW Curran” now rather than the “Mcflurry” signature of old.

But this doesn’t change the fact that my handwriting is still shit. It will take something more drastic to change that fact. That my handwriting is as bad as a doctor’s or a teacher’s is something I take for granted, after all I use a computer an awful lot. I even have a very portable computer that I take with me almost everywhere because my handwriting is that poor and because I can type a helluva lot quicker than I can write (and I don’t do short hand – it comes out less coherent than long-hand).
But I have wondered whether writing by keyboard is less effective than writing by pen or pencil. Clive Barker is one of those authors who still writes several drafts by hand, and while it takes him an age to get anything out, he says it ensures he picks every word deliberately and carefully.
I admit, when it comes to first drafts, my imagination spews words onto the page to be re-ordered later on. It means I cut and paste sentences sometimes, which is a lazy approach rather than sitting down and writing everything from scratch again during the second and third drafts.
In my defence, it works for me, and it does save time – and time is to a part-time writer, what oxygen is to a deep-sea diver. But it has made me wonder whether I’m missing a trick. We are an impatient society and sometimes writing is about being patient - not rushing it, but being precise, deliberate and careful. So I’ve wondered recently what would happen if I had good handwriting skills and wrote on a collection of trusty note-pads rather than a legion of laptops.
Does it really make a lot of difference writing a book by hand rather than by keyboard?