In Defense of Pen and Paper

In this digital age, writing in defense of pen and paper — of writing things down instead of recording them digitally — may seem strange. I hope I can defend its merits in this short piece.

When I was in (I think) the fifth grade, I had a history and geography teacher who instructed us to take notes on assigned readings. I didn’t think I’d be good at it, and thought it was kinda boring anyway, so I became one of the foot draggers. Why wasn’t just reading the textbook good enough?

Fortunately as things turned out, she got on our case about it. She basically made us take notes, told us she wanted to see them, with the warning of a note to our parents if we refused to cooperate (such threats meant something in those days).

We took notes. And guess what?

Our grades went up. Having taken notes on readings about the era of the Louisiana Purchase, my grade in U.S. history went from a C to a high B in just one test. Having taken notes on readings on the things France has been known for, my grade went from a C to a low A.

“This is why we want you to take notes!” the teacher crowed, pointing to my higher grades.

The lesson was not lost on this ten-year-old.

What did we do right? What we were learning was how to extract the main ideas from a paragraph, or section in a book chapter, and put them in our own words. This skill is invaluable to anyone pursuing a subject or profession requiring you to engage others and convince them of something. Law, for example, but many other things as well.

Since that year, if I wanted to learn a topic, I took notes on it — not just in history and geography, but in every subject, and on other topics.

I now have file folders crammed with notes taken for various purposes, some to write books or articles and others just because I wanted to remember the information. They fill boxes stacked in closets and in my storage area.

During the period I myself taught classes at the university level, taking notes proved invaluable. The best way to master a subject thoroughly, after all, is prepare to teach it to others, and have those others be able to pass a test on it.

At the start of this year, having written reams of commentary and making the unhappy discovery that unless you work for The Washington Post or some syndication service, neither one pays very much (when it pays anything at all), I turned my attention to professional copywriting. In six months, I went from novice to AWAI Verified and am preparing to launch my website and business.

I remember that one of our first instructions was to copy well-performing sales letters by hand. Don’t merely take notes on them, said the text. Copy them by hand. And don't copy them just once. Copy them three times. Several such letters awaited.

Many people, having bought the AWAI flagship program, balk at this assignment. What is the point of copying letters? they ask. It’s time-consuming, for one thing.

What it does, is take the pen-and-paper method to the next level!

If you copy successful sales letters by hand and do it diligently, paying attention to what you copying, you are burning into your brain the words, rhythms, cadence, and tone of a successful sales letter. Maybe one that earned a company millions of dollars.

Maybe, by doing so, you will learn to do the same thing.

Or to write letters able to raise money for a cause, since each of these, the sales letter and the fundraising letter, have a common denominator: an Architecture of Persuasion (Michael Masterson’s term), the result being that readers feel compelled to open their wallets or whip out their credit cards.

Once, perhaps three months ago, I tried to transcribe my extensive handwritten notes on Masterson’s Architecture of Persuasion into a Word document. I made another discovery I think is worth sharing.  

I noticed that while I was typing, my mind was wandering. I wondered if there was more coffee in the kitchen. I recalled a book I’d been reading for pleasure late the night before. I thought of a girl I’d once dated and wondered where she was now. That is, my mind was on everything except what I was typing.

I wasn’t getting anything out of it.

I abandoned that project.

Maybe others will find transcribing such things into digital form useful. I did not, and do not. To this day I keep an old-fashioned, hard-copy calendar on a clipboard. I don’t knock spreadsheets if others find them useful. I only say, writing appointments and other events down on pen and paper helps me remember them better. Maybe it will help you, too.

When doing distance learning, I continue to take notes by hand, always trying to extract the essence of what the author is saying. I sometimes recopy my notes to organize them better, as I’ve often filled margins with side comments and cross-referencing observations.

This world of digital communications technology is often amazing. It makes learning across oceans possible.

But it isn’t everything.

If you really want to learn something — a subject, a method, a routine — and really burn it into your brain, I recommend putting ink on paper. Take notes. Copy and recopy successful products written by others by hand. Write things down the old-fashioned, “low tech” way.

You’ll see the results and be glad you did!