Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

I always wrote by hand - probably because I spent over a decade in academia dealing with equations. I always have a pen in my pocket (without a pocket protector!)

About a decade ago I went back to writing with fountain pens after a nearly two decade hiatus. Oh, the joy!

But very sad he has no (real) tips on dealing with hand fatigue - other than to write in cursive. I always had hand fatigue for writing long stretches of prose - even back in my school days. A few years ago, I simply had to change how I grip the pen to reduce the pain, but I still can't write many pages without significant pain and the need for breaks. I can't imagine writing a whole novel that way.

Also, I wish he told us how he gets that handwritten stuff into digital form. Does he just mail handwritten stuff to the publishers?

In the past, I'd write twice: Once by hand, and then I'd type up anything worth saving to get it in digital form. A royal pain!

Then with Whisper and LLMs, life got a lot better. I would simply read what I'd handwritten, and get an LLM to clean it up. I only occasionally needed to fix it up after that.

Now LLMs are so good at it that I simply take a picture and send it to the LLM for transcribing.

I don't care how much people hate AI - for me it has quite literally reduced physical pain in my life.

The muscles in your hand and fingers are small and tire pretty easily. The muscles in your arm and shoulder are bigger and can do a lot more work. Back in the day, folks who were taught "business cursive" like the "Palmer Method" were taught to keep their hand mostly static, and to guide the pen strokes using their arm. The way I do it is by planting my forearm on the desk as a pivot point, and moving my arm and shoulder to make the pen move. It took some getting used to, but my handwriting looks about the same as it did before, but no more hand pain.

Yes - I've heard this is the way to go. But will it work for non-cursive?

I almost exclusively write in cursive, so I don't have any personal experience, but I assume the only real difference is in how often you pick up the pen, so my guess is that it should be roughly the same.

That's quite similar to the "start from the shoulder and use your whole arm to strum" concept when playing the guitar.

> But very sad he has no (real) tips on dealing with hand fatigue

I also spent a good amount of time in academia (math & physics), wrote everything by hand (dozens of pages per day), and I, too, suffered from serious hand fatigue & RSI for years, even when using a fountain pen. My recommendations:

- Use as light and as thick a fountain pen as possible. Also, very thin & hard pen tips may be nice but in my experience they make it harder to write.

- Work on your posture (if you don't do that already). Work out your neck and your back in particular to compensate for sitting all day every day. A stiff neck (even if you don't feel that it is stiff) can seriously impact the nerves in your arms & hands and, thus, muscle tension & recovery.

> Use as light and as thick a fountain pen as possible. Also, very thin & hard pen tips may be nice but in my experience they make it harder to write.

I use Fine-Medium nibs (some fine nibs are too fine, and some medium nibs are too thick).

Amusingly, I've discovered recently that my handwriting is much worse with thick pens. I write better with pens slightly on the thin side (but not too thin). Of course, that doesn't mean it's better for my wrist!

I also write with fountain pens these days. Do you have a favorite model?

It changes every few years.

My first was the Pilot Metropolitan. Still a solid pen I recommend.

My next favorite was/is a PenBBS - perhaps the 309 - I don't have it on me at the moment. I replaced the nib with a Goulet nib, and somehow made it extremely smooth. I've not been able to make any other Goulet nib that smooth - somehow got lucky.

These days I'm heavily using a Platinum Plaisir which is also surprisingly smooth (no modifications).

Every time I've paid more than $50 for a pen, it hasn't been worth it. I can't get the ink in my Opus 88 pen to flow consistently. I'm sick of it.

I'm partial to Faber Castell nibs, but the pen I bought had a grip that I didn't like, and I don't want to spend the money to try their other pens.

Not OP, but Sailor KOP Naganita Togi.

Learn to write with both hands. When one becomes fatigued switch to the other one.

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