I sit down to write with my favorite felt-tip pen in a notebook, in cursive script. That’s how almost all of my writing – good and bad – begins. A few years ago I regularly attended a writing group: we sat, we wrote, we read. No editing, just an outpouring of words and ideas onto the page, raw and deep, if we let ourselves go.

I recently read that schools are abandoning the instruction of cursive writing. I imagine people not being able to write in cursive, and that picture disturbs me. I know handwriting is inefficient, but I would argue that for many reasons it serves a valuable function.

Loving the way the pen moves across paper, I choose smooth sheets for writing and find that the words flow most easily and from the deepest places when I write by hand rather than type. The kinesthetic experience of cursive writing seems to allow me deeper access to my own mind.

In journalism school in the late 1970s, I was taught to keep typing (on an actual typewriter!) when I made a mistake. Corrections were made in the copyediting process. The typesetters recomposed everything in the production process anyway, so it really didn’t matter if we typed perfectly. Writing without pausing to correct typos or grammatical mistakes became a valuable part of my process, even when I’m not keyboarding.

The legibility of my handwriting has suffered lately, as a result of more typing than writing. Not so, my mother’s handwriting: as I was going through papers last week, I came across a recipe she’d written out for me. Written in classic cursive, her perfect letterforms, loops and crosses, with uniform slant, heights and tails, are governed by invisible rules on the page.

My handwriting, by comparison, is messy and uneven, like I’m always in a hurry. (I am.) My hand can barely keep up with the pace of my thoughts, so I’m usually rushing to get it all down before an idea or train of thought goes away.

My mother’s handwriting, while nearly perfect, is still distinguishable as hers. The steadfastness of her writing says something about her personality, not in a “handwriting analysis” sort of way, but about the rhythm and speed of her life.

Handwriting, too, is a “gateway skill” to drawing. If we lose the ability to hold a pencil and make sweeping, curving symbols – even our signature – what will become of our ability to describe objects with line?

I once met an artist in Durango who incorporated her correspondence and journal entries – written in perfect Catholic school Palmer method script – into her artwork. I still have the letters she wrote me, written in that exquisite looping style. Content barely even mattered; I delighted in the gorgeous line of her thoughts.

On the other hand, my husband prints nearly everything. He says it’s because cursive was awkward for him to learn, and that now he prefers the neatness of a printed word. The only thing he writes in cursive script is his signature.

If students aren’t taught cursive, will their signatures – evidentiary of personality – be completely replaced by electronic signatures, or an eyeball scan or some such nonsense?

I often take a notebook out into the woods to write in the clear air. How silly would it feel to have my laptop in the woods? What happens if the battery gets low and I’m not ready to stop writing? In thirty years, will we have lost the ability to record our thoughts without an electronic device?

This week, I spent some time reading back over the journal entries I made a month ago, while in Oregon visiting Wendy. She lives down a country road in a log cabin outside of Eugene. There’s no wireless signal, and cell phones don’t work until you get down the hill a bit. Looking back at those pages reminds me of what it felt like to be in that moist place in the late fall, sleeping late, waking to foggy skies and luxuriating in the damp air and muffled sounds. I wrote, “On days like this you can’t tell where the sun is, so you’d better know where your own light/center is.” I doubt that an electronic version of that could so effectively help me re-experience those feelings.