Dr Johnson maintained that what is written without effort is in general read without pleasure The converse is that good writing comes hard Looking back though my handwritten school essays I was surprised at how few crossingsout they contained Today I would have rewritten them five times over I am sure the reason was that they were physically hard to write The slowness of the hand disciplined the brain What would be difficult to alter or erase was written with care The casual facility of the computer leads to sloppiness Most writers using word processors find the time spent correcting early drafts more or less equates with the time originally spent on handwritten text