Trouble writing

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That's what typing is for

I am actually a faster typer that a writer. It takes me forever to write, and it hurts my hands, and my words are barely legible to anyone except for me, of course.

I can relate to this. Although most of my writing is readable to others. But i spent ages when i was a kid, erasing my sentences and writing them over and over and over and over until they were perfect. They had to be exactly like the examples in our books. So ive learned to write ok. But i much prefer typing as it doesnt hurt my hands. And not to mention the fact that i spend half an hour writing something by hand that takes me maybe five minutes typing.

The only problem i have with writing is that people find it hard to read.
Some people sometimes say my handwriting is childlike.
At school as a kid i often caught alot of heat due to my handwriting.
Some ret*d teachers thought i was doing it to piss them off.
I often got grades taken down due to poor handwriting.
Wich is kind of lame seeing as it's about what's in the test, and not how your handwriting is.

My handwriting is terrible, and I think it might have got worse. Due to my poor fine motor skills, my letters either become jumbled together, or I end up making a stalk too high, so that a lowercase 'a' looks like a 9. The result is that my writing is legible, but it takes a bit of practice for people to read it easily. I feel sorry for the examiners who are going to have to read my writing - when I'm writing fast and under pressure, it gets really bad.

I do have difficulties putting my thoughts down onto words. It's improved recently since I've been posting here and writing entries on my blog, but there is still a huge problem with 'translating' my abstract, visual and disordered thoughts to writing that makes sense.

I could never keep a journal or diary because I could never think of anything to write in them. Things do happen in my life - nothing major like catching an infamous mad axe murderer - but I either don't feel the need to write them down, or I am simply unable to. My thoughts do not correspond well to concrete writing, and I can honestly say it's harder than translating a passage of French into English.

Edit: Omagadz! 3 paragraphs of writing.

Everyday I spend time here, the more and more I feel as If I'm looking into a mirror.

In fact, I was thinking of starting an exact same thread a few days ago on this and another forum, but I never got around to it.

I've never had problems with writing. I can communicate much better in writing than I can through speech.

The physical act of writing, however, is another matter entirely. That's why I type instead whenever I can.

Well-said. I think in imagery (mind-movies) 90% of the time and I've often wondered if I'd be better at making films than trying to write stories, since I have the same problem in articulating exactly what I see in my head. I remember once trying to describe the terrible beauty of the aftermath of an ice storm. I wrote it and rewrote it a hundred times but I couldn't quite capture what it was that I found so beautiful about it. This problem comes up for me a great deal and the end result is that I end up trashing more than half of everything I write because it just doesn't come out the way I'd envisioned.

Maybe thats why i love editing movies so much I always think in movies, so making them is kinda like getting pictures of your thoughts handed out, and you can line them up exactly as your thought was.

I have trouble translating my thoughts to words... I can't always explain the 'green and orange kite that is shaped like an unusual object' and put down on paper so others will get it...

my writing is small and "wringle"

My problem is my thinking is so non-linear that it's hard to get it down on paper. I can't just sit down and write a stream of consciousness like some people can. Everything has to be pre-thought out and deliberate.

I also notice that when I have an idea in my head it seems like it will only take a few sentences to explain, yet when I try to get it down on paper it's always much longer and much less coherent sounding than it was in my head.

I can't write cursive at all. My handwriting is cockeyed, not to mention extremely slow. Word processor is the only way to go for me.

I can understand that all to well.
Sometimes I think of something and go to write it down, but as soon as I grasp the pen and put it on the paper, the thought itself seems to mix itself up and blend together in a pointless, meaningless mush.

I can think of an idea and it's clear in my head, but trying to explain in via writing is sometimes near impossible.

It's quite confusing, since I write a lot of poetry and that seems to come naturally to me.

Precisely!

Same here. As to your comment regarding stream-of-consciuosness writing - I tried it once during a lit class where the focus for the week was on James Joyce. I literally could not do it. My brain kept trying to force logic in a writing piece that was supposed to be completely abstract and illogical. I ended up writing maybe a paragraph and that was the first real 'F' I ever earned in an English Lit class.