Some writers have discovered that writing your manuscript by hand can produce better results than simply typing your novel.

Experiment as you meet your daily writing quota–write by hand and compare to the work you typed earlier this week. Lifehacker collected a few scientific reasons why writing works better than typing:

Dr. Virginia Berniger, who studies reading and writing systems and their relationship to learning processes, found that children’s writing ability was consistently better (they wrote more, faster, and more complete sentences) when they used a pen rather than a keyboard … The difference, Berniger notes, may lie in the fact that with writing, you use your hand to form the letters (and connect them), thereby more actively engaging the brain in the process. Typing, on the other hand, involves just selecting letters by pressing identical-looking keys.

Looking for way to write by hand in our digital world?

This GalleyCat editor used to write everything by hand, but switched to typing as his life grew busier. However, using the TruGlide Stylus and Notes Plus for the iPad, we managed to digitize our scribbled notes.

Follow this link to find out how you can convert your handwriting to text on the iPad.

This is our eighth NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. As writers around the country join the writing marathon this month, we will share one piece of advice or writing tool to help you cope with this daunting project.