> My handwriting was never really able to keep up with my brain

I found value in hand-writing by doing morning-pages as a regular high volume stream-of-conscious practice which allowed my hand-writing to free itself from the deliberate part of my mind.

The mind should be alive while you hand-write rather than, as a imagine it, a child spelling out the letters as they print them. Ideally it should be more of a flow state with multiple parts of your mind working in parallel. You can basically queue up a sentence for the more autonomous part of the brain to hand-write while the rest of your mind is thinking more strategically and refining arguments.

For me, hand-writing can be magical because that semi-conscious autonomous part can be a source of creativity of it's own. The conscious mind has ordered a vanilla statement but the hand has embellished it with unplanned rhetorical flourish which can take the observing part of the mind by surprise by it's beauty.

This can feel like a bit of dialogue between parts of my mind as I write. The planning part is reading what is emerging from the hand and getting inspired beyond it's own plans. I'd be curious if this has any genuine physiological basis with multiple parts of the brain because it does fit into those right-brain / left-brain type models.

I go in cycles and start assuming I'm getting the same benefit with typing but I then rediscover how the craft of hand-writing opens up something fresh I've been missing. There is something to the constant forward progression, the uneditable ink and the physical movement that helps. The way words appear is allowing for creative supervention. There is something about how ink on a page materially changes the world but letters on a screen are intangible vapour. For me typing, can always feel a little unserious and uncommitted. No matter how I might try to set my mind, there is a temptation to edit after every keystroke.

I think it's related to how some people can speak with simplicity and grace but they write turgid crap. Whatever that natural off-the-top-of-your-mind circuit we use to speak can become overpowered by an overthinking inner bore. For me at least, hand-writing can activate some different brain areas and find some freedom.

Same. I also do audio journals, and I find that each type seems better suited to sorting different kinds of problems. Usually if I need to figure out many details, or something that has an enumeration or sequence, writing is better (and digital so I can rearrange it).

If it's about trying to understand what's bothering me on a subject, audio journal ("talking it out") seems to work better, though writing also works.

Sometimes I'll be surprised when I see or hear my thoughts laid out like that. Often I've thought something for a long time and never realized it explicitly.