At first writing was just as difficult as reading and perhaps more so. He had forgotten how to hold a pencil or to form letters. He was completely helpless.
I’d forgotten how to use a pencil. I’d twist it back and forth but I just couldn’t begin to write. I was shown how to hold it and asked to write something. But when I picked up the pencil all I could do was draw some crooked lines across the paper. I looked at the pencil and at the paper and finally moved the pencil across the paper. But looking at the mark I’d made it was impossible to tell where I’d started. It looked something like the scribbling of a child who still hasn’t learned the alphabet. It seemed funny but also weird that I’d done that. Why had I? At one time I knew how to read and write well—and quickly. I began to think I must be dreaming again, that’s all there was to it. And I looked at my teacher again with that idiotic smile.
But a discovery he made one day proved to be the turning point: writing could be very simple. At first he had proceeded just as little children do when they first learn to write—he had tried to visualize each letter in order to form it. Yet he had been writing for almost twenty years and as such did not need to employ the same methods as a child, to think about each letter and consider what strokes to use. For adults, writing is an automatic skill, a series of built-in movements which I call “kinetic melodies.” Hence, why shouldn’t he try to use what skills he still had? His injury, after all, had damaged his capacity to see and orient himself spatially, but had not affected his kinetic-motor functions.
He remembered this day well and mentioned it frequently in his journal. Though it was such a simple discovery, it had changed his life entirely:
At first I had just as much trouble with writing—that is, even after I thought I knew the letters, I couldn’t remember how they were formed. Each time I wanted to think of a particular letter I’d have to run through the alphabet until I found it. But one day a doctor I’d come to know well, since he was always very informal with me and the other patients, asked me to try to write automatically—without lifting my hand from the paper. I was bewildered and questioned him a few times before I could even begin. But I finally picked up the pencil and after repeating the word krov [“blood”] a few times, I quickly wrote it. I hardly knew what I’d written since I still had trouble reading—even my own writing.
In this way he started to write. He no longer had to agonize over each letter, trying to remember how it was formed. He could write spontaneously, without thinking.
It turned out I could only write certain words automatically—short ones, but not words like rasporyadok [“arrangement”] and krokodil [“crocodile”] , etc. But still, after the doctor showed me how to write quickly, automatically, and not letter by letter, I was able to get one word down after the other without having to think about it. When I come to a word like rasporyadok or others that are even longer, I have to break them down into syllables. But even this is an enormous achievement for me, a great help in developing my memory. I was very grateful to the doctor and to my therapist O. P. for this. Three months after I arrived at K. I could already write this way, even though I still couldn’t read my own writing.
As the years passed his discovery bore fruit. Despite the difficulties, the mistakes, and the problems he had deciphering his own handwriting, he could write and that meant a great deal.
After intensive training I learned to read and write in six months. Writing came far more quickly (I write about as well as I did before I was wounded), but I haven’t done as well with reading. I still have to break down words into syllables and letters—my reading ability hasn’t gone beyond that.
But I have learned to write automatically, and once I remember a word I can write it—quickly and easily. True, I often have to stop and think about the first letter, but when it comes to me I have no trouble writing it. However, I often notice that I swallow or lose letters, or confuse those that are similar in sound—like “k” and “kh,” “z” and “s,” etc. Or else I’ll substitute a letter I’ve already used in a word and write zozoto instead oízoloto. Frequently I forget to use punctuation marks, since I no longer remember the rules for these. I do remember to use a period after a sentence but I mostly write very short sentences consisting of several words joined by the conjunctions “and” and “but.” But I still have trouble reading and understanding my own writing.
The problem of reading did not ease. He read slowly, breaking words down into letters and syllables, confronting new obstacles at every turn because the part of the cortex which controls visual functioning had been badly damaged by his injury. Nonetheless, he could write automatically, even though he had to wrack his brain for words and ideas with which to express himself.
When I look at a word like golovokruzheniye [“dizziness”], I just can’t understand it. All the letters—even parts of the word—are as meaningless to me as they would be to a child who’d never seen a primer or an alphabet. But soon something begins to stir in my mind. I look at the first letter (“g”) and wait until I remember how to pronounce it. Then I go on to the letter “o” and pronounce the whole syllable. Then I try to join it to the next syllable (“go-lo”). I take a quick look at the next letter (“v”), wait a little, then quickly look at the letter “o.” While I’m looking at that letter the two letters to the left of it escape my vision—that is, I see only the letter “o” and two of the letters on the left. But the first two or three letters in the word (“go-1”) are no longer visible. To put it more exactly, at that point I see only a gray mist in which spots, threads, and little bodies seem to shift and flicker back and forth.
He decided to write a journal describing the terrible abyss into which his injury had hurled him and the struggle it took for him to recover what he had lost.