Learning to Write
For some time I’ve marveled at the consistency that calligraphers are able to maintain when doing their work. Everything else is just knowing how to move a pen to get a particular shape, flourish, or effect. No individual part of calligraphy is all that mysterious, but actually getting the letterforms the same again and again, that’s a skill that has so far eluded me.
Posts on the Fountain Pen Network led me to Paperpenalia’s handwriting method of writing by moving from the shoulder rather than flexing the wrist. I’ve been practicing when I can for a page at a time in my Clairefontaine notebook (I find purposes for all these notebooks! you’d almost think I was making up excuses to write on paper) and am getting a page in maybe every other day. I try to remember the rest of the time, but I’m not convinced I’ve really gotten the hang of how to hold the pen.
Yes, it is almost totally like learning to write all over again. I can begin to see how using this set of muscles helps to establish a rhythm that may eventually lead to more regular handwriting. I hope so, because it’s been a lot of work. I’m writing a lot of diagonal lines and horizontal lines and circles — it’s all to get that muscle memory trained until these movements become natural. Right now it feels like that’s a long way off, but I’m committed to getting it going.
My handwriting has already been rehabilitated quite a bit in the last few years. Sometime in grade school I gave up on cursive writing and then in high school I abandoned lowercase letters altogether. It was the only way (so I thought) that I could make the words I put down on paper legible. Five or six years ago I decided to reinvent my handwriting and reintroduce lowercase letters. I made some letterforms that I’d never been taught in school, mostly picking shapes I admired from typography. My lowercase g’s are bicameral, my a’s have terminals, and I’ve added ligatures common to typography. The intentionality I brought to creating the shapes has made a big difference and my handwritten text is now much better-looking and legible than it ever has been.
Yet I still have trouble keeping my text on a regular baseline without using ruled paper and keeping the size and angle of the letters consistent. If my letters are sloppy and out-of-control, it doesn’t much matter how many times I reinvent the alphabet.
So one thing at a time. For now, I’m working on getting used to holding the pen between two fingers with the pen resting on my big index knuckle. The biggest trouble there is that it feels unstable and I tend to grip the pen way too hard. Practice, practice, practice!