Penmanship

Developing good penmanship is really not that easy. Ever since going back to school a year ago and having to take a ton of notes as a result, I've been going through a lot of ink. Contrast this to four years of working in industry where one barely ever picks up a pen.

Anyway, a year ago this time I was watching a bunch of how-to's on youtube, trying to figure out how to improve. I don't remember any of them being incredibly helpful, but it did get me thinking on the basics: posture, grip, rhythm, etc.

To this day I have bouts of great penmanship, and days where I just can't seem to get it past high school quality. On those on-days, I really feel the rhythm in my writing. You can see it too.

Learning has been similar to my learning process on the bass guitar: long periods of wood shedding on the current paradigm, broken up by quantum leaps forward.

Anywho. My lessons learned:

• Posture: support the elbow, but don't lean on it. Corollary: The wrist also lightly rests on the table.
• keep the hand straight in line with the arm. None of this pained, contorted wrist action I see all over the place. To move the pen to the right during writing, the whole arm moves. The wrist stays straight the whole time. 
• Hold the pen with index, thumb, and middle finger just like Momma always said, but DON'T hold it in some death grip as she insisted (or as I remember her insisting. Maybe the years have tainted my memory)
• Finally, my biggest Eureka momemt: guide the pen with the index finger, which should also be applying pressure to the pen onto the paper.

I'm still no expert, but hey. Practice, practice, practice. I know someone who still practices writing the first letter of her first name after some 40 years!