Apparently I've Made Some Progress

April 8, 2014

Quick handwriting story to offer some encouragement to fellow learners.

I learned chancery italic last year, as an attempt to improve my *awful* scrawl. I was reasonably persistent in practice for the first few months, until I got to the stage where I could write slightly faster than a crawling speed, but since then I've not done much in the way of formal practicing. I try to use chancery whenever I write, but I still don't write a whole lot.

However, the other day I was sitting in an airplane having just boarded. I was in first class, so was already sitting and had pulled out my notebook to do some writing while everyone else was boarding. A few minutes later, the guy sitting next to me leaned over and said, "How the hell do you manage to write so good!?" I thanked him and explained that I had just tried learning from some books. A few minutes later, a voice above me said "Oh your calligraphy is so beautiful." I looked up to see a (beautiful) 20-something girl looking down at my book. I mumbled an embarrassed "thanks" and we both smiled.

Thing is, to my eyes, my writing is *thoroughly* mediocre. I still consider myself a rank beginner but sure, if I work with large letters, in my practice book, then fair enough I can see how a non-writer would be somewhat impressed. But my regular handwriting (sample page of my notebook attached) is just not, to me, worth commenting on, especially not when you've been exposed to writing of the likes of Caliken and so on -- or at least, so I thought. But, apparently I've made some progress. It seems that what to my eyes is mediocrity is, to handwriting muggles, somewhat pleasant to look at. And I guess that's kinda nice :-)

tpk

Edited April 8, 2014 by TPK

April 8, 2014

Looks pretty good.

Some advice I heard many years ago: When someone pays you a compliment just say thank you. Don't apologize, even when you know that you really did not do your job to the best of your ability. They didn't see or hear the mistakes.