Search the Community

And no, it's not a tremor. Backstory. For eight years I've worked in my hell hole at a corporate desk job at which the most handwriting involved is writing down my lunch order onto a Post-It once a week. I sometimes jot down 6-digit numbers too. Real intense. Handwriting has always been a passion of mine and I've been dismayed to watch mine give up the ghost. I committed fully to learning calligraphy in some serious way, but had no guidance and was subsequently clueless. In March, a stray comment changed my life and put a name to my penmanship journey. Copperplate. Copperplate and I evolved from strangers to lovers to sharing a very twisted BDSM relationship, all in a matter of weeks. I practiced, a lot. Drills and drills and drills. I drilled for weeks before attempting minuscules, even. Unfortunately my progress slowed down a LOT once I endeavored along with majuscules. I found myself contemplating a universe in which no capital B exists, but then how could there be no Beyonce. So with slowed progress I've practiced less. I haven't stopped. And I've practiced some other styles, more modern, since I do have an okay command of my dip pen at this point. (This may have been a huge mistake.) Completely against my will, fountain pens keep accumulating in my house. I feel bad for them getting tinkered with and not getting enough paper time. It's surprising how difficult it seemed to find anything to write about, but I slowly started to practice. Oh. The horror. I cannot write. It shakes, it trembles, it's confused. Whose hand is this? It's ten times worse than it's ever been in my life. What is going on here? My theories are that my muscle memory has been obliterated for small cursive. Well, actually that's my only theory. What can I do about it? I have some books on Spencerian but will likely need some videos to understand this rhythmic thing. Is this what I need, or do I need to just slow down and let my own unique hand return to me (most likely in a very different way than it used to be)? I know there's no right answer but any advice would be appreciated because I'm pretty stumped at this point. This photo shows my hand as steady as I can get and trying to experiment a bit. I'll respond with a better one shortly.