Handwriting #2: Getting ready

Any good musician, athlete, or artist will tell you the same thing: good equipment and setup are extremely important. They all believe in good quality specific tools, so I’m going to send you to the store. Walmart or Target (or the campus bookstore when we are back in session) should have everything you need. (By the way, I want to keep this project very inexpensive.)

Pencils, pens, etc.

A couple of common yellow #2 pencils would be a good choice (though you would have to figure out a way to sharpen them). Rollerball pens are also very good for what we are doing. There are several good brands, but I like the Pilot Precise V5 Rollerball Pen (you can get a package of seven in a variety of colors for about sixteen bucks). You might like to buy a single pen and try it out; if you don’t like it, you can try something different.

Avoid ballpoints, especially the cheap give-aways from the bank. (The lady at my bank says she always brings in her own pen because she can’t stand to write with them!) The problem with ballpoints, especially cheap ones, is that they need a fair amount of force to make them work, which means you must hold them in a death-grip and you are tempted to really bear down—and that is why you hand and arm hurt after three lines of writing.

A word about fountain pens

Yes, you will see that I still use this ancient technology. It is beautiful and deeply personal, and because I have quite a collection of pens and ink, I can change every day according to my mood. They are so easy to use that I can write four or five pages at a sitting without hurting my hand or arm. If you would like to join me, I can point you to a couple of online stores which can sell you what you need for twenty dollars or so.

Paper

An ordinary spiral notebook is your best choice. Buy two or three. Left-handers should buy the kind with the spring across the top of the page. You should avoid the beautiful leather-bound journals you find at places like Barnes & Noble. B&N has a real beauty with a scene from a Monet painting on the cover—yours for $45 plus tax. If you bought that one, you would never use it because you would never believe that your foolish words and messy handwriting belong in anything so grand. What you need is something cheap and cheerful, perhaps with a cartoon character on the cover. We are about to get into a project that should be relaxing and fun, not intimidating.

Sitting down

I find that I do best with a flat table, decent straight-back chair, my feet flat on the ground, and good lighting. When I must balance my notebook on my knee, the results are terrible. Writing in my easy chair is almost as bad. I need a flat, clear space that doesn’t move. If I am trying to take notes from a book, I need even more real estate. I wouldn’t even try to write much propped up in bed and juggling a cup of coffee.

Some of those “How to handwrite” YouTube videos have you writing at a slanted artist’s drawing board. I guess that would be OK, but I do not own one, and a flat table is easy to find: library, personal desk, restaurant. One of the great things about what we are doing is portability. You can walk into a place, open your notebook, get out your pen, and begin. No electricity. No connection. Just writing. The artist’s drawing board sends my brain the message that I cannot work without a huge piece of equipment. But that is not true of writing. I can put the whole thing into a corner of a backpack. At least four days a week during summer, you can find me writing at a table in my favorite coffee house.