Before she died, my grandmother spent some time writing out a quick history of her family and all the relatives she could think of.  It was just written in a steno notebook, and the notes were pretty much made as she thought of them, but she wanted to leave a little information for the family and I’m glad she did.  These few pages turned out to be things of beauty.  Over looking the dog-eared pages and the haphazard organization of notes, my grandmother had the most wonderful handwriting!  It was elegant and consistent.

My own handwriting has always been substantially less than stellar.  To start with, I’m a lefty.  Nothing works for us.  Notebook spirals cut into our wrists, ink smears, and your hand hides the letter as you make them.  I mixed cursive and printing with wild abandon.  I capitalized letters for no reason (often in the middle of words).  I felt I was just one handwriting analysis away from being committed to an asylum.  Heaven forbid I try to write something on unlined paper.

I’ve found a lot of people think they have this problem.  In an age when computer keyboards are ubiquitous, no time is spent on penmanship.  No one practices and when they scrawl something across the page they think of it as some sort of birth defect.  “I have lousy handwriting” gets the same inflection with “I was born with a vestigial tale.”

This lack of beauty in their handwriting keeps a lot of people from journaling.  Who wants to fill a book with proof of their weak skills?

I decided, one summer to see if I could fix my own scrawl up a bit.  You know what? It was surprisingly easy to do.  I found a great book to help me out.  Its called  Write Now: A Complete Self-teaching Program for Better Handwriting

Its a simple workbook that you can follow that will teach you some of the basics of improving your own handwriting.

Here’s a list of things I learned about improving my handwriting that summer:

• Consistency is key.  When you decide on how to draw a letter (Capitol or Lowercase) stick with it.  Make all your small a’s look the same.  Cross all your t’s in the same spot.  Ascenders and descenders are the same lengths and bend in consistent fashions. The hump on your h should be the same height as the humps on m’s and n’s” This will go a long way to making your handwriting legible
• Pay attention to letter and word spacing.  Letters go VERY close together.  Words should be separated by about an average letters width (technically the width of an m).
• Start SLOW.  You will need time to build the letter forms into muscle memory.  Draw them slowly at first and very quickly you will get smooth with them.  If you see your handwriting deteriorating, slow down again.
• Practice Practice Practice.  When schools actually taught penmanship (when my grandmother learned) they spent HOURS on drills and copying materials.  It burned the skill into their minds and muscles.  Just like any other skill or sport, proficiency comes with repetition of correct form.  Make beautiful “to-do” lists.  Copy a page from your paperback.  Get in some practice.

When you are happy with your handwriting, you will use it much more often.

Oh and here is a quick link concerning how to hold your pen.

The ancient Egyptians didn’t write directly on the walls or papyrus .

The Romans and Greeks rarely sat down with a blank scroll and just started writing.

Even Leonardo DaVinci didn’t pull out a pristine book and start making notes and drawings and just trust his luck that all of his thoughts would come out in the order he wanted them published.

The Egyptians (like many ancients) would make notes on pot-shards (broken pots were a dime a dozen and you could scratch on them with anything) then later collect the important information in a more usable format.

Likewise the Romans did day-to-day note taking on wax tablets.  These were shallow frames of wood with wax melted into them that could be scratched into with a stylus.  These notes could be later transcribed onto a scroll.

The “Notebooks” of DaVinci didn’t start out as actual books.  He made notes on separate leaves of paper and then organized them as to topic.  It was years after his death that his followers managed to have them bound into books.

As much as I love having my clunky journal around to write and scheme and make notes, sometimes (actually quite often) it’s just not that practical to pull out and start scribbling.  At the same time, if I don’t write these things down they may become watered down in memory or even forgotten before I can get to my book.

My advice for journal keeping on the go is to take a lesson from these great thinkers of history.  Use something else to collect your thoughts.

I don’t carry pot-shards or a wax tablet but I do carry a small spiral notebook, or, four or five 3×5 index cards in my back pocket.  I can get a lot of information on two sides of a single index card.  I write small and do a lot of on the spot shorthand but later I can expound on the notes and ideas.

You can even get a sheet of the printable business cards and separate out a couple and keep them in your wallet for a more elegant solution.

You could try a folded sheet of paper like a Pocket Mod.  Go to their website an you can create and print a small book that is blank or has lines, grids, columns, calendars …  just about anything you can think of to help you stay organized.

Lately, however, I have been utilizing my cell phone as a collection book.  When journaling on the spot or making notes I can pull out the phone and start typing away.  Then just email or texts the notes to myself and I don’t even have to re-type them.

Think texting yourself a few notes is too tough.  Check out Robert Bernocco.  He managed to knock out an entire science fiction novel on his cell phone.

Okay, I admit that I am actually using an iPhone with an Evernote app that stores all sorts of information, including voice recordings and photos.  In any case, it’s actually become quite trendy to be typing into your cell phone when out and about, whereas scribbling in a notebook might actually be considered rude.  Go figure.

Just because you don’t have your journal with you doesn’t mean you have to stop journaling.  You can use almost anything to collect your thoughts or notes on the go, and then transcribe them at your leisure.