Write with Style – By Holly Lavender – part 2
PART 2
Write With Style – TIPS & TRICKS
So… How are you doing so far? Here are some extra tips on materials and inspiration.
MATERIALS
- Paper
I personally prefer MD paper, as the offered with Travelers Notebooks.
It’s very fountainpen-friendly, pricey and comes in all kind of different sizes/ with or without lines/ruled or blanc. Alternative I recommend “Clairefontaine” “Tomoe River” or “Rhodia”.
- Inks
For the vintages I use Montblanc, Waterman or Faber Castell only. The Sailores I own only get inked with japanes ink, Pilot or Sailor. If you own a Kaweco, for instance, there’s many other brands you might wanna check out and play along with.
- Practise
I know, there’s nothing more tempting & boring as practice … And often enough, we really show good will, but there’s sooo many other things we have in mind, to-do and what not. AND THAT’S THE POINT.
Please see “write with style” as maybe a kind of daily 5- 10 min meditation. If you only write a single word, what’s wrong with that? Take your time, cause that’s the key. Slow down, breathe, slow down a bit more … there you go.
TIPS
Tip 1:
get yourself a trainee paper where you doodle, sketch or somehow draw the first lines BEFORE you start your handwriting. At this way you “catch up” with the pen, you might not have used for days, or at least not at that day.
Tip 2:
get yourself a handful LOVELY words. My fav to letter or “welcome” a new pen surely are FLOWERS; BAGEL and LOTTA (my pugs name). They’ve got all the letters I love, nice little curves and loops. Do the same with short memes, which help to gain trust and get soon very confident.
Tip 3:
Most wanted/most hated. For some reason there’s letters we easy learn while others take ages to look even half the way, we imagine them. That’s totally okay! Try to combine the beloved with the tiny annoyances, reward yourself with 1 or 2 or more lines of the good ones when roughly managed the odds ?
PLAY, dear friends. Play with stupid words that make no sense at all, only to overcome a strange lettermix of a seemingly impossible to combine pair of letters. Maybe ch is a challenge or br or eg– don’t be fooled by the thought ALL others ain’t got their own bugbears. Write foolish slogans or rhymes, only to improve this or that word. Do it alphabetically, pick a color and start with a first letter of your name – whatever inspires YOU – take it, use it and go for it.
TIP 4:
The most important: your daily writing is, was and will always be FLUX.
As anything and everything is in constant change. What yesterday went hilarious right, might not even with 5 tries a row work today. OR other way round ? All of a sudden, one day, your s or g looks like you a l w a y s dreamt it, but never got there. Or your b changes for whatever reason and you LOVE it exactly that way!
My “Sunday style” helps me to letter a card, fill out an address neatly, write a quote, meme, and trim my journals. I start writing letters again – and yeah, I admit, I dug deep down the rabbit hole of pens, inks, papers and such.
Well, could be worse, couldn’t it? Now it’s up to you. Please, please, PLEASE create your own “Sunday style”, With a loopy S or a bouncy b, no matter at all. As long as your JOY of writing expands and your confidence rises.
Anyway, finally there’s just one more thing left:
I would LOOOOVE to see, or hear:
Holly, (Des!) look, this was my before, here I am now! And it’s sooo much fun.
Because that’s the only reason I started this.
Yours faithfully Holly & Desiree
#writewithstyle