Jack @frustratedantiquarian@scholar.social

🖼

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/407

bandcamp friday is back baby!! for another seven hours or so anyway

if supporting independent artists is important to you and you've got a few quid to spare, please consider buying some tunes today

love, your sweet powder pals xoxo

https://powderpaint.bandcamp.com/

Forget what school taught you. Find / create letterforms that just flow out of your pen(cil) and/or are/feel like uniquely yours. E.g. by lowercase D and uppercase H is pretty unique, and I use a larger lowercase signle storey A for my uppercase A. Almost none of my other letterforms are "canonical", I've basically developed a personal cursive over the years.

Find a nice set of writing utensils that cover your purposes. My set is this:

Nice A5 clipboard with A5 paper, and a bunch of paperclips. This is my notebook. A clipboard means you can move paper around such that e.g. I'm taking notes on some book, but I want to write something on an unrelated topic, I just put the current page aside, write my note, put it aside, and attach the reading note paper back in to the clipboard. Really convenient.
Jinhao X750 with medium nib and KWZ Turqoise ink for taking notes. M nib means the pen slides nicely on the paper, and I take notes in cursive because it's easier on the wrist. An M pen is not good for printing tbf, because it'll connect regardless.
Lamy Safari w/ fine nib and KWZ Grapefruit ink (reddish orange colour). This is for annotating printed pages. I can underline lines and take margin notes (mix of print and cursive) without obscuring text.
Kaweco Sport w/ F nib and Parker black ink. Pocket pen. I.e., this is either in my pocked, or in the front pocket of my bag. For taking a note wherever. Often accompanied with two-three twice folded sheets of A5 paper as a little pocket notebook.
BIC 4 colour ballpoint pen. For my todo list. I print nicely because that makes it easy to glance.
A yellow marker pen, used seldom when marking a very key passage.

Practice your handwriting. Just jot down your thoughts into a little diary, or transcribe stuff you like from a book, etc. Make variations of letterforms to see how they fit in with the text and pick and choose like that. Have fun. Create you unique version of your language's script.

Lastly, if you just don't want to write by hand and just type, that's totally okay. There are advantages to taking notes by hand, but that does not mean typing has some advantages as well. I personally find writing helps me retain better and get distracted less. I am sometimes pulled towards hi-tech setup where everything is in Org mode and read on screen and typed only, sometimes I am pulled by a low-tech setup. I suggest you do allow that happen as well, if it tends to happen. In the latter case tho, I always type in my handwritten notes and two things are noteworthy here:

clipboard is really helpful while transcribing, as it opens fully and is rigid so can stand straight.
Transcribing feels like really helps me grasp the topic at hand in a way that just typing and then rereading doesn't. IDK why, IDK if it's real or placebo, but it sure feels that way.

Later!