I picked up my beautiful ? handwriting from my father, whose written application no one understood but I always got a ‘leave of absence.’ My rule was to make it look good, but one should not understand a word of it. I tried angles to see if words look better at zero degrees or at 10, 20, 30, 45, even sixty degrees ?
The damage was being done year on year… till I bumped into one of my best teachers Mrs. Maneckji- my English teacher. However, hard she tried but she could not make me change my fantastic habit of words and letters in a word flying in pair of 2… over the years even I tried but could not. As I moved on, the angles worked to perfection and people’s ability to decipher my secret code continued to diminish from bad to worst… I remember one fantastic anecdote with one of my Navy academy law teacher- one day he pulled out my 4th-semester law paper in front of the class and announced that I got maximum marks. He waved my paper and he said “Looks are always deceptive.”
He proclaimed that he did not understand all my words- thanks to my good handwriting ?, so rest he assumed it to be right. And as law works on evidence, he had no concrete evidence that the words he could not understand were right or wrong- and hence he has to give the benefit of the doubt and thus I got full marks. While that’s on the lighter side- my journey from a naval honcho to an IT person, helped me a lot as my beautiful handwriting gave way to electronic typing. But the touch and feel of one’s handwriting has its own charm. I still prefer using handwritten notes over typed notes. Because I feel I can connect with what I write vs what I type. Even the use of stylus over electronic screen
does not give me that connected feeling.
Writing is an outlet of your expression, your innerself – when you write you empty yourself and become light- what actually you are doing is- that you are imprinting your footprints via your words in the annals of history! As you complete your words you are actually becoming history for your reader(s) to connect and decipher.
However to become a good writer you have to be a good reader and a very keen observer of human behavior and its nuances, which means you should know the art of connecting. Other trait I realize is that you need to be a person close to ‘nature’-meaning being with nature. That’s where ideas of your next writing endeavor crops up… amidst that misty silence… when the sun is trying to shower it’s not so warm…warmth on Mother Earth on a cold misty winter morning.
Write as much as you can, whenever you can- teach through writing (on paper or board) than speaking. Write about anything… just start writing… you will see ‘yourself’ within you who can and is expressing his/her thought/ wisdom/ emotion/ point of view through you and to you… Happy Writing ?