Gunnlaugur SE Briem on how to master italics in handwriting:
Forget about writing for a moment. Try making extravagant movements with your pen. Don’t be timid. Thrash your hand about from the wrist. When you’ve filled a few pages of scribbles, you can introduce some discipline. Make zigzags on lined paper. You want the picket fence effect: slightly slanted lines, evenly spaced. Then add recognition points, and you’ve got handwriting.
I’ve been getting back to playing cello more regularly recently. So neglected it was for a few months, the entire bridge had become displaced and strings undone. I polished it up for daily playing again, and thought of David B., my extraordinary cello teacher who makes music from his modest brick apartment complex deep in Queens, four transport forms away.
You see, for every person stuck writing in all caps trying to flow into italic curves, there’s a classical musician, trying to loosen up, to be free. Forget about the music, forget about the notes, play anything, let go, David would say. Make extravagant movements, let your bow hand wander where the hand wants, and you’ll be surprised what the scribbles of sounds will produce. Then, add a bit of dynamic, intention, notes in the right places. And before you know it, the picket fence effect has taken hold. You have music. You’ve got handwriting. Or whatever it was that needed some some simple scribbling first.
