Editing The Pen Addict 25/transcript (section)

== Penmanship ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' That came out of nowhere, Dowdy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah. But it's – you'd be amazed how that tied into my penmanship because, you know, you – when – and this is – I'm talking this is like in the early, mid-90s. You know, I'm an older gent. So this is a while ago and, you know, we didn't have as many of the computer-generated things as we have now. So when we'd have tournaments at our golf course, you know, they realized pretty quickly that I was the only one with legible penmanship to write the huge scoreboards. You know, I don't know if everyone's – if you're not familiar with golf or haven't been around. But, you know, at the end of a tournament, you know, there'll be just, you know, kind of a running scoreboard of the players as they turn in their score. Well, I was always the one that had the fistful of pens and manning the scoreboard. And I would have to – you know, before the tournament, I'd get a list of 100 names. And I'd have to put all those names up on a scoreboard. And this is presented to the whole tournament. So I was nervous about how it looked, right? And a lot of people who – at the time who did those scoreboards did calligraphy. I was never into calligraphy. And plus, that would take way more time than I had to do that kind of thing. So I just really worked hard at, like, refining just, like, a really neat block lettering style. And the type of pen you choose really makes a huge difference in your penmanship. And we'll talk about that more as we go. But at that time, it was using, you know, like large chisel tip markers, right? So I had a very sharp edge. I remember this vividly. You know, just – I would order these specific pens, had very sharp edges. And I'd write these huge scoreboards with all these players' names on them and have to post them up on a wall for everyone to see and, you know, write their scores in. So I developed kind of a style of lettering, which was all, you know, bold, capital letter type of lettering. You know, I didn't have a lot of differentiation between uppercase and lowercase. You know, I had – all the letters looked the same. If it was uppercase, it was just a little bit bigger, right? Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah, that's a – you learn lots of things about me on this podcast. And that's one thing, you know, I mean, I've never had any reason to talk about, you know, me playing golf for about four years when I got out of college. Amazing. So – and that actually transitions into the job where I really learned how to write. This is funny. This is like a personal diary.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I feel like we're in therapy at the moment.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. I know. So I'm – and what's funny is like the vividness, which I remember this stuff is – I don't know. And it's because it's a lot of it's around pens and writing and you don't realize it at the time. But, I mean, we're literally talking about, you know, 15 or more years ago where these seeds are being planted. So I'm a golf pro, right? And, you know, you don't – it's an awesome job for a single guy. But, you know, I fortunately met the future Mrs. Pin Addict while I had that job. But that required me to get a real job just to pay the bills. And so I got a job at a construction sales company.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And part of that job required me to do some drafting. And like I said, back then we, of course, had computers, but we didn't – weren't using all the, you know, powerful CAD programs and things. So I had to do a lot of hand drafting as far as some designs and measurements and drawing, you know, drawing items, you know, to get fabricated. You know, a lot of fabrication type of models and things like that. So myself and the guys I work with, we did a lot of hand drafting. So we had, you know, all these special rulers and we were always looking for these really fine tip pens. Back then we used to – I can't remember the exact zebra model, but we found a zebra that was really fine tip and sharp and black. And what I did when I was at that job, because my handwriting had to be clean on that because I'm presenting documents for fabrication, right? So I can't really make mistakes in my numbers or lettering or things like that. Is, you know, when you look at huge blueprints and a lot of them use that architectural type or engineering type that, you know, looks like a font. I made it my goal to mimic that style as much as possible. And that's kind of where my handwriting is today. It's way worse than it used to be back then. Like I could – I used to be able to like kind of write in a blueprint architectural style and you couldn't tell if it was handwritten or, you know, printed off a computer. My handwriting used to be like that tight. Wow. And it's really – it was just – it was just practicing. I mean I would take – I would get, you know, a large legal pad and I'd just write the alphabet across the page looking at some of the – you know, some letters were harder to convert over into my handwriting than others. So, you know, I might have good practice, you know, like A, B, C, D, E, F and like G was really hard for me for a while.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I would literally write pages and pages of just letters trying to mimic this style and doing that plus, you know, working – doing that job every day for two years. I think I did that job for about two years. That's what kind of – that was the foundation for the way my handwriting is now. Like I said, everyone comments on my handwriting on my reviews at Pen Addict and I just can't explain how bad my handwriting is now compared to how it used to be.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Wow. Really?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. But also at that point I could go – I would go a lot slower and was more diligent, right? I mean I think the pace makes a big deal.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, yeah, for sure.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So now my pace is very fast. You know, I write extremely fast and, you know, so my penmanship is still good but it could definitely be better. And, you know, Alan asked how to make it better. I mean I think the tips are obviously practice. You know, find a handwriting style of someone. You can find all kinds of things online. And you just have to practice mimicking that every letter, you know, every curve, every line. And just – it's got to get built into your muscle memory, you know. So it's just that repetition. There's some videos out on YouTube that I've watched. They're not – I mean it's a decent lettering style but it may not be your style but you can at least look at them to get an idea. I think they're called – gosh, what are they called? How to Write Like an Architect. I'll send you some links, Michael. I think you can probably just search for it and that probably comes straight up. But the guy did a video series on how to write like an architect. And I don't know that I would recommend his exact lettering style but you can watch the videos to see how he practices his lettering. And you can get some good tricks, tips and tricks from there. The second thing I would recommend on how to improve it is use the right pen. And that makes a huge difference. And you don't have to use the pen that you write with every day. I would recommend using something like a Sharpie pen like with a felt tip. I tend to get a more responsive, clean type of line that I can tell what my handwriting is looking like better with a felt tip pen like a Sharpie pen which you can just get off the store shelf. I'm not talking about the permanent marker. I'm talking about the Sharpie pen. When I'm talking about penmanship, I'm talking about my style, the printing style of penmanship since I don't write in cursive so I can't really speak to that. If you're wanting to try to write in a block print style like me, I wouldn't recommend a 1.0 millimeter gel ink pen. If you're trying to learn cursive and a bigger flowing type of writing style, definitely go for a wider gel ink pen. You don't want anything too small when you're learning and practicing because you'll probably get a lot of hand fatigue if you're practicing a lot. But something like a Sharpie pen, a felt tip, it's a fine tip but it's relative. It's still probably a 0.5 millimeter line or 0.7 millimeter line. But something like that allows you to practice and see your lines. Get a notebook out. Practice your lettering. Practice numbers too because they kind of get some of the same shapes as some of your letters. And what you really want to do is if you get stuck on a letter, just really repeat that letter over and over and over again because you can change the muscle memory in your hands. I've changed how I write a 4, how I write a G, how I write a W. There are some very specific letters that I've completely changed my muscle memory on that I don't write them how I used to. And it can be done. For me, it just took time and practice and I didn't know I was doing it at the time. But doing those things, the jobs I did when I was right out of college actually kind of laid the groundwork for the way my penmanship is today. And my penmanship today could use a lot, a lot of work. Personally, I'm not really happy with it. And I'll talk about it when I find a good pen. I'll talk about how great my penmanship came out. I was like, wow, this pen really made my handwriting look good. The last one I can remember was the Kuretake Zig cartoonist pen. I'll link you that review on the Pen Addict. I did that maybe a month ago. And, man, my handwriting came out awesome in that. And every review I do is, you know, I don't write any differently. You know, my hand angle is the same. The pace I write with is the same. I don't go slow thinking about every letter I put on there. I write pretty much as fast as the words come out of my brain into the pen. That's as fast as I write. So when I look at a review like that, I'm like, wow, that pen really made a difference in my handwriting. And, you know, that's a felt tip pen, kind of like the plastic tip pen, like a Sharpie pen. So I'll send you a link to that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I already got it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You got it with the purple ink.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Got it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I made a comment in that review. I was like, wow, my handwriting really looks good on this one. So and that just goes to show you, you know, how much the pen does make a difference. So, I mean, because it's all my, I mean, my reviews are pretty much the same. Like I said, the pace of writing, everything. So the pen really makes a difference in how it looks. So I've rambled on enough about that. You know, if you guys have any questions, definitely get in contact or tweet me and email me. We'll go over that at the end. If you have any more questions about penmanship. And maybe I didn't explain it, you know, completely, but I just want to kind of give an idea of how my handwriting style came to be. And it was actually a, unfortunately, it's not a quick, quick process. It's definitely built up over the years. And there's highs and lows by just how much I, how much I was writing at the time. You know, when I was really doing it with a meaning and a purpose, it was, it was very tight and clean. And now, even though I am doing it with a meaning and a purpose, right, you know, doing pen reviews, it's not the same. Because I think, you know, my pace has changed and I don't have to have that complete clarity like I used to have. So I still have remnants of, of that drafting style and things like that in my writing today. But it's not as neat and clean as I would like it to be. And, you know, the only way to fix that is, is more practice. So, so that's kind of, that's kind of it.