National Handwriting Day
A gift from me to you
Welcome to my wee corner of Substack. I am a seasonal artist living on the Isle of Arran, off the west coast of Scotland. I am the custodian of approximately two acres of land that includes a woodland, a meadow and my wee garden. I offer a seasonal book arts project for paid subscribers if you are interested and you can read more about that HERE. Grab a cuppa and lets delve into our relationship with the shifting seasons….
I am deeply passionate about the hand written word. We are in danger of losing this skill that many of us had to work so hard at school to learn. Imagine a world where we don’t think to send a hand written card to a friend who is struggling. Instead, we press a few buttons and send a gift using a large retail site that I won’t name. We don’t have to imagine do we?
Today is national handwriting day so I wonder if folk reading this could spend a few moments writing by hand? I still write a shopping list but I see many folk don’t as they reference their phones as they wander round the supermarket. I am not clever enough for that but I also don’t want to do that. I don’t want another area of my life to the digitized. I don’t want to be digitized. I want to remain free to express myself through my own hand written words and I want those words to mean something. I want them to be useful, comforting and effective.
However, as a champion of the hand written word I want to encourage others to see the merits. By way of encouragement I am gifting my Slow Letter Writing workbook below. I feel sorry that it is digital! I do hope it is useful and inspires us all to give our hand writing a wee dust down and see where that takes us. Thank you for listening. x
This is gorgeous. I write by hand every day.
Fiona, What a beautiful workbook! I still use handwriting in my working journal, to make lists and take notes at work. I will admit for repetitive activities such as grocery shopping and travel lists the apps are useful and save time, but I love a good handwritten list on scrap paper. I think it is time to pull out my stationary and send some friends snail mail instead of text messages to brighten their day.