I heard Sara Bareilles’ song, “Brave” on the radio as I was driving home from work and thought it was a great theme song for new year’s resolutions. So I wrote out one line to remind me to try to be brave this year in my work and my life. It can be scary to share work that isn’t perfect and the journey, at least for me, but I think it is hard for a lot of people. But it is important.

This weekend, I’m hoping to acquire some more calligraphy supplies. I really need to get a T-square and a new compass (I can’t find mine; I’m blaming the cat). I need to start ruling my pages so I can do more practice. I should probably get more tracing paper, too. Tracing paper is totally a secret weapon in learning calligraphy. I’ve found it super-helpful for when I’m having trouble with letterforms. Tracing the proper form and feeling how to form the letters has helped me immensely.

So here’s to the new year, to being brave in our work, and to being brave in our lives.

Happy New Year!

I hope you and yours are having a wonderful start to the new year. This year I decided to start a blog to document my calligraphy practice as well as my attempts at fiction writing. So on this blog I’ll be posting examples of my calligraphy work, maybe works-in-progress, and fiction writing (sometimes, maybe). One of my resolutions this year is to be more diligent about practicing calligraphy, which I love, and learning some new scripts. One of my other resolutions is to continue writing for fun (instead of just for work, where I write up research). I had so much fun doing NaNoWriMo and meeting other writers in my area that I really want to continue writing this year and not just in November.

The blog’s title, Beautiful Writing, isn’t because I have a huge ego and think all my writing is beautiful, but rather because calligraphy can loosely be translated to beautiful writing. And, I’d like to aspire to have all my writing be beautiful in form and content.

Also, fair warning, there may also some random bits of stuff that get in here that are only tangentially related to writing and calligraphy. You have been warned.

Have a wonderful start to the new year! It should be an exciting journey or at least a new 365 day trip around the sun! 🙂