I Dream In Cursive

Elizabeth Gilbert has me writing with a fountain pen again. 

I joined her Substack, which is where she encourages people to write a letter to themselves each day. Preferably in the morning. 

A letter from Love. As if Love is a person who lives inside you. 

You begin by asking Love: “What would you have me know today?

Sidenote: Every time I hear that question, I hear Michael Barbaro from The Daily say, “And here’s what you need to know today.”

And then you surrender the pen to Love and let its words channel through you.

Although she didn’t say specifically you had to use a pen, I just assumed.

That’s because I’ve had heart-to-heart talks using a pen before, and a pen is the only way you can access this inner voice.

This isn’t new to me, though. I started this kind of soul-to-soul letter writing years ago. It started with a psychedelic holotropic breath work session at Kripalu that opened up a whole new portal in my brain.

I found my Inner Wisdom Guide, a voice I named Stella.

 Every morning, I would surrender my pen to Stella, and she would talk to me tenderly, and give me wise advice.

I relinquished the practice after I read The Untethered Soul because Singer convinced me Stella was just another story I had manufactured, and she was getting in the way of me connecting with pure consciousness. (Now I’m questioning that.)

Anyway, I stopped giving my pen to Stella and started running my show myself. In Scrivener. Every day, I open Scrivener, commit to 1K words, and start typing.

And while this Scrivener show is running okay, I’m noticing a dramatic difference between Scriv and what comes out of the pen in the morning. The pen writing is more genuine and honest. It’s less judgmental and harsh. The ink forgives.

So I’ve named this inner voice Inky. Or, The Ink. Or, The Inkling.

Each morning, I open my pink Standard Issue No. 3 and say Okay, Inky. Go. What am I missing? What do I need to do? 

As I follow the Ink along the page, I feel more rooted than when I type. And even though my handwriting has devolved into this horrible cat scratch where I slur my letters almost beyond legibility, cursive is still my native tongue.

I dream in longhand, not keyboard. I have ink in my blood, not keystrokes.

And when I look at my writing afterward,  I can tell whether I was hot on the trail of an idea or struggling.

The pen strokes mark the tempo of my thinking. Some pages are slow and deliberate, others riff all over the place.

Oh, and some days, there’s even marginalia.

And doodles! And Zentangles! 

(There’s no doodling in Scrivener.) 

But I do so love the keyboard! Don’t get me wrong!  It makes life infinitely editable, legible, saveable, tag-able, and archivable. 

But for me, it will always be a fluent second language. My native tongue is pen and ink. And when I dream, it’s always in cursive.  

I am so grateful for the nudge by Liz Gilbert to reconnect me with my pen. Check out her Substack. It’s free for all the important stuff, but if you want to read the comments, you have to pay.. You can check it out here. 

And if you are into pens and ink, you must check out Mary’s blog, From The Pen Cup. She’s a pen nerd who has turned cursive into an art form.

Thank you for reading!

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