Expanding Your Love of Writing to Calligraphy

Where Those Letters Came From
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Guest post By Mindy Phillips Lawrence

When you sit at your keyboard and play with letters, do you ever think of where they came from? What is the history of those squiggles and circles which form words? They are different for Asian and Cyrillic writing and pretty much the same for anything coming from a Latin point of view. Isn’t that interesting?

If you are both a writer and a calligrapher as I am, even the formation of the letters into families is interesting. I just wrote “Gratitude” in calligraphy in a variation on an Old English script I am learning from the work of Thomas Brunton in California. His work is much better, and much more lively, but it gives me food for thought and for practice.

The words and phrases you write in your books and poetry are fodder for calligraphy. If you don’t do this work yourself, you might want to team up with someone who does and highlight a quote or two from your writing work. It might make someone want to take a peek at your book that normally wouldn’t read the type of work you write.

Be an investigator. Search out the history of words and artists who make them stand out. Use this knowledge to support the promotion of your calligraphy and your other work.

LINKS

Loredana Zega: http://www.kaligrafija.org/

Denis Brown: http://www.quillskill.com/

Thomas Brunton (Uvulus): http://www.enjoygram.com/uvulus

Sheila Waters: http://www.patricialovett.com/sheila-waters-at-eighty-a-retrospective/ 

For a sample of my own efforts at calligraphy using a Pilot Parallel Pen on Artist Loft sketch paper, e-mail me at  mplcreative1@aol.com.

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Mindy Phillips Lawrence, owner of MPL Creative Resources, is a writer and artist based in Springfield, Missouri. She is working on an e-book edition of the best of her Itty Bitty columns originally published in Carolyn Howard-Johnson's SharingwithWriters newsletter. Find her at www.mplcreative.com . Subscribe to the newsletter and get a free e-book on wordtrippers at http://howtodoitfrugally.com.  

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  Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .