Copywork: a simple practice of savoring

Allowing a slow steep of art

The thinnest black line, as fine as a pin’s head, stretches along the page. Dark ink looping up and down, circling forward and around in continuous script. I settle into the beauty of the black Micron 005 dancing onto the page.

Tiny cursive fills my soul.

Cursive can be quite polarizing, even under my own roof. Some call it beautiful, proud of their signature and all the letters they can produce. Others lament the requirement: what’s the purpose? Why bother?

But handwriting of any form is magical, isn’t it? The transformation of thought to language to hand to ink to paper. For me, it’s soothing. A defragmenting, grounding practice.

But I’m tired — and writing sometimes feels too hard. As though it requires more creative discipline and energy than I have to give. In the weariness, my heart is prone to curl back to its perfectionistic malformations, like a dying spider drawing in on itself. Why bother trying? What’s the point?

*

“People like you must create. If you don’t create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society.”¹

I’ve been a novelist for over five² years — though my inner worlds constantly battle over this point.

“Not published yet!” I often qualify.

But my heart is an author’s heart, regardless of publication, right? (You are an author, Rachael. You are!)

Creatives must create, and I forgot that for a season. Actually, I wasn’t aware of it. I wasn’t aware of a lot of things in my late 20s and early 30s that feel obvious now.

But I digress.

Of my many inner worlds, I’m learning to honor that one belongs to an artist. I need the playful practice of creativity. Otherwise, perfectionism leaves me malnourished.

*

In a season where my desire to build my fiction manuscripts doesn’t match my capacity (I have an infant, after all, and five other children besides), I still need to create.

When I can’t find my own words — when perfectionism demands too much or my world is too loud inside or out — there’s comfort in copywork. Just like a study of Van Gogh or Monet, I turn to my favorite writers. Literally, rewriting their novels and poetry by hand into my journal.

I dig through my bag of pens and earth-toned highlighters, selecting the favorite, finest black, and my heart flutters as I untie the sage green journal. I fold open a blank spread. Bullet journaling has given me permission to chronicle or plan without rigor. Playing with styles, fonts, colors, and formats. Jotting to-do lists or writing fragments. Some pages I design with blocks and serifs. Others I write sideways. Pages hold sketches, calendars, or rebus-style memories.

Here, copywork gives space to savor the trails of ink and the beauty of language.

Two things are true: I still love my fictional worlds, and my tiredness is all too real. These days, you’re likely to find me slowly inking cursive copywork onto the page, a practice helpfully divorced from any guise of productivity. Not beholden to word counts or finessing a plot.

A practice that carries just the joy of writing.

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Do you have any simple practices like copywork? Anything you’ve been curious (or reluctant) to try? I’d love to hear what inspiration is blooming.

Warmly,

Rachael

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the April series, "Simple."

1. Maria Semple, Where’d You Go, Bernadette? — great book, favorite movie!

2. Arguments could be made for 8 years. Even for 30. But those claims feel too bold.