I used to be able to write neatly.  When I was at school I won a prize for keeping a neat notebook.  I have a love of all the paraphernalia of writing, the notebooks, the pens, the ink, the heady smell of a stationery shop.  So when did I lose the ability to write, and where did my handwriting go?  Did the rot start the day I first lay fingers on the keys of a typewriter?  Certainly, by the time I was taking my creative writing course I could write much more effectively sitting at a computer than handwriting on paper and then laboriously transcribing it.  I didn’t realise it at the time, but my handwriting was already starting to drift away from me.  Yet even a few short years ago I was capable of turning out page after page of readable script when I put my mind to it.  Now, it disintegrates into an ungainly scrawl which the finest pens and ink cannot remedy, and I can no longer love it.

I don’t know if my handwriting and I can ever be reconciled, but it feels like a part of me is missing if I cannot pick up a pen and produce something sweet.