NAME: Peter Enman

OCCUPATION: Editor. And aspiring Penman, old-fashioned cursive style. Hence the MacLean Method image, and the email handle.

Yes, I know, already with the puns. I didn’t name myself after James Joyce’s Shem the Penman for nothing. Mind you, I’m not pretending to be even remotely in his league.

Forty-four years ago last month, in June 1981, I was merely an aspiring editor, having just been hired on probation by the Calgary office of Carswell, Canada’s leading legal publisher. To be considered for an interview, applicants had to submit a handwritten resumé and pass a three-page, high-school-level grammar and spelling test. Carswell needed to know if we knew our way around a sentence, and whether we could write one that would be legible to other people. Edits in those days were still all handwritten on hard copy, then typeset and orally proofread.

Thirty-two of us applied. I don’t know how the others fared with their handwriting, but only two of us passed the grammar test, and we were both duly hired. (It’s worth mentioning here that over the years there were plenty of applicants with MAs in English who failed the grammar test, much to their shock and disbelief.)

My penmanship, presentable enough in 1981 to gain me admittance into what would become my lifetime occupation, held up pretty well through the shift to online editing in the 1990s but began to deteriorate after the turn of the century as I wrote fewer and fewer personal letters. I continued to scribble away in my notebooks, but legibility often surrendered to haste, to the chagrin of my future self as he tried to decipher the enigmatic scrawls I’d so thoughtlessly left behind.

These days I carry a Moleskin-type pocket notebook for hurried jottings; I use a slightly larger format (A5) Oasis and a Pentel Energel pen (both items Japanese) for turning thoughts into words and sentences; and for material I want to preserve, including that of other writers, I turn to my Quo Vadis 6.25 x 9.25 inch refillable (Canadian!), which takes fountain pen ink particularly well and carries itself with an assertive blend of heft and brio. And the idea is that the best of what’s in the Quo Vadis will end up, in some form, on this here blog for the amusement or bemusement of you, my (at this point, hypothetical) readers.

Why all the technical notebook lingo, you ask? Well, last summer, while on a casual afternoon walk, I rediscovered a Calgary treasure, Reid’s Stationers on 17th Avenue SW. They happened to be celebrating their 40th anniversary. I vividly remembered their 1984 opening, as I’d lived only a few blocks away from them at the time. Venturing inside in August 2024, I found it just as surprising and elegant and magical as ever.

The ever-helpful Reid’s staff made procuring refills for my neglected stash of ballpoint and fountain pens, and setting up the aforementioned hierarchy of notebooks, virtually effortless. So now, almost a year later, we can thank them for inspiring a renaissance of penmanship for me, and a creative renaissance along with it.

You see, I spend a good deal of time these days copying passages from writers I admire, and sometimes even snippets of my own from notebooks of yore, if they seem to merit resurrection clothed in finer raiment, so to speak. And I think such copying has somehow rejuvenated my perceptions about writing—my inner eye and ear—and made it all seem vivid and worthwhile again. And memorable. I remember stuff I read now. Well, more of it, anyway.

Antonio Rengel, who blogs about writing and creativity, says this about the joy of copying work by hand:

“Copying someone’s work . . . shifts your focus from reader to writer. You gain awareness of how an author structures sentences. What words they include and omit. Their punctuation. And turn of phrase.

“You come to see that everything on the page, down to the slightest details, was a deliberate choice. Ones that the author labored over draft after draft. . . .

“The kinetic feeling of putting ink on paper gives you a visceral appreciation for the work. Each stroke of the pen is a breath of life to words that inspired you.

“There is something romantic about this. It connects you with the past. It draws you closer to your heroes: those who’ve mastered the arduous, and at times thankless craft of writing. Through copying the words you become a steward of their work.”

I might not have had the gumption to put it quite that way, but I’m glad Mr. Rengel has done so, and I hope he doesn’t mind that I’ve borrowed his gumption here for a bit. I will say one thing: copying is habit forming, and his words have made it easier for me to understand why.

So why not just call the blog Penmanship? Why New Stanza? Well, that’s the subject of another page.