Learn How To Hold a Pen

My hand hurts.  I wrote for three hours this morning and I'm starting to develop a dent on the left side of my right middle finger.  It's getting deeper and deeper and probably comes in two sizes: sharpie marker size (for the front of my index cards) and pen size (for the back of index cards, tests, and handouts).

It's really important to have a good pen.  I am very specific with my pens and only use uniball vision elite, micro blue black ink.  It rolls nicely on the page and I don't have to press as hard.  There's something nice about a nice pen.  That being said, I've been writing more in the last few weeks than I have in years, and my hand hurts.  Especially that dent in my finger that's not going away.  Even though I don't have to write too hard, I think I do anyway.

So what to do?  Turns out that there are websites devoted to this question.  Start with this one.  It has various pictures of hands holding pens and tells you which muscles to use to write.  This is clearly too complicated for me.  It suggests drills too.  I don't have time to do the MBE drills and the writing drills.  So this approach clearly is going to fail.

Then there was this series of posts, where one commentator started with the following observation:

Does it matter how one holds a cars steering wheel, or how you hold a sword or perhaps even a firearm? If you were having an operation would it matter how your surgeon held his / her scalpel? 

I don't even know where to begin with that.  For starters, what are you doing with a sword?  OH!!  It was a British website.  They still fight dragons over there.

Next I found that you hold a ping pong paddle like a pen.  Maybe.  But I don't think that makes sense for the bar exam.

So google failed me.  Now I was off to the videos.  This one clearly was too infantile - and it describes how I do hold my pens. The only advice it offered was not to hold the pen so tightly. 



So what's next?  Maybe I need to buy this product that is supposed to help you grip better. 

Or maybe I should just give up and get a cotton ball or something for my finger.  Let me know in the comments.