Calligraphy is often more difficult than beginners expect. The issue is not the pen, the ink, or the letters, but the impulse to practice whole words with your hand not yet acquainted with their inner movements. The quickest method for a beginner to get better is to treat the practice session as a drill, not decoration. Calligraphy is made up of control, rhythm, spacing, and pressure. When these four aspects are practiced in focused sessions, you can see improvement in as little as 15 minutes. A page filled with four or five carefully executed drills is far more beneficial than a page full of hurriedly written quotes that slant and lean or have too much spacing between them.
Begin by narrowing your focus and picking one particular mark. Instead of starting with the entire alphabet, spend a few minutes doing the basic marks that make up these letters. Do some light upstrokes, do some heavier downstrokes, small ovals, and entrance strokes. Draw these slowly enough that you can feel where your pen catches and where your hand presses more or less than it did in the last movement, and where the shape of the mark loses its form. Do several repetitions of one of these marks in a row. This is where beginners tend to make progress, as the hand begins to know the movement as soon as it starts and is not just guessing. Do not stop until your downstrokes are even, and continue to do those strokes until your hand begins to get accustomed to the movement, even though they are not all going to look perfect the first time.
Now join them in a pair or small group of letters. Try to pick letters that share a mark or movement, such as the a, d, g, and q in an italician script (or maybe the i, u, and w, t). Draw them larger than usual, so that it is easier to tell how well they look. Do one letter, stop and evaluate it, and then do that letter again with the correction in mind. Is the oval closing too slowly? Is the slant changing throughout the stroke? Does the exit stroke go up too quickly? This is as important a step as the act of drawing itself. Beginners tend to try to speed through the practice because they feel that repetition feels tedious. This just results in 10 slightly different versions of the letter with not much idea why they are different. The correction is that you slow down, you draw with a consistent pen angle, and you compare each attempt to the one before it instead of going on to the next letter.
When the letters themselves are becoming easier, use a few minutes of your practice time to connect them together in small combinations like mi, na, lo, or te. These pairs will teach you more about spacing than working with the individual letters. Beginners will often make individual letters look well-spaced because of how they concentrate on the mark, and these individual letters do not look connected to one another, resulting in a word that is not actually a word. This is because beginners do not pay as much attention to the spacing between letters as they do to the marks themselves. You should be mindful that the spaces are not just random and that there is a relationship to each one. If you feel that it is spaced too far apart, do not adjust the entire word, rather, just bring it just a little closer, the slight adjustment teaches you more than a drastic one.
Your 15-minute practice schedule should last a few days in a row. You can spend five minutes on the repeated mark, five on the letters you connected together, and five on the word that uses these forms and letters. If you find you do not like your spacing, do not discard the word. Circle one of your issues, say, too little space in the ascenders, a drifting line, or a collapsed curve. Tomorrow morning, you can pick that one issue to start your practice session. Your progress is not a one-time exercise, but something you can return to again and again. The page becomes not a test to be completed, but a collection of what you are learning. As you practice, things will happen you do not think of. Your hand will get steadier. You will be able to create space in between letters. Your pressure will be more consistent.
It is also helpful to use one page for your drills and another for actual writing. This eliminates the pressure of getting it all “right” the first time. Your drill page can be where you practice your mistakes. Once you are on your actual page, you will be able to see the progress your drills have given you. As time goes on, it will become easy to notice the difference between those two pages. Letters will appear more centered on the line. It will appear smoother, curves not forced. The word will look like it belongs together rather than pieces stitched. When you are practicing in short 15 minutes sessions, the page will no longer be a place for you to prove your work, but where your hand will know what to do.