I wish I could get away from drills. I've tried it recently, and noticed a huge downward spiral into terribleness in my writing when I don't do drills for awhile.
Most of the drills I do focus on muscular movement for ornamental penmanship, without doing them I feel like my muscle memory disappears. I can barely write anything unless I get out a line of ovals first.
I am a slow learner though, so maybe my muscles just need extra help lol.
Edit: I just wanted to add this because I think
@himasf makes a really good point about speed: I do think for doing drills (for the people who do them
) that matching the speed of your writing is important. When I first started doing drills it was at a much faster pace than my actual writing, and that really didn't help my actual writing, just my drills. Once I matched them up, I noticed my writing was actually incorporating the muscular movement I was training, which improved it a lot.
I think people should just do whatever works for them though. I'm just jealous of you guys that I admire that don't do drills!