Perhaps I'm stuck in the past, but I confess I don't know what a gel-pen is. I've never been aware of any difficulty using a ball-point, but it might help to explain why my handwriting is atrocious. Nowadays I write very little by hand, other than my signature and names and addresses on envelopes (which I print in block capitals to ensure they are legible).

It probably didn't help my handwriting that, having initially been taught copperplate at the age of eight or so, when I started grammar school at age eleven they decided that my class's handwriting was atrocious and taught us all italic, so that now my writing is a confused mish-mash of the two.