This blog posts on Mondays. Second Mondays of the month I devote to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. Welcome!
> For the archive of workshop posts click here.
Do you write with a pen or a pencil? That’s the biggest, fattest cliché of a question for a writer. Caramba! I never thought I’d write a post about a pencil.
Backstory: An age ago I read about Palomino Blackwing pencils on Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools blog, and because I’d found a number of surprisingly excellent recommendations there, I thought hmmm, I just might maybe look for those pencils one of these days…
I wasn’t even writing with a pencil at that point. I had used mechanical pencils on and off in high school and college, but I hated running out of the leads, or as often happened, finding that I had the wrong size. I was all for writing with ballpoint pens, and (long, boring story) I came into a supply of some 250 swag pens, so that lasted me for the past decade…
Two years ago I started writing with a pencil again. I had just happened to be in the stationary supply aisle in my local grocery store when, for no particular reason, except that I fancied their fire-engine red color, I tossed a packet of pencils into the cart. These were nothing special, regular old No. 2 lead pencils. But I soon found that I quite liked writing with a pencil, mainly because I could erase! I erase a lot.
Voilà, also from my local grocery store, my eraser and pencil sharpener!
Thundernation, I think I spent, like, maybe five bucks on all this low-tech equipment. (Casting bronze sculpture, this ain’t…)
So the mammoth news is, last month I finally ordered a dozen Palomino Blackwings, which cost a ridiculous (==put on your seatbelt==) 25 dollars. (That comes to about 2 bucks per pencil.) They arrived in a sleek black box suitable for Swiss truffles.
The Palomino Blackwing pencil is fabulicious! It glides across the page in a way I can only describe as yummy. It seems the secret is the Japanese graphite, “crafted with clay for strength and wax for smoothness.”
Trivial as they may seem, these material matters of writerly routine and comfort– using a special pencil, or, say, a lap desk for a certain task on a certain sofa at a certain time– can make a nifty difference for a writer’s productivity.
So, actually, there just might be something for you to the question, do you write with a pen or a pencil?
Or, on a computer or a typewriter? Or, all of the above?
Coffee or tea?
Classical music or rock music?
Desk facing the window or the wall?
If you are feeling in any way blocked or slow with your process, what might make a refreshing tweak for you?
Great Power in One: Miss Charles Emily Wilson
Q & A with Bruce Berger on A Desert Harvest
Find out more about C.M. Mayo’s books, shorter works, podcasts, and more at www.cmmayo.com.
