I was going to title this 'The Right Pen Can Make The Difference', But after finishing it, I changed my mind.
I made an interesting discovery this last week. My pen ran out of ink.
Okay, so that wasn’t really the discovery, it was what followed.
Just so we have this clear, my pen ran out of ink, I picked up another pen from the little coffee cup on my desk, and tried to continue to write. Key word in that sentence is ‘tried’.
Writers’ Block from a pen? Wow! Crazy! But true. I just could not write.
It took me over a week and a trip to town to pick up a new refill for my pen. Now, again, just so you know, my pen is a little different from most. My hands are large, so finding a pen that feels good in my hands can be a challenge. I also wear shirts that are often a bit more on the dressy side, so I like to have a pen that looks nice. Know what I mean? More than that, I like a pen that fits in my pocket properly without poking up or sitting sideways. Strange pet peeve, I know… but there you have it. Big enough for my hand, small enough for my pocket.
So, to solve all these myriad problems I settled on a nice stainless steel Parker Jotter for its nice looks, how it fits in my hand, and how it fits in my pocket. However, there is still the ‘writing’ issue.
I write everywhere. Not just at a nice desk or table. I write inside, outside, summer, winter, on my journal as it rests on my knee, in the rain, and on the plane. (just had to rhyme that one!) I find that the ‘normal’ refill cartridge you can pick up at any store can be blobby and smeary and they all have difficulty in the cold and rain. Some run. Some bleed. Some skip. To solve this, ever since I found out they existed (slightly post-moonwalk) I have been using the Fisher Space Pens. I keep one of their bullet pens in my pocket at all times as a spare. But my ‘dress’ pen, my 'writing' pen, the one I use the most as described previously, has a Fisher refill in it. It’s the perfect pen… for me.
Try as I might, I could only get a few pages put to ink with that ‘non-standard’ pen that I had as a spare. My ‘pocket’ pen is great, but not ideal for continuous writing. So I just had to get a refill so I could once again write comfortably.
Now for the discovery part. (You knew I’d get there eventually!) It’s not so much that I had the perfect pen or not, or the perfect journal to carry around (made it myself out of some scrap leather I got at an op shop, but that’s another story). The discovery was that everyone that writes needs something… perfect.
The perfect location… perfect pen… perfect journal… perfect music… perfect encouragement.
Whatever your ‘perfect’ is, revel in it, and keep on doing what you do. And if you write? KEEP ON WRITING!!!
(And don’t run out of ink!!)
