Writing Hack No. 1 - Never EVER Have A Favourite Pen
AKA Don't lose an entire afternoon trying to make your "special pen" work instead of writing.
Dearest friend,
I sat down with an hour and a half of solitude ahead of me. The first time this has happened since before Christmas. I put a suitably wintry record on, cup of coffee and chocolate biscuits to hand (the good ones, not the cut price broken kind that A insists on buying by the kg box!).
Notebook open, pen at the ready, and actual thoughts in my head that I felt like I might be able to extract and then - NOTHING.
I don’t mean writer’s block or any such, I’m talking about the lack of ink on the page where there should be words. The instrument in question is supposedly one of the best in the world (so I’m told, not that it matters I don’t suppose but for emphasis that this thing should work). It has an aluminium body and is developing a few nice scratches and scrapes that make it mine. It is a thing of beauty and when I hold it I feel like it should channel good things. Like I could or should be Hemingway or Alcott or someone that I could never hope to match the narratives of (I’m now wondering whether the Dessners1 use pens to write their music or whether it appears in etchings with a flourish of fairy dust in a magical fashion as their brilliance makes me imagine it should). But it seems that today the pen has rather taken on the aura of it’s owner. Well intentioned but barely and rarely functional.
I have taken it apart, washed everything, scraped channels, dried parts thoroughly and re-assembled. Twice in fact. I had just about given up when on the final touch of nib to paper, a miracle. An oaky brown line and another, then another (I draw in black ink but can’t stand to write in it, it seems too austere or permanent or something). I feel like there’s maybe some parable style meaning here about perseverance but I’m not sure, because sureness is something I have given up for New Year’s for the sake of productivity and living.
I have, I think, maybe 20 minutes left before the rowdy bunch gets back from an after school trip to the dentist. I have abandoned any earlier thoughts that might errantly have wandered off mid sentence anyway and recount this thrilling tale, to you. Plot twist, my pen abruptly stopped working again at the end of the last paragraph.
Life seems like that right now. It flows and then it doesn’t. Abrupt, unpredictable, smooth, magical. An ebb and flow of opposites. In the day or two since I started this there have been precisely 792 changes of emotional winds in this house. Having neurodiverse teens is, shall we say - a challenge. It can feel like walking barefoot up a mountain carrying the weight of an entire village’s possessions at times and I write this not to tread the trenches of misery in word form, but to let you know that if this is also your life, I see you and I’m here for you. You are never alone.
I want to wish you a happy new year. A lower case one because the upper case variety is too much like a loaded gun to stare down the barrel of. It is high expectations and a gauntlet thrown down at a time of year that has no business at all having high energy demands and expectations. Despite meaning folks being at home for an extra week when I was ready and desperate for the solitude of an empty home, the snows of last week were the kindest gift I could ever ask for. The lack of winds blowing outside, the pure and blank canvas draped over the landscape, the traffic told to stay home. A world where feet reign supreme and become the primary method of transport. They are mine anyway.
Sunsets streaked with ice blue and molten lemon give poetic punctuation to every days end. Walking became an orchestral thing of beauty, each step creating an onomatopoeic symphony.
Today the weather is of the melting kind and windy and outside feels like an altogether more chaotic place. I don’t know how to say something of the real world chaos right now, words feel of little value in situations of such gravity, but I suppose there is more magic in our writing than any of us can ever truly understand. The very etymology of the word “spelling2” reminds me of this and brings me back to the page when I feel like you might not need or want to hear from me. I am too often guilty of wondering why no one comes to a cafe that I haven’t opened let alone switched on the coffee machine or hung a “welcome, we’re open” sign at, when, in my lighter days, I can see that there are people queuing down the street hoping for a cup of something warm and soul nourishing. Self doubt is a mist that our paths are easily lost in, no?
If you’ve read this far, thank you. Connection, despite supposedly being human nature, is not something that comes easy to me and writing, well, that too. My real love languages are watching a film together or putting one foot in front of the other and observing what’s around us in quiet company on a walk. Tricksy over a letter, but not impossible?
My thoughts have begun to puddle on the floor so I shall sign off for now. Thank you for your patience in my sporadic writing. I stopped sending letters because they always took me so long and by the time I licked the stamp to post them the contents seemed irrelevant. Silly really when all post takes time anyway.
Know you are in my thoughts always,
V.V x
Still with me? I love writing letters, but even more I love getting them back. How are you? Really. Not in a “not too bad thanks” kind of way but actually. Drop me a message below or directly. It’s not quite a letter back, but I’d love it all the same.
If you know someone who would enjoy this post, please do pass it on.
I saw a cut down version of this premise by someone else via social media, but as I’m on all of the online drivel platforms and send a million things a day to A, it has been lost in the mists of capybaras, cats and Taylor Swift posts (and Huskies, let’s not forget them as they’d definitely have something to say about it). This is a good explanation / theory though.