"Art thou a pen, Whose task shall be
To drown in ink What writer's think?
Oh, wisely write, That pages white
Be not the worse for ink and thee."
~ Ethel Lynn Beers~
For centuries writers have put pen to paper - or
parchment - weaving their "
webs of words" to enchant their audiences. I cannot speak for anyone else, but every once-in-a-while I have to get away from the computers, the tablets, the phones and put pen to paper; to let the ink flow. When it's easier to paint pictures with words with the feel of my favorite "brush" in hand whispering softly across my writer's canvas instead of the clack-clack of the keys beneath my fingertips. There is something about the journey an idea takes from knocking around in my head, down my arm and into my fingertips - whether the words flow in a gentle cursive or burst forth in a flurry of print and shorthand - and in that moment an idea can become a tangible thing. It is at those times that I find myself so completely immersed in the experience that the words and pages disappear. Almost as if the pen cradled between my fingers were but a vessel for an entity entirely of its own, the story reveals itself. I treasure those moments.
Throughout time there has been much praise and homage paid to the virtues of the pen. One of the most familiar quotes being "
The Pen is mightier than the Sword" coined around the year 1839, by English writer
Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The quote comes from
Act II,
Scene II of his play
Richelieu (liberally based on
Cardinal Richelieu);
"True, This - Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch-enchanter's wand! - itself a nothing! -
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyse the Ceasars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless! - Take away the sword -
States can be saved without it."
Famous
playwrite William Shakespeare wrote in a similar vein in reference to the tool of the scribe in Act II, Scene II of his classic tragedy
Hamlet:
"... many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequils."
But it is not only classic writers who have commented on the worthiness of the hand written word and it's instrument. Even in these modern times Irish author and journalist,
Clare Boylan, noted this:
"Some writers have a personal love affair with particular pens. Others do not give a blot what comes to hand so long as it is stick-shaped, silent, and able to make its mark. I was surprised to discover about 70 percent of writers still write full manuscripts by hand." - Clare Boylan
And it is in the spirit of this assertion that we continue on. Now, I happen to be one of those former writers that Clare Boylan mentions, and over the years my writing tool has changed. In this article I'm going to cover several tools that I have used over the years and why. Maybe it will help you find a favorite writing utensil, or maybe it will simply entertain you that a writer can be surprisingly neurotic about something so seemingly trivial.
