Tools
Earlier this week I bought twelve Japanese HB pencils online. I’ve never been one to write with pencil, preferring much more ink gel or fountain pens when I need time away from my laptop, but last week I had to resort to a run-of-the-mill pencil out of not having anything else to write with. I was first apprehensive about this ordinary instrument, but eventually I fell for the scratching sound of graphite on paper, the wooden sensation when handling it, and the obligatory pause required for sharpening — an interlude that is perfectly suitable to start despairing about what you’ve written even before you are done with it.
A first consideration: you need to be able to write with whatever you’ve got at hand. A second consideration: yes, you need to be able to write with whatever you’ve got at hand, but it’s also nice to own tools that you enjoy using. Firstly, because it's important to make the eternal homework of writing pleasurable; secondly, because these tools influence your output: I’m a different writer when I’m typing on my laptop, when I’m writing longhand, when I’m writing on an A4 page, and when I’m doing it on my A5 notebooks. The real me isn’t a single one of them but their synthesis. Unless you want to be a mono-dimensional writer you should consider having a variety of tools at your disposal.
I have written before about my A5 notebooks, the same notebooks that are still on my library, gathering dust, patiently waiting to be sent off with a Viking funeral. I won’t repeat the whole post, but my rationale for writing on them was this one:
Being a reformed musician, eventually I came to realise that these notebooks were the writerly equivalent of playing arpeggios and scales when I was studying guitar, piano, or saxophone. These notebooks are the place to develop a technique.