What you write with. Literally.

 Funny, I just wrote about office supplies, and now I read Flavorwire's Writing Tools of 20 Famous Authors, which inspired me to write further about my own writing tools. Other than a computer, obviously. 

I do not like pencils. I never have. I probably never will. They're a "necessary evil" for gaming (character sheets require a lot of erasures, for your health if nothing else), and they were required in math class in school, but other than that, I don't use them. And I no longer have school, and thus little math.

I do like fountain pens, as many of the 20 writers the quoted article favor. I have a couple of cheap ones that tend to run out of ink through evaporation before I've written it all down. I've also used Varsity disposable ones, discovered in my college store. I just got a new one (brand forgotten already) from Walgreens. It's "steel" and the cardboard package is green; that's all I remember so far.

If I'm hand writing something, though, I like pens that are felt tipped. Flairs are great (pictured in my previous post with the rad wolf journal). Bic has some that aren't too bad. Sharpie pens are surprisingly disappointing; they're too rigid at first, the lines too draggy and skinny, and then they die soon after they're "just write". I do like a regular Sharpie, and occasionally I've written in a sketchpad using a Sharpie. This works well for the legibility of my handwriting as well. Like a kindergartener, a larger writing implement helps with my manual dexterity.

The (horrible) epic fantasy novel I wrote in high school was written using Pilot vball pens, and also sometimes Pilot precise, which had a way of leaking onto the first knuckle of my middle finger, leaving me with a smudgy blue smear. I flip flop between using blue ink versus black. More than 1000 pages handwritten on loose leaf, in one of those Pilots or the other. I'd like to think that I got it out of my system.

I've been on a black ink kick for several years now, so that might be the one that stays.

Write it Down

I used to be afraid to write in a blank book. I felt that, if I started a story in one, I had to finish the story there, or else I had "wasted" it. I loved having blank books, though, and so have amassed quite a collection.

Junior or Senior year of college, I got over it. Maybe it was because of the creative writing classes I was eventually able to take on the side (my degree is in Psychology). Suddenly, I was able to write a name, or a blurb, or the beginning of a story, and if that was all I was going to write on that topic, I could draw a line or turn the page and write something else. Easy peasy.

It was freeing, really, to not have to worry about keeping a book "nice". I think I had probably read too many books in which the heroine had journals or letters that she kept for posterity, for Those Who Came After to read. Between computers and my handwriting, I don't really need to worry about that. Frequently, I'll write the opening of a story in a notebook (I keep any number of them in my purse and at work) and then finish the rest of it on the computer.

Other times, I'll have an idea, but not really the time to get out the pen and paper. In those instances, I'll whip out the cell phone and email or text myself the phrase that's come to mind. That's how I preserved my idea for this year's National Novel Writing Month; I was almost asleep, lights off, pen and paper distant, and thinking about the stories that we tell.  I didn't want to forget my notions, and so I grabbed my phone and emailed myself the words "Family Apocrypha". And then went to sleep and forgot. Imagine my surprise, the next morning, when I opened my Gmail! But I remembered the idea.

Good ideas or bad, if you don't remember them, you aren't able to judge. Write it down.