The Pen, The Pen, The Pen

Above, image from Lamy's web site used here for illustration: the Lamy Studio Pen. (here).

If you are looking for that perfect Christmas gift to make the long nights in the laundry room a little more bearable in the next year, the Lamy Studio fountain pen is a pretty nice item to put on the list.

I've burned several tens of thousands of pages with mine. I like it is much today as when it was new from the box. More so, really. The nib has flattened and shaped itself to my writing stroke and glides without effort across the page. That helps with those difficult scenes.

I've a couple pens with which I'll travel and I always have a Kaweco Lilliput in copper hanging around my writing bag. The studio stays at my writing desk and in it I find comfort early in the morning or late in the evening.

The act of composing works best for me when I am on an even keel and able to use my most creative impulses for my prose. I'm not solving some interpersonal issue in the background or worrying about finances or even thinking about a new boat I shouldn't buy.

I'm writing.

The tactile familiarity that comes from a pen which is now a comfort helps transport me to my story, my characters' minds, and my vaguest of plot intentions.

I know a great many writers compose on the keyboard. Save the backspace key!

Try a little longhand and the cross-out. The composition pass of transposing your longhand chapter into the electronic format gives you that "one more chance" to tune the prose before committing it to your opus. Hemingway did this with his writing.

Besides, a little ink stain on your finger looks writer-ly when you stop by the coffee shop. Anybody can wear a big woolly sweater. Inked fingers? There's a mark of distinction.

Okay. So the noise canceling headphones might be a better idea to deaden the sound of the dryer while you write.

I lived in a laundry room for a few years. I can sympathize. The card table upon which I wrote evolved into the sorting and folding table so I had to move.

It's difficult to plot a murder while under the threat of the leaning tower of underwear.

Consider the pen. It feels good in the hand.