Taylor Swift has three different pens which she uses to write different types of songs. She writes her most gothic overwrought lyrics with a quill pen, all scratchy and twisted. She writes poetic literary stuff with a fountain pen and she writes the bouncy bubblegum stuff with a glitter pen, like you’d find in a teenagers pencil case. She confessed all this when accepting a Songwriter of the Decade award.
Slightly disappointingly she says these pens are imaginary. “I don’t have a quill. Any more. I broke it when I was mad.”
People who write for a living are intensely interested in this kind of thing. Get together with a gang of writers and they’re not arguing about influences or iambic pentameters. They’re gossiping about tools. Has anyone found a source of Alwych’s? What’s your workflow in Scrivener? How much does everyone hate Word?
Of course, there are always a few isolated individuals who airily contend that the tools don’t matter. They can write on anything, anywhere, they don’t need a special chair and a special pen. They look down on the rest of us. ‘Just write’ they say. And if you’re one of them. Great. But why are you reading this? This book is for those of us who occasionally need a nudge. We’re looking for ways to make things easier and one of the ways to do that is to make them exciting and pleasurable. So if you get pleasure from writing with a particular special pen, fantastic. Just make sure you carry it around. If you’ve got a favourite fountain pen that makes you feel slightly like you’re Joan Didion skewering a contemporary more then embrace it. Maybe get the hat and sunglasses too. Whatever it takes to get you writing.
Try this: treat yourself to a slightly more expensive pen or pencil than you’re otherwise normally use. Make a little moment out of using it for the first time. Let the ceremony of that first mark carry over into your writing and get the flow going.