Sometimes, My Pen Is Not My Friend.
I’ve heard about the unbreakable bond between writer and pen.
Sometimes my pen is not my friend.
I’ve heard about the unbreakable bond between writer and pen.
How they travel the world together; to capture the heartfelt or heartbreaking stories of unspoken people. Recorded with vivid color and wild messy scribbles that still manage look like the finest of art. Their pen invites, their pen provokes. Their pen inspires. The bond between writer and pen. And yet, my pen is not always my friend.
I’d been busy scanning the antique shop’s shelves and allowed my fingertips to swim through the seas of pages of the great writers, better writers than me I might add. And in true movie magic, I took a clumsy trip, the tumbling of boxes and the mysteries of hidden treasures spilled onto the carpet floor. We locked eyes and there it was. My pen. The brass tip pointed and waiting to drink up the ink it would digest and sing out pitch-perfect tales.
After years of patiently waiting in his little black box with red velvet lining, my pen was ready to write its next inspirational story. So ready, it chastised me for not having one to write. For some pens, writing a shopping list or notes from a class just isn’t enough. The scowl becomes permanent on its face, putting me off from lifting the nib when a small spark of idea toys in my head. Because that small idea will never match up to the great stories of the famous authors that came before. I will never join their names on the list of the classics, of the profound, of the genius. Or at least, that’s what my pen tells me.
Sometimes my pen is not my friend, but my enemy. The saboteur that inhabited the space on my desk rent-free. In an act of defiance, I put the pen away in its box and buried it amongst the old stories I had archived for days when inspiration fails to come to me. It wanted to be surrounded by words written by writers better than me, then so be it. Enjoy your prison of the wonders written by other people. Maybe now I can actually get some work done. Maybe without all of your venom, I might actually feel like writing the story you said wasn’t great enough to be told on paper.
I sit at my desk, moving as far away from the pen as I can get. I’ve changed my mind, my tactics. The laptop is now my home. Digital words typed at the speed of a rushing train will be my version of the scribbled notes in the back of a book.
…
And yet, no words come. I can still hear your voice. I can still hear you telling me that the words I put onto paper are no more magical than the shopping list I wrote down the other day. In a burst of rage, a slammed laptop lid and still no words written; I go to give that pen a piece of my mind. Not my friend, not even my enemy. My nemesis. If it would just shut up for ten minutes!
But when I open the box of old discarded pages written by writers better than me, I see.
My pen is just a pen.
-ARTEMIS INKS
