Monday Moanings - June 10, 2013

Oh woe is me, woe I say!
I have managed to fritter away some seven hours today. Perhaps "fritter" is a little harsh - enjoying a good healthy breakfast and then heading off to a Curves workout in town were surely commendable pursuits. So let's award two hours for good behaviour. Now what about those other five? Well okay then, "fritter" is actually a fair word...

Fuelling this wasteful behaviour was, and is, my complete inability to make a decision, to simply choose a topic for this blogpost and then apply my backside firmly to a chair and write it. I was clobbered by some kind of tsunami as a sea of hands rose up in my classroom of topics each one demanding my attention. I'll have you know though, that I've been doing the 'backside in chair' part very well! The World Wide Web is such a great outlet for displacement activity.

Finally my inner critic goaded me with enough guilt that I just picked up my pen, grabbed my journal and started to write...

Almost all of my writing begins with pen on paper, as opposed to fingers on keyboard. There is a highly favoured writing instrument for this activity; a Parker 'Sonnet' fountain pen made in France, that my beloved bought for me some fifteen years ago. The perfect weight of the pen in my hand, the fine balance; the perfect tapered thickness of barrel between my fingers, the lush coolness; the satin smooth flow of specially blended ink accompanied by ever so soft scratching sounds as letters become words at the tip of a golden nib; all work together to make writing the most natural, most soothing, most pleasurable thing in the world.

The fountain pen comes with a history and character that only some papers can bear. The paper must be smooth enough to allow the pen to move unimpeded across the page, thick enough to resist bleed through and plentiful enough to encourage whole truths.

Maybe next time I'll be able to call on one of those urgent, waving hands in my writing ideas class, but for now I'll just let a fountain pen caress paper and enjoy what happens.