Pen to Paper

By Greg Leding

I always carry a pen.  And if I’m at a bar, probably you’ll find me with a pile of napkins full of half-formed doodles or short stories.  (I can’t be certain, but I like to think that many of the world’s best ideas were born on a bar napkin; I sometimes like to picture Thomas Jefferson in a dark bar playing with the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, a bottle of his favorite nearby.)

I’m man enough to admit that not any pen will do.  I actually own a Mont Blanc — a birthday gift from several years ago, given to me by a friend — but I feel a little silly using it under most circumstances.  For most everything I write, I carry the Pilot G-2, black, and, yes, I’m sufficiently picky as to search for one (or a very similar model) should I not have one handy.   I know that probably that makes me a little unusual, but I don’t care; I like to write and sketch in ink, and only certain pens will do.  So.

I carry a Moleskine, too.  (I realize I’m opening myself to several lines of attack here.)  I carry two, actually:  one for everyday notes and one for more capturing inspiration or ideas.  I enjoy writing in them.  I enjoy the feel of the pen against the paper as I draft remarks, play with an idea, or sketch whatever happens to be in front of me.  I love the peculiarities of a person’s penmanship, and I pay close attention to my own.  I write in small block capitals–have since the ninth grade–and I love, God help me, the act of forming the words on the page.  After a day spent typing at the computer and texting on my phone, I like to sit with pen and paper and write or sketch or solve a crossword puzzle (which must absolutely always under all circumstances be done in ink; to do otherwise is a sin against God and Will Shortz).  I feel more connected to my thoughts when I write.  I often find it far too easy to detach myself from my work on a computer.  Whether it’s because typing is significantly faster, or because it’s so much easier to rework, I know that my output is always of a higher quality when I take the time to draft it in ink first.

That’s not the primary reason I write, though.  I write with pen and paper because, despite my best efforts, I remain mortal (dammit), and I’d like to leave something behind other than an inbox full of emails and a phone full of text messages.  I’d like to leave a box or two full of letters to family and friends and girlfriends and colleagues; pages of illustrations and drafts of speeches; notebooks of raw thoughts.  I want to leave behind something that illustrates me, and I believe that my handwriting will do a better job than a paper I typed in twelve-point Helvetica.  I also like that a handwritten letter is real, and as such will age unlike a digital copy of my work–just as the recipes handwritten by my grandmothers that my own mom keeps in a small box above my parents’ kitchen stove have aged.  (I can’t imagine having the same emotional connection to my maternal grandmother’s recipe for red velvet cake were it only a Word file on my parents’ home computer and not a yellowed index card, stiff with age, covered in my grandmother’s copperplate.)

No, I did not draft this article by hand first.  (Probably that’s evident from the quality.)  Today I honestly didn’t have the time, and so I’m writing this straight through and with little thought as to what’s coming next, because I’m hopping on a plane in a little less than seven hours, and I need to pack and iron and read and hopefully find a few hours’ sleep before getting up to head to the airport.  Somewhere over central Arkansas, though, after I’ve downed a cup of coffee from the beverage service, I’m going to pull out my notebook and a pen, and I’m going to write.

Greg

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