The Creative Power of Pencil
How a well-crafted tool changed my life
I’ve never been much of a “New Year’s Resolutions” type of person, but I committed to starting journaling at the beginning of this year.
This is the first time I have ever journaled or maintained any sort of written diary, and I didn't start now out of any need for the kind of introspection that journaling can provide. Nor did I commit in hopes of chronicling my life for posterity.
The catalyst was a realization I had late last year about my business. To achieve my business goals, I would have to draw more attention to myself as an expert in my field. I’m typically reserved and have always been opposed to (and unsuccessful at) building a “personal brand,” so achieving the “more attention” objective does not come naturally.
After much meditation, I decided that writing and publishing content is the best way to achieve my objective. I’m not a great writer, so I’d need practice. So, I committed to start journaling as a way to practice writing.
But this is not a story about journaling.
Writing is hard for me for two reasons. First, I don't type well, so writing on a computer is ponderous are can be frustrating. Second, I’m a better editor, so I’m constantly self-editing. That often results in losing my train of thought or missing deadlines while searching for the right word or phrase.
When I decided to journal, I knew I’d have to write it by hand. That’s certainly not an unusual decision, but it created some anxiety for me.
I’m an active note-taker, and for decades I have exclusively used pens for note-taking and any other handwriting I do. I’m very particular about the pens I use. The Uniball Jetstream was my go-to pen for many years, but I decided to stop using disposable pens at the beginning of the pandemic, so I switched to the Fisher Space Pen. They are both excellent writing implements, and either would do for my journaling practice.
The anxiety stemmed from a condition I acquired as I aged. When I was young, I was a terrible slob. I mean, I was genuinely disgusting — it was not uncommon to have dirty dishes and dirty clothes strewn about my room or even the whole apartment. Over time, however, I’ve evolved into quite a tidy person. That kind of mess would never happen today.
In fact, that type of environment would be completely unbearable. Messes or any kind of physical chaos cause me significant stress and anxiety, so I’m that guy — the one with almost nothing on his desk and a filing system that requires frequent use of a professional label maker.
My condition is exacerbated by the fact that I share my home with two people who are perfectly comfortable with chaotic stacks of books and papers everywhere (that is to say, normal people), so in many ways, my personal space is a refuge of tidiness.
One place I still experienced some chaos was in my notes. Specifically, making corrections or updates to my hand-written-in-ink notes inevitably resulted in chaos on the page. To mitigate the mess of corrections, I’ve literally tried to emulate Benjamin Franklin’s editing style to maintain some semblance of neatness, but I rarely succeeded.
My journal would not need the kind of edits and updates that my work notes require, of course, but I was still concerned that my habit of self-editing, combined with misspellings and basic penmanship errors, would add anxiety to the effort. If journaling caused me any kind of stress, I’d probably quit. So I needed a solution.
“Simple,” I thought. “I’ll use a pencil.”
I last used a pencil in my math, science, and engineering classes in college. Of course, I used mechanical pencils, which provided precision and consistency, but I never really liked them because I’m left-handed.
If you are right-handed, you may be unfamiliar with the challenges we lefties face when writing by hand. One fundamental but meaningful difference is how we make a writing device work. If you are right-handed, writing left-to-right generally involves pulling a pen or pencil across the page. Left-handers are actually pushing the tool across the page.
Pushing a mechanical pencil with a 0.5 mm lead across the page can be tricky. If the leading edge gets too sharp, or if there’s a minor irregularity in the paper, or if a trickster god compels it, that point will bite into the paper and SNAP! the lead is gone, and you have to stop. This is true of very fine point pens, too, which can actually tear the paper since the point can’t break easily. (Fountain pens are virtually impossible for a left-handed person.)
So, I decided to try a good old-fashioned lead-in-wood, like-we-used-in-grammar-school pencil. I went online to a well-known shopping site and ordered a box of Ticonderoga #2 pencils, and when they arrived, I started journaling.
Very quickly, I noticed two things.
First, compared to the black ink pens I’ve been using for many years, the pencil was very light. It was actually hard to read in dim light.
Second, I remembered another challenge left-handers have with writing.
When you right-handers write, most of you move your hand across the empty part of the page, the space where nothing has been written. When I write, my left hand moves across the part of the page that I've already filled with writing. So, if I'm not careful, I will smear everything I've just written, and the side of my hand will be covered in graphite or ink.
Writing with the Ticonderoga #2 turned out to be messy, covering the side of my hand with graphite by the end of just a few lines. It was a mess that caused me stress. This pencil was not the solution I had hoped for.
Then I remembered an article I read a few years ago when songwriter Guy Clark died. Someone, I couldn’t remember who, but someone had made a commemorative pencil to honor him since he developed his song lyrics in pencil. At the time, I thought that was sweet, but seriously, who would buy a commemorative pencil? And, to be clear, these were not mechanical pencils. These were old-fashioned wood-and-graphite pencils.
After some online research, I discovered that a California company called Blackwing had made the Guy Clark pencils, and the company has a great story. “What the hell,” I thought, and I bought a box of their pencils at more than twice the cost of the Ticonderoga.
When the pencils arrived, and I started using them, my life changed.
The Blackwing 602 glides across the page like no other pencil I've ever used, making writing with these pencils enjoyable. Although it smears a little, it doesn't smudge as much as other pencils, so my nighttime journaling didn’t leave me with a grey hand.
But it's not just the pencil; it's the eraser too. The eraser allows for easy edits and corrections without messing up the page. Additionally, the eraser sits in a small receptacle that slides in and out of the ferrule. This means that as you use the eraser, you can easily pull more out, which will last longer than the pencil itself.
Using this tool has allowed me to recognize an aspect of pencil I hadn’t considered until I experienced it: the physicality of writing. Simply stated, the physical act of writing has changed how I write.
The flow of the pencil across the page, the fullness or narrowness of the graphite lines, the slope and drag of the letters, and the way the eraser diminishes, leaving fragments to be brushed away — all of these contribute to the thoughts and feelings being expressed from my mind through my hand and the graphite onto the paper.
I think more clearly because my thoughts are tempered by my effort to write legibly. I keep my train of thought better when correcting mistakes with an eraser than when using a pen or a keyboard.
The ability to write and make corrections without filling the page, always having a well-crafted, easy-to-use instrument when writing, and never struggling with an eraser have improved my writing — from journaling to this article, the first drafts of which were written by hand in pencil.
Writing by hand adds dimension to writing as an expression of what’s inside me. It’s become important to me as a way of understanding my writing process as I develop thoughts into ideas and ideas into hypotheses and stories.
Now, I use the Blackwing for everything. All my notes are in pencil, and the first drafts of all my writing. I only use a pen when a legal signature is required.
It feels good to write and to write by hand in pencil.