Writing in pen or pencil is a multi-sensory joy, even if no one else can read it
Dear Adrian Chiles, if you found no joy in using a pen to paper, might I suggest reviving your use of the humble pencil (For the first time in 35 years, I’m having to use a pen and paper. Help!, 15 January)? Thought and planning will still be required, but there are many added benefits, the most obvious of which is the eraser. Beyond the basic model attached to most pencils, erasers come in a wide array of happy shapes and colours. Hedgehog! Watermelon! Sushi!
Pencils (like pens) require no electricity. Turning off your computer, or forgetting it at home, is a simple way to lower your carbon footprint. Writing in the dark with a pencil is challenging for obvious reasons, but I see it as an opportunity to dial up the ambience. A headlamp evokes adventure, and candlelight is romantic. In an pinch, you can still use your laptop – but only as a light source.
Writing with pencils is a multi-sensory experience. I love the sound of a pencil drawing across paper, slowly filling the page with grey characters that form words, sometimes sentences, and if I’m lucky, a good story. Sharpening pencils is part of my daily ritual. Which is all to say, choosing to write with a pencil comes with many unexpected meditative benefits.
I confess, I personally hadn’t used pencils for regular writing in 25 years, until I tried a high-quality pencil last month. I became hooked. Pencils are my newfound joy. I recommend that everyone these days try writing with pencils again, starting with a handwritten letter to a good friend.
Scarlett Lopez Freeman
Orinda, California, US
• Ever since I was 21, I have had a gold-filled Parker 51 pen and pencil set, a 21st birthday present from my brother. I still use this pen today, but not for writing letters, just for notes to myself. I completely empathise with Adrian Chiles’s predicament in what a task it is to actually write a coherent sentence from start to finish, and join more sentences together, scripting a whole.
What bothers me more is the deterioration of my finger motor skills in actually forming letters in cursive writing, a skill I must have learned as a child in Rickmansworth. Now at almost 83 years old, my handwriting skills have aged along with the rest of my body, and arthritis joints make it more difficult. But I still find joy in using my fountain pen, in filling it with ink and placing it prominently on my desk.
Alex Oldfield
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
• One thing I have in common with Adrian Chiles, and indeed Karl Marx, is that my handwriting is now and always has been almost illegible. I still use a range of electronic devices for written communications, thankful that the days of the typewriter and Tipp-Ex are in the past. However, there is such a thing as the tyranny of the screen, so I do now keep some handwritten notes as well. It’s satisfying to mark off things that I’ve done – if I can decipher what they were, of course.
Keith Flett
Tottenham, London
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