In seventh grade, I started hanging out with a girl who wore thick, dark eyeliner and convinced me to shoplift. We’d walk to Main Street after school. One of my favorite shops was the office supply store—no surprise to anyone who knew my nerdy self. I spent a long time in front of the pens, trying each one out on the Post-It notes on display. I’d uncap a Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pen (turquoise ink) and write SMILE! with a Super S, one of those strange blocky S’s that was popular in the 1990s. One day, my friend encouraged me to just stuff a bunch of pens into the pocket of my monogrammed eggplant-purple L.L. Bean bag. I caved to peer pressure, but immediately regretted it. It was too late. The cashier noticed.
“Give the pens back immediately, and we won’t call the police.”
Panicking, I unzipped my bag and grabbed the fistful of stolen loot, dropping them on the counter in one guilty gesture.
As a teenager, I got a job at Staples. I’ve always loved office supplies. I have fond memories of going back-to-school shopping with my mother, picking out a Lisa Frank trapper keeper, a planner (maybe this would be the year I’d finally get organized!), journals with college-ruled lines so I could write tiny, bold letters with my Bic mechanical pencils, which I coveted even though the thin lead constantly broke.
Nowadays, I sometimes write by hand in my Moleskine journals with the same pens I obsessively used throughout high school and college: Pilot P-700 Rollerball Stick Gel Pens, preferably in blue or purple.
I am not alone in my intense relationship to the tools of the writing trade, so I thought I’d ask some writers I deeply admire about their favorite pens and pencils. The first person who came to mind was Mary Norris, author of Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen and a copy editor for The New Yorker.
“I have a lot of nerve, as a non-artist, being so precious about pencils,” Norris says. “But when I copy-edit with Blackwings I think of something a friend’s mother once said as she bought underwear for her daughter who was going off to nursing school: ‘As long as you have to wear that uniform, you might as well feel fancy underneath.’”
by Michele Filgate, Literary Hub | Read more:
Image: uncredited
“Give the pens back immediately, and we won’t call the police.”Panicking, I unzipped my bag and grabbed the fistful of stolen loot, dropping them on the counter in one guilty gesture.
As a teenager, I got a job at Staples. I’ve always loved office supplies. I have fond memories of going back-to-school shopping with my mother, picking out a Lisa Frank trapper keeper, a planner (maybe this would be the year I’d finally get organized!), journals with college-ruled lines so I could write tiny, bold letters with my Bic mechanical pencils, which I coveted even though the thin lead constantly broke.
Nowadays, I sometimes write by hand in my Moleskine journals with the same pens I obsessively used throughout high school and college: Pilot P-700 Rollerball Stick Gel Pens, preferably in blue or purple.
I am not alone in my intense relationship to the tools of the writing trade, so I thought I’d ask some writers I deeply admire about their favorite pens and pencils. The first person who came to mind was Mary Norris, author of Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen and a copy editor for The New Yorker.
“I have a lot of nerve, as a non-artist, being so precious about pencils,” Norris says. “But when I copy-edit with Blackwings I think of something a friend’s mother once said as she bought underwear for her daughter who was going off to nursing school: ‘As long as you have to wear that uniform, you might as well feel fancy underneath.’”
by Michele Filgate, Literary Hub | Read more:
Image: uncredited
