{"id":4340,"date":"2016-06-06T20:14:38","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T20:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=4340"},"modified":"2016-06-06T20:14:38","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T20:14:38","slug":"the-pen-is-mightier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=4340","title":{"rendered":"The Pen is Mightier"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"quill<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to let you into a secret: every blog and review I put on damesnet<\/span><\/span> <\/strong>I have written in its entirety in longhand first.\u00a0 I may have mastered the rudiments of\u00a0 half a dozen software packages and know my LAN from my WAN, but I\u2019m just a digital daytripper.<\/p>\n

I was faintly ashamed of my devotion to the pen until I went to a workshop run by novelist Andrew Miller (of Pure<\/em> and Ingenious Pain<\/em> fame) and discovered that his method was\u00a0to draft the whole novel in longhand first. Well, if it\u2019s good enough for him \u2026<\/p>\n

The truth is, I can\u2019t really think without a pen in my hand. It\u2019s probably some sort of Pavlovian reflex \u2013 sometimes I have to pick one up, even if I\u2019m not going to write anything, just to get the synapses to snap into action.<\/p>\n

There is something so direct about the act of writing with a pen: my thoughts are somehow marshalled in a halfway logical order in my head, they flow down my right arm, and then out through the nib, the point, the rollerball, or even the lead \u2013 rather than being diluted and diffused across ten fingers on the keyboard (actually about four in my case).<\/p>\n

Once the words are all out, it\u2019s time to get really creative: crossing out, scribbling in, lassoing groups of words with a line and sending them all over the page with an arrow, and adding marginal notes and absent-minded \u2013 but deeply inspirational \u2013 doodles. How could I abandon the pen?<\/p>\n

Yet I remember suggesting \u2018a nice pen\u2019 as a possible 18th birthday present for my nephew, only to see a look of bemusement cross his father\u2019s face. \u2018He wouldn\u2019t really use a pen\u2019 he said, kindly. And upmarket styluses suitable for a big birthday are nowhere to be found, unless you commission a diamond-encrusted one from Damien Hirst.<\/p>\n

But \u2018a nice pen\u2019 is fundamental to the pleasure of writing. It doesn\u2019t have to be a Mont Blanc, or even a Parker. I\u2019m writing this with a Uniball Jetstream 1.0 in black, available at W H Smith, or from Amazon at \u00a35.08 for three (Keithybhoy says \u2018Used these pens once and couldn’t use anything else after them\u2019, another happy punter describes them as \u2018God-like pens\u2019!) The ink flows out smoothly enough for you to write very fast, but not to the point where it shows through on the other side of the paper, yet the pressure on the page ends up creating a pleasingly textured \u2018onion skin\u2019 effect on the paper.<\/p>\n

Writing with a soft pencil is good, too \u2013 again, the point is yielding enough to write with ease, and you get a satisfying film of graphite dust that somehow lends whatever you\u2019ve written an air of blurry gravitas. (I seem to see the word \u2018nerd\u2019 flashing up in front of me in neon letters.)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for the pen to fight back, and where better to start, in these days of vintage-mania, than with the advertising jingle of the Waverley pen company, though it might have to be tweaked a bit so as not to offend modern sensibilities.<\/p>\n

“They come as a boon and a blessing to men,<\/p>\n

The Pickwick, the Owl, and the Waverley pen.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why not commission a diamond-encrusted one from Damien Hirst?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,55,53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4340"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4355,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4340\/revisions\/4355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}