Then there are other things we can analyze.

Ink or computer?

There is a scratching beauty to ink - Sharpie pens are scratchy like a pencil and makes a person feel like they are inking their way to immortality.   Then looking down at pages of work and realizing - I DID THAT. 

It is easier to pen.   "pen the story"   When I do play around with writing, such as this little blog thing I pretend to do, it is easier to pen things down first,   Once I put the pen down and the ink does its bleeding thing, there is a rhythm to things.  Only when I put pen to paper do the words really flow, but I fear to lift my pen in case the words suddenly stop

When I type it, it is too easy to pause, to reflect for a moment on words I have written and stop writing  I think, but thinking means the writing has stopped.  The pen is almost easier to control, at least in terms of word count.

I will not claim that muse has visited me in those moments when the pen scratches across the page, but at least she looked my way,  She shook her head, maybe flipped me off, but SHE LOOKED.  The fear now, when the pen is in full gush, that the knock comes on the door, the text message buzzes away, a voice calls from another room.  These things all break the spell (as the cliche says).

As long as the pen stays on paper, the words will come.  Random, often meaningless, but they are words, and oh how those words give you something to stare at after an hour and feel like something was done.

So why don't I write?  Well, when I look back and the words a couple of days later, I realize there may have been a lot of feathers, but not much chicken (yup, I ended with a Kim Mitchell reference).  

Eulogy For a Pen

As a not-writer, I cannot help but to feel a sense of romanticism for a pen that has been used so much the ink has disappeared, leaving a trail of glorious words behind.  Of course, the speck in me that has pretensions of literary spinning tells me to drop the idea into metaphor, and rather than use the idea of simply writing and the pen using ink and running out, oh no, we must "bleed" a pen dry of ink.

For a writer, surely there is something absolutely magical about using a pen so much it has run out of ink.  It means you did your job, even if you did not do it well.  Scribbling and coating a page in blotches does not count.  That is more pen-suicidal and not really helpful.  Even the pen is saddened at that kind of death.  Not much purpose in that death.   Give it a grand exit, with spilling like Paris' blood all over the Capulet tomb.  

 Sometimes my thoughts of writing slow, and I blame the pen; is it straining against the digging of its own grave?  I have made the pen aware of its own mortality and it pulls against the page sometimes.  It knows each word I bleed from it brings it that much closer to death.  Surely that is the reason why my words falter every time I try to put them to paper.  The cost in ink-blood is just too much.

So the silence of the pen is really only self-preservation, terrified it might be putting more blood and life essence on to a page than I do.  I shake my head, disappointed that I have made the pen aware of itself.   I almost feel guilty, reminded of the story of the pig and its commitment to making breakfast.  My success relies too much upon the death of the pen (and killing a metaphor as well).  The pen is my pig I guess, doomed to death if I am successful in putting ideas to paper.

No wonder it holds back on me and leaves my best words unsaid.  I have them in my head, and I marvel at the ideas that spin around in my brain sometimes.   But when I pick up the pen, it refuses to write and convinces me instead to try other tasks.  Too often, I listen.  Often, it hides from me, diving under a table and perhaps hoping the Muse will leave me before I get it in hand.  "Ah, here it is," I murmur, but by then the words have passed on to someone else.  I am left holding a pen in hand that has been granted yet another stay of execution.

What if I die before this pen?   Or what if we are connected, that with my words bleeding upon the page, we both pass on, and the pen is the only thing tying me to "this mortal coil"?  What if it is my guardian angel of a sort, and I am not realizing the service it does me when it allows me to say nothing.

Ah, all the things I wonder as I put pen to paper and pretend to write.