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| The Two Cross Pens that I favor these days |
It all began as a monthly letter that I emailed to a few friends and family. Click here to write my first letter. With time, the distribution grew to between four and five hundred. In 2009, I joined the modern world and started this blog. For a while, I continued one letter a month that I both posted here and emailed. Eventually, I stopped emailing monthly letters and began to post here exclusively and more frequently than once a month. When it was a monthly letter, the letters averaged two-thousand words. With the increased number of posts, the average word count per post dropped to around five or six hundred words. This is equivalent to a page of handwriting which used to be my daily habit when I started this project in 2004.
In these anniversary letters, I have written about my favorite pens, when and where I write, and I have even posted an example or links to example of a fine piece of writing.
As for pens, I still prefer ballpoints. I have dabbled with fountain pens. They are all the rage these days and I have some very nice Parkers and Waterman fountain pens. Yet, I find them two much fuss and bother having to deal with caps and ink refilling and all. I also have some fine roller ball pens. I don’t use them on a daily basis either. I will, however, use the rollerballs and fountain pens when I write thank you notes. I like gel pens and favor Uniball over the more popular Pilot G2 series. Both strike bold and colorful lines but both of these brands are throwaways and I do perfer to sport more elegant writing instruments. I still like Caran D’Ache, Cross, Waterman, and Parker. I even have Rotrings and a Mont Blanc that get into the mix occasionally. Lately, I have been favoring two Cross pens for no particular reason that comes to mind. It has been this way over the years. I will favor one brand for a year or so and then switch it up.
Where do I write? I am pretty much down to three places. Most of my writing is done in my home. I either sit at my desk in my study using my desktop computer or in my easy chair, legs propped up on an ottoman, and my laptop, well, on my lap. The third venue is my office at North Park. I began this project by handwriting a page a day in a notebook. Somewhere in the depths of the Great Recession I started handwriting less and typing more. Today, I type pretty much type at least ninety-five percent of the time. It is too convenient. I do miss the handwriting.
Forget about proofreading. I am horrible at it and have been consistently horrible at it since I had to first write what we used to call a “theme” back in the second grade. It’s not that I don’t proofread. I do. But I have to seriously focus and read my work at least twice. Even when I can do that, I only minimize the number of phrasing errors and misspellings. I would love to have the luxury of having a secretary and editor at my beck and call. That is not likely to ever happen, but a boy can dream, can’t he?
As I go through periods favoring one pen brand or another, my writing style follows a similar kind of ebb and flow. If I am not careful, I am very capable of writing some impressive run-on sentences. It just happens. In an attempt to make a very clever observation or point, I will create lengthy and convoluted sentences that border on the unintelligible. Such a period has just ended. Now, I am purposely trying to write shorter sentences and bring out my inner Hemingway. That is, assuming, that I have an inner Hemingway.
When it comes to the best examples of writing I have read, I must simply refer to my reflection on reading To Kill a Mockingbird and Where the Crawdads Sing over the holidays.
I love doing this. It forces me to think about a wide variety of topics more deeply and how I react to them. I do believe it has made me a clearer thinker and communicator… run on sentences notwithstanding.
Thank you all for reading this blog and providing all the feedback you do. It means the world to me.
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