Sunday, 17 November 2013

Learning to Write with a Pencil


I have a confession to make. This might seem like something silly and dumb, but I’m going to write about it anyway. Prepare for the cheesiest blog post you’ll ever read.

I used to hate people who write with pencils. It’s like a secret jealously I had. It seemed to always be the same people... who had the perfect assignments, the perfect projects, perfect examinations, everything just so perfectly flawless. Literally. I found this frustrating. Why can’t they write in pen? Where they don’t have to stop and annoy the rest of the class with their repetitive sharpening of the dull lead in a middle of an exam. Or leave their eraser shavings all over the desk and ground as they left the room – so someone who wrote with a pen could come along and throw the shavings to the ground so the pen writers don’t have to have residue left on their belongings. Or even worse, some of the pencil writers even had to have a certain kind of pencil to write with or they would practically refused to write notes for the class.

Perhaps these pencil writers had a pattern in their lives? Maybe they ate breakfast every morning because they knew if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be able to perform to their best of ability for the rest of the day. To sharpen up a pencil doesn’t sound like a lot of work when you know it will help make things perform better. Or maybe these pencil writers took the time every day to do some exercising and self-meditating to make sure their bodies and minds were in sync with each other. To find the perfect balance in their lives because they knew the importance of staying healthy. This is probably why finding the perfect pencil is so important to some people. Or perhaps these pencil writers had a friend they took the time to talk to – to push the stress and anxiety out of their lives and to allow things to fall in place, allow the past to stay, and to keep moving forward in life. If you view the eraser shavings as fixing mistakes and moving on to succeed rather than a nuisance that is annoying and needs to be cleaned up so it’s not left as residue for someone else.  There is so many explanations of why a writer would write with a pencil. To be able to find a balance, fix mistakes, move forward, and help them ace life without dwelling on their mistakes and letting others see them.

To a pen writer, this sound absolutely ridiculous. Who has the time to find the perfect pencil? It’s just lead in the end. To sharpen is a waste of time. Sometimes it takes several minutes, or even a new pencil when the lead breaks, to find the perfect end point! And to erase is a joke. Who has time to flip the pencil around, spend time doing some squiggles around the mistakes just to correct them… when it is much easier to stroke them out? Why would someone go to the trouble of fixing the mistakes, when you can finish the assignment much faster?

I’m almost 19 years old and I’m just learning how to write with a pencil.

Why?

Because I just realized that ink is permanent. The scratched out mistakes are always going to be there no matter how many strokes you try to make. In fact, the more strokes there is, the worse it looks. No matter how many times I look back at my past, those mistakes are always popping out at me and I try to hide them under more layers of ink. Even white out eventually peels away. Mistakes seem to be worse in pen – maybe it’s just in my mind but I’m beginning to wonder if eventually other people will see these mistakes. And that’s not the kind of person I want to remembered for – the girl who wrote her life in pen.

I want to be a pencil writer. Who have it all together. Who spends her time preparing for a healthy morning – sharpening my pencil… making things better. I want to be able to spend time fixing mistakes by erasing them – dealing with problems as they happen and spend some time to find a better solution rather than waiting until later to try to eliminate them by strokes of ink. Because one day someone is going to read my story – my life. And I don’t all my mistakes popping out at them.

I don’t want to be a pen writer anymore.