Writing

Pencil on paper is making a comeback for me

Since last year, I have been pushing aside biros and writing with ink in favour of writing with a mechanical pencil.

Actually, plural pencils.

Since last year, I have been using a pencil very much like the Rotring Tikky above. There’s just something about the way it feels to write on paper with one of these mechanical pencils; a tactile sensation like that of writing with a fountain pen, only it will not blot on the paper.

I caught the bug when I Kickstarted one of these:-

The ForeverPen is one of the world’s tiniest pens. Its secret is that, apart from being tiny, its tip is also silver.

ForeverPen brought back the fine art of silverpoint.

Silverpoint, in Renaissance Europe, produced artworks of exceptional beauty: art which looked like this.

I can guarantee I couldn’t draw anywhere like that for toffee. But writing - that, I can do, and I have taken to writing on paper with pencils and mechanical pencils with a passion.

Beginning this year, I’m taking to writing erotic poetry in a little handbook. Often, I draught up the poem in an ordinary reporter’s spiral notepad. I like to think that, if the public take note at all, they may be thinking that I’m actually writing up a shopping list or something.

Writing with a mechanical pencil is as close as I imagine I’ll get to writing with silverpoint. I mean, look what £199 will get me:-

But I’ll settle for a Faber-Castell 0.7 pencil, and Rotring 0.7 B grade leads inctead.