The Pen Is Mightier. The Computer Has No Pulse.

This morning I made a cup of de-caf, took out a pen, found a lightly used Moleskin and started writing. With a pen. On paper.

I wrote a letter to my muse, asking her to come back to me. I told her that I saw her as a kite that had gotten so high in the sky that she was only visible as a little dot in the sky. Even the kite string that attached her to me, disappeared after a while so I wasn’t even sure we we tethered any longer.

I told her that she was like a big fish that I had hooked, but couldn’t seem to reel in. She was strongly in control of our destiny, pulling the little boat of me way out into the pathless sea.

I’ve been trying for well over a year, to get my muse to go digital. “C’mon Muse,” I write, (actually, I call her Stella). “C’mon Stella,” I scribble, “You know my handwriting is atrocious, and if you say something wonderful, I will only have to transcribe this into Scrivener anyway, so why can’t we learn to relate to each other on the keyboard?”

“No,” she says, “I hate the keyboard. The electricity mucks up our vibe. I need your pulse. It activates the ink. Actually, I wish you would go back to your old fountain pen. I really liked that fountain pen. Gel ink? It’s so processed.”

I am going to draw the line at the fountain pen, I don’t even think I have one anymore, but I am going back to the ink pen and the paper because I need her. I can’t do this alone. When I do have a pen in my hand, and an open notebook, I can feel her getting closer. My brain starts to fire in a different way, my thoughts have a different voice. It’s as if she is in my head,  whispering: “Loosen your grip, Kath, let your eyes go out of focus, let ME write.”

I know she’ll come back to me eventually, but only if she sees me holding a pen. It’s killing me that we have to do it like this because typing is so much more efficient: cleaner, faster, and infinitely more edit-able.

But I need her.

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