Those who follow me on twitter (@rebeccatinnelly, in case you’re interested) may be familiar with my recent pen struggle. I have a favourite pen. It is a black ball point pen with retractable nib picked up from a hotel lobby in Greece by my parents years and years ago. It is really comfortable to write with and as a result it is the pen I have used to plan my novel. I have grown rather attached to it. It has become my lucky pen.
Queue disaster: the damn thing ran out of ink and I couldn’t find a refill for love nor money. I tried writing with other pens, only to be convinced that my ideas were not transferring onto the page quite so well. I searched through every pen in the house to see if any of their cartridges would fit, but to no avail. The pen is irreplaceable: even the hotel logo on the pen has worn off so I couldn’t contact the hotel to find out who made it. And I would have done, believe you me.
THANK GOD FOR THE INTERNET. After much searching I have found a refill that fits and my pen is working again. Hooray! Now I just have the fear that it will happen again and the company will stop making the refills or someone else will buy them all or….
I could go on and on. Is anyone else this superstitious about their writing things? This damn pen has taken over a lot of my thinking for the past week. But I will not give it up.
Rebecca Tinnelly 