Member-only story
The Time I Discovered I Loved Writing
Day 31 of Keeley’s writing challenge…phew…I made it
Do I love writing? Can I say I’ve never really given it much thought. It’s like saying do I love reading?
It’s just something I do and have always done.
When I first learned to write in grade one, we used slate pencils on a slate. We used to sharpen the slate pencil on the concrete under our classroom and clean the slate with a wet piece of rag. In grade two, I learned to write with a pencil on paper. I was a very neat writer — apparently I still am — although I hardly ever write anything by hand these days.
In grade for or five, we had pens (not biros) that we dipped in an ink well in the middle of our desk. We had blotting paper to dry the ink and to make sure it didn’t smudge. We learned to write copperplate writing in a copybook where you had to copy whatever was written on one line as closely resembling it as you could on the line underneath.
Those readers under 70 probably have no idea what I’m talking about!
After a few years of struggling with pen and ink, we graduated to fountain pens (pictured)— the ink was stored in a little cylinder inside the barrel of the pen so you didn’t have to keep dipping it into ink.
