Down to the Nub

Memories of my childhood are vivid but disjointed, like a movie trailer that flashes various exciting bits, but not in context and out of order. Thus I can't be sure which of the stories I wrote as a child was the first.

But I do have clarity around my first memory of being a writer. I can't tell you what the story was about. But the intensity of focus; the world falling away; the compulsion to keep putting words down no matter what; the pure primal joy of creation -- that is what has stuck with me.

I was 6? 7? 8? I wasn't at home, but ... visiting a relative? In a guest room? All I can see in my minds eye is a bed, a small notebook, and a short pencil. It was either early in the morning, or late at night -- either way, the room had the kind of quiet that come when you are the only one awake. I believe I didn't have a book with me, or I had already finished my book. Because otherwise I would have been reading.

With nothing else to do, I started writing a story in the little notebook. It was probably about a cluster of friends and their adventures, because that was the sort of book I often read. As the pages filled with writing, the pencil grew duller. I turned it this way and that to find an angle that could still produce a mark.

At last I had to admit the futility of these efforts. Since I had no pencil sharpener, and no other writing implement, I started picking at the wood to expose more of the lead. It was slow going and I often had to pause in my writing to repeat the process.

I was not the type of child who would tiptoe from the room and rifle through drawers to find a new pencil. That kind of boldness was for people in stories.

Finally my pencil was little more than a smear of eraser, the metal ring, and a tiny jag of wood holding the lead in place. Then I realized I was on the last page of the notebook -- but I still had story left in me. I wrote with smaller and smaller letters, abandoning the ruled lines, rotating the page and filling in the margins. I doubt even I could have deciphered it later.

But I finished the story. I felt then the distinct satisfaction of completing a writing project, which I still feel each time I click that "submit" button on Vocal.

I've reflected on that image of the stubby pencil and overstuffed page, wondering what has made this frame stand out in my memory when all other details have faded away -- including the story I wrote. It strikes me that this experience was not only my introduction to the heady process of putting ideas into words, but also my first exposure to the prosaic realities that inevitably intrude on the writing cocoon. You can't be a writer without something to write with, and space to write in.

That's the difference between imagining and creating.

I floated through my own unsubstantial world as a child. I was a space cadet, daydreamer, mind in the clouds, lose-your-head-if-it-wasn't-attached type of kid. The characters and scenarios that filled my mind were to me more real--and more interesting--than anything my senses could access. My voracious consumption of the written word fueled these imaginings.

So that time when I filled the notebook in the spare room(?), making my story leap from mind to page, was a fulcrum. This was the moment my relationship with words extended from consumer to creator. I wasn't just an imaginer. I could be an author.

Many years later, that pencil nub still represents to me the difficulties in the passage of ideas from the flighty realm of the mind, to the tangible (or electronic) written artifact. No matter how many times I make that journey, it is always a struggle to leave my cramped, smudged scrawl imprinted on the universe.

Where once I ran out of pencil lead and paper, now I run out of time and energy and confidence. I have to squish my writing into smaller and smaller spaces of life. I'm guessing that for a lot of you reader-writers, that's probably your story too.

So, as I hover over the memory of my child self, scraping at that pencil stump to claim every last stroke of graphite, I'm also cheering you on to keep clambering over whatever hurdles you face in being a writer.

Because when you finally squeeze in that last word ... it's all worth it, is it not?

*

Thank you for reading. Here's another, gloomier take on a similar theme (apparently my pencil was particularly nubby the day I wrote this poem):