In 1951 while writing the first draft of East of Eden John Steinbeck wrote a letter a day to his editor Pascal Covici. It gives an insight into his thought processes, as he is actually writing the book. In one entry he said this:
It occurs to me that everyone likes or wants to be an eccentric and this is my eccentricity, my pencil trifling.
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On March 23rd Good Friday Steinbeck was clearly obsessed not with plot or character but his pencils.
You know I am really stupid. For years I have looked for the perfect pencil. I have found very good one’s but never the perfect one. And all the time it was not the pencils but me. A pencil that is alright one day is no good another day. For example yesterday I used a special pencil, soft and fine, and it floated over the paper most wonderfully. So this morning I try the same kind. And they crack on me. Points break and all hell is let loose. This is the day when I am stabbing the paper.
He goes on to say he has three types of pencils for hard writing days and soft writing days. Then he says:
I have also some super soft pencils which I do not use very often because I must feel as delicate as a rose petal to use them. And I am not often that way.
As delicate as a rose petal – how lovely! One day stabbing and breaking and one day soft and delicate.
When in my normal writing position the metal of the pencil eraser touches my hand I retire that pencil. Then Tom and Catbird (his children) get them.
Oh, and how he loves his electric pencil sharpener:
I have never had anything that I used more and was more help to me. To sharpen the number of pencils I use every day … by a hand sharpener would not only take too long but would tire my hand out.
As a writer, it is all too easy to fetishize the tools of your trade and indulge in magical thinking along the lines of:
“If only I had that beautiful note book/pen/pencil/cabin in the wood/tree house/house by the sea/lake/Lake Como actually, No, make that a palazzo in Venice/ oh no wait what about mountains? Actually just give me a garden, any garden.” Then I would write a masterpiece.
Looking out onto the street, outside my window I’m currently looking at a smashed TV screen and some plastic bottles rolling in the gutter. Usually I’m also looking at the backs of BT engineers fiddling with wires in those green street cabinets. I worry about their knees. The overground part of the District Line is about 15 meters away. I live on a main road. Someone is usually drilling somewhere very loudly along the road. This is where I’ve written all my books.
There’s the odd occasion when I long for a house with a sea view. When it was 35 degrees for a few days in a row this summer and they were tarmacking the road directly outside, the noise and the heat were such that I got to thinking about where I would live if I won the lottery – Iceland came to mind – but that’s rare. I write where I live like most writers, for better or worse.
And I’m sure you realise that I’d never do anything as crass as buy certain types of pencils thinking they might turn me into a Nobel Prize winner. Oh, no…
Whoops, I’m definitely feeling the metal here! One for the kiddies I think…
Steinbeck used Blackwing pencils and if you’d like to take a look at their very desirable website here it is. They even produced some lovely purple ones last month in honour of the passing of the 19th Amendment and women getting the vote in America on August 18th 1920.
What are the tools of your trade? Do you have a favourite?
victoria blake 
This is a charming post, Victoria – I am going to save it and read it again. Recently I’ve been falling into what I shall henceforward call the “Lake Como trap” – imagining that I would write so much more and so much better if I were in a more inspiring location. But surely the duty of a writer is to create an inspiring location… Thank you for provoking the thought!
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Thank you, Susan. During lockdown I did crave a garden but I would have hardly written any more or better if I could have sat on a bit of lawn looking at my begonias as opposed to staring at the somewhat/very scraggy geraniums on my windowsill. I also find beautiful views weirdly trapping. It’s not to say I don’t like looking at them but looking at them and writing never seem to go hand in hand!
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In our present house I have had my desk in the attic, cellar, shed and now in a back bedroom. I come in the door, ironing to the left, desk to the right, with my back to the ironing board. I look out at the leaves of a Cornus tree with a little sky above. Pencils don’t distract me but bluetits often do.
I have always loved John Steinbeck. Cannery Row being a favourite from my early teens. Thank you again and keep on brightening my days.
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Hi Keir how lovely to hear from you. Blue tits – how fab. I get the odd parakeet, they’re very loud and also magpies, even louder! And then there are the children, now returned to school, across the way. All through lockdown we had someone working on the flat next door which made Maureen exclaim. ‘What’s he building in there the Taj Mahal? because it was taking so bloody long!
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Oh, I hear his pain. It has to be absolutely right! I once asked to do a metaphysics exam in pencil because of the way the pencil flowed over the paper and I was met with great suspicion – I don’t know what they thought I was going to do(!)
The right paintbrush is a thing of glory!
Now, about that cabin on a lake …
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To think a pencil could be such a suspicious thing! I’ve never been to the Italian Lakes but if I did I imagine I would just sit there and stare!
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You and me both, Lovely! 😯💛
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A great post Vicky. If I had to write with a pencil I suppose I might be a bit obsessed with them. I could definitely do with the house with the sea view, or the country view, or the garden!
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Even though we’ve got parks nearby I definitely had ‘garden’ cravings over the last 6 months. The traffic has been terrible recently because Hammersmith Bridge is closed so all that traffic is coming past us to go over Putney Bridge and then there were the road works …
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