Zestful Blog Post #199
This will just take a minute, but you've stayed with me this far, you will thank me. I’ve
been doing a lot of writing lately with wood-cased pencils, premium ones that
write nice and smooth. They tend to be expensive, so I’ve been
conscious of making best use of them. ‘Best use’ of a pencil means wasting as
little as possible, which means minimizing the number of times it goes into the
sharpener.
Also, as a handwriter of first drafts, I’m always looking
for ways to minimize hand/arm fatigue.
When you use a writing instrument such as a ballpoint pen,
it makes sense to apply the point more or less vertically to the paper, to let more
of the ball contact the page. But if you apply a pencil that way,
you dull the point fairly quickly, and the cramped position
of your hand promotes discomfort. But if you hold the pencil like this,
on a much shallower angle, and—this is key—if you rotate it
every so often, slightly, in your fingers, you’ll retain the point longer and
need to sharpen it less often. And see how the hand is in a more lengthened,
relaxed position? I don't know why it took me so long to learn this.
Here is a closeup, the one on the left showing the planes or
facets of a point used on a proper slant with occasional rotation, versus a
point dulled by clueless vertical positioning.
[Photos by ES]
I rest my (wood) case.
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