My very first letter soaked. I used an old tomato sauce jar lid filled with water to rehydrate the dried out ink on my grandfather’s old nib, then overturned the lid and spilled the water all over my letter.
My friend Jeff had warned me that the nib is directional: you pull the nib across the paper. It’s like petting a dog so her hair lies flat instead of against the fur, making it stand up awkwardly. You hardly need to press at all. A gentle stroke will do.
After drying off my sodden, splotchy letter, I resumed writing, passionately pressing the nib into the finally dry page, utterly disobeying Jeff’s advice. Impressive, Poe-esque gobbets of ink sprayed across the paper, delighting me. Je suis artist! However, I was less than delighted when I accidentally shanked the letter and fouled the tip by gouging the nib end full of paper, the fibers sticking out like a micro-hairball.
Delightful or not, it turns out “shank” is actually the name of the body of the nib. A shank points not only to the difficulty and danger but also the powerful appeal of this deadly instrument. “The pen is mightier than the sword,” they say. Certainly, the shank adds a new tangibility to that old expression about the pen and the sword.
Don’t believe me? Nib’s sharp!
If I hadn’t learned my lesson by shanking the paper, I would have learned it bloody well had I written with the same pressure on my hand. I was pressing far too hard!
But back to the power of the shank: Just picture a writer filled with a passion combined with a gentle yet deadly attention to detail, wielding an inked nib. Whoa!
Have you ever used a traditional quill made of a cut feather plunged into hot sand? What about one of these metal shanks?
If you’re looking for a way to write which finely picks up any direction or misdirection from your hands, I absolutely recommend the quill and ink. Quill-and-ink’s an honest tool/medium… as far as story making instruments go. You might say those who live by the shank die by the shank, in both crime and literary criticism.
In any case, the shank may also save your life. Diplomacy saves lives. So can the right story at the right time. And, there’s always the added benefit of cross-over in anything requiring manual dexterity. In that regard, I’d wager writing with a quill is good training for scalpel-wielding medical students, too.
So, if you haven’t tried it yet, I recommend writing a letter with one of these metal shanks. Or you could go the even more old school route with a quill made of a cut feather tempered by plunging it into a jar of hot sand.
How did writing with an old-school pen go for you? Do you like the nib, or do you prefer the trusty old ball-point? If you do use a ball-point, you do realize you’re writing with an oxymoron, right? Remember: the shank is sharper, more direct, cooler than an oxymoron, and mightier than the sword.
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