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The Black Pen AwakesJuly 25, 2007 I do most of my rough-drafting in longhand, using a fountain pen and bottled ink. At last count I had six pens and five colors of ink. In recent months they've mostly been snoozing in their boxes under light layers of dust while I spent more time at the computer. The only pen on my desk has been the one with green ink. The pen itself is a sort of green, but not the flat, bright green on the color chart. It's a multifaceted underwater green, olive suffused with brown and flecked with light. Lately I've been using it for a Squatters' Speakeasy scene in progress; rather, a scene not in progress. Sometimes the muses won't speak through my fingers if my fingers are anywhere near a keyboard. They will speak through the ink in a pen held by those same fingers. Go figure. Writing starts when you stop trying to figure and just get on with it. Anyway, yesterday morning the muses went off on a tangent. For several pages, the green ink had been flowing from Mama Segredo's memories. She was thinking about how when you drive down a dark road you can't see to either side; people could be partying out there and you'd never know it unless you saw a light. Horses wear blinders so they won't see things that spook them. Where the hell did that come from? So far Mama Segredo has disclosed no knowledge of or strong feelings about horses. My Allie, on the other hand, is a bit of a spookster. Whatever was happening, it wasn't (quite) Squatters though it was clearly a riff on a Squatterish theme. I wanted to keep it in the same notebook, but I wanted to set it off. Clearly it was time to waken the black pen from its slumber. Black Pen takes care of notes and tangents. Black Pen uses Fireball ink -- a bright reddish orange that dries a pleasant pumpkin color. After months of disuse, the ink had dried up in the barrel and crusted in the point. So I stood at the sink and sluiced the point with tepid water; the red-orange puddle in the dish drainer was quite dramatic, and my fingers are now subtly tinged with Fireball. Black Pen and Fireball were happy to be back in service; they went on for several pages, which I'll post later. Right now I'm going to wake my sleeping dog and go for a walk.
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