I prefer writing everything by pencil: the shhh-shhh-shhh of the lead on the page and the satisfying scritch of crossing something out feels like I’m actually making something. The origin of the word poet translates to “one who makes.” To me, clicks from the keyboard sound like high heels walking in circles. Maddening. I try to use pencil as much as possible. The smell of freshly sharpened pencils still makes me feel like anything is possible. Like I might write a recipe for first-day-of-school ricotta pancakes. Or a new poem where the speaker wears jelly shoes and carries a Trapper Keeper.
I am devoted to Blackwing pencils the way some people are devoted to a particular birdcall or a favorite sweater. These pencils are not cheap, which is part of what makes me slow down with them. But they aren’t out of reach either. It’s what I call “a delicious indulgence.” You don’t feel sick after buying a box. Each pencil feels like perhaps it is okay to linger, to listen, to get a line wrong—and try again.
I almost always write my poems in pencil first. Ink feels too declarative, too sure of itself. Pencil allows for doubt, erasure, the soft mercy of revision. The Blackwing’s graphite slide-glides in a way that makes my hand believe it knows where it’s going, even when my mind might not. There is a particular hush when the tip meets paper—a faint scratch that reminds me I am here, awake, paying attention.
Growing up, I loved stationery with an almost embarrassing intensity. Pens, notebooks, erasers shaped like fruit. But I also noticed, early on, that the hands modeling these objects—the hands promising a beautiful, orderly future—were always white. Perfect nails, pale skin, a certain kind of ease. I never saw my hands reflected there. Never saw brown fingers smudged with graphite, never saw the mess, the work of it, and most importantly, never saw the possibility.
So maybe this is part of my devotion now in taking a leap of faith every time I pick up a pencil and write: choosing tools that feel worthy of my time and my stories, tools that stay with me through drafts and crossings-out and quiet mornings and late nights. The Blackwing is sturdy. It doesn’t rush me. It feels like a collaborator.
If you’re looking for sheer productivity, there are faster tools. But if you’re looking for intimacy—if you want to feel your thoughts arrive through your fingertips—this is the pencil I reach for every time. It reminds me that writing is not just about making something but about noticing, being open and alive to all the senses, which is perhaps one of the earliest ways we learn how to love.
—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Night Owl (Ecco, 2026)
Photo credit: Dustin Parsons