A Pen and a Cup of Coffee
As 2025 approaches, I’m sharing a journal entry penned when I was on the cusp of becoming a published writer. After 30 years of weekly newspaper columns in Missouri and 225 weekly blogs since June 2020, I share this reflection on epistolary friendships maintained across decades and miles that continue to give me hope and provide light, even as we face daunting challenges in the years ahead.
Cathy Salter 1994
In recent years, I have grown to love a good fountain pen. I remember having one years ago when I was a high school student, but carrying around a bottle of ink wasn't very convenient. School desks in the 1950s, even into the 1960s, still had a hole in the upper right-hand corner of the desktop, designed to hold an ink well. But by then, the wells had gone dry. Cartridges and ballpoint pens were in.
A fountain pen has an altogether different feel in one's hand than a ballpoint or disposable rolling writer pen is ever able to achieve. Mine is a Sailor—black and honey-colored tortoise shell floating in Lucite, with a gold nib and band. An hour of writing, pen point floating on liquid as it meets paper, empties the pen's reservoir. Each time I start to write, I begin by immersing my pen into one of several glass ink bottles on my desk. It is part of the ceremony of writing. For words to flow, ink must flow first. The pen must be ready to meet the page. As I look at my bottle of Quink Parker black ink, I realize that all of the words that I create this morning are floating in that glass bottle. Like a nomad whose travels are tied to the next oasis for water, I am drawn to these ink wells for words.
The pen unscrews, revealing an empty ink chamber. With a twisting motion of the end of the pen, an interior mechanism descends to draw up the ink and the words. After a period of staring beyond pen and page, out spill the words. The whole business of writing seems a bit like magic when you think of the trip each word has to make before it takes shape on a page.
Words flow most easily when we feel passionately about something and feel the need to express that passion. For some, expression finds its way out through spoken words or strong actions. For me, expression comes through writing and becomes stronger the more it is practiced. It is a conversation we have with ourselves, a way of thinking about and expressing our feelings.
Writing as a form of expression has not disappeared, but it has become less personal, less passionate, and less frequently the mode taken. I am not speaking of novels or books of poetry. I am referring more to correspondences with friends as well as journal writing—the forms of expression that take the most time and effort to record.
When I was a child, my grandmother became my secret pal. Greeting cards with secret messages grew into letters filled with thoughts and news of what was going on in our lives. It was a correspondence that continued for more than forty years across thousands of miles. Our letters became an ongoing conversation that kept us connected through our thoughts during long periods of separation.
Maintaining correspondences with friends requires time and careful attention, like keeping a cup of coffee hot. Not just warm, which it becomes the minute cream is added, but hand-warming hot from the top of the cup to the bottom. The real trick is in sitting still. Doing just that one thing. Focusing on just that cup of coffee or on finding the right word.
A writing life, like that cup of coffee, is richer and more satisfying if you work at keeping it hot, work on maintaining the right balance of cream to coffee. Writing with a good fountain pen is rather like the difference between drinking a cup of coffee from a porcelain diner mug (mine is from the Moose Cafe) and a Styrofoam cup. It takes more time to wash the porcelain mug than it does to toss the disposable cup, but I guarantee it will be a better cup of coffee every time.
Get a hot cup of coffee and pick up a pen that you like. Then work on sitting still. If you listen to yourself long enough, the worlds will spill out of your pen, and you will have taken the first step to adding writing to your life. The pen, the ink, and the coffee are merely part of the ceremony. Ultimately, you have to sit still long enough to make writing happen.
There is poetry in each of us. Writing is a way to give that poetry a voice. When it happens, it is a rich experience, indeed.
