Ear­li­er this week, Lily Brett wrote about why she did­n’t become a lawyer. Her newest book, Lola Ben­sky: A Nov­el (Coun­ter­point), is now avail­able. She will be blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.

I love pens and pen­cils. I have loved them all my life. When­ev­er and wher­ev­er I trav­el, I buy pens and pen­cils. I am not a pen or a pen­cil snob. I buy them in super­mar­kets and street stalls as well as every sort of sta­tionery store. I don’t need to go to a Mont Blanc store or own a lim­it­ed edi­tion Tiffany’s pen.

To tell you the truth, I don’t need to own any more pens. I have a draw­er full of pens. Ball­point pens, roller ball pens, foun­tain pens. I also have a draw­er full or pen­cils. All sorts of pen­cils. Short pen­cils, long pen­cils, carpenter’s pen­cils, char­coal pen­cils. I even have pen­cils inscribed as Dixon Beginner’s. They are black and thick­er than reg­u­lar pencils.

Hav­ing all these pens and pen­cils doesn’t pre­vent me from want­i­ng more pen­cils and pens. I cov­et oth­er people’s pen­cils in the same way that oth­ers might cov­et a friend or neighbor’s house or car or husband.

My lust for pens and pen­cils start­ed when I was a child. My par­ents and I were refugees to Aus­tralia. My par­ents were a rare sta­tis­tic. Two Jews who were mar­ried to each oth­er before the war and who each sur­vived Nazi death camps. 

In Aus­tralia, we lived in one room before mov­ing to a very small cot­tage. I looked at the foun­tain pens in a news agency, a block and a half away from our small cot­tage, for over two years before, one day, in a moment of great need and pos­si­ble reck­less­ness, I stole one. I wasn’t caught. I guard­ed that foun­tain pen as though it was Eliz­a­beth Taylor’s Krupp diamond.

I have writ­ten all of my books by hand. I know exact­ly which pens and pen­cils I used for each of my books. I do the actu­al writ­ing with pens. For the last few years I have used a Pilot G‑2 07 retractable gel ink roller ball pen. Always with black ink. I nev­er write in any oth­er col­or. In pen­cil, I cir­cle and draw arrows around what­ev­er parts of my text I want to move or change. For my lat­est nov­el, Lola Ben­sky, I used emer­ald green Cri­teri­um pen­cils, made in France. I bought them in a tiny, almost hole-in-the-wall, sta­tionery store in a small, moun­tain town 170 miles north of Mex­i­co City. They were so entic­ing and so cheap. I bought twen­ty-five of them.

As soon as I pick up a pen­cil or a pen, a sense of calm comes over me. I feel that that pen or pen­cil is direct­ly con­nect­ed to my core, to my heart, my lungs, my arter­ies. Noth­ing sep­a­rates us. Of course I type on a com­put­er and an iPad and a smart­phone. And I take great care with my sen­tences on each of those devices. Too much care — who needs to search for com­mas or apos­tro­phes when you’re typ­ing with one or two fin­gers. And I do love key­boards. And the sounds they make. But they are not con­nect­ed to me in the same way as a pen or pencil. 

I was recent­ly in Seat­tle. I went into a huge Rite Aid store. We don’t have super­sized Rite Aid stores in my part of Man­hat­tan. I always think I love big stores. That is until I am actu­al­ly inside one. After five min­utes of feel­ing lost and dis­ori­ent­ed in a seem­ing­ly end­less aisle, I left. I did leave with a bag of ten dark yel­low, eras­er-topped pen­cils. Paid for, of course. 

Lily Brett has writ­ten six nov­els, three col­lec­tions of essays, and sev­en vol­umes of poet­ry. Her work fre­quent­ly explores the lives of Holo­caust sur­vivors and their chil­dren, the expe­ri­ences of mod­ern women, women’s rela­tion­ship with food, and life in New York City. Her most recent book, Lola Ben­sky: A Nov­el (Coun­ter­point), is now available.