I’m a pretty normal person, most of the time, but I do admit that I can be a bit odd at times. If you’ve ever seen me in a Staples store, drooling over their selection of notebooks, blank journals, and assorted pens, in various colors, you know what I’m talking about. I have an unnatural addiction for blank notebooks or journals. And writing utensils. I could spend hours in stores that sell these things, trying to figure out if the point on that pen is fine enough for my tastes, or if the pages in the journal are college ruled, or not lined at all, which I prefer when writing in a journal. But when writing fiction, I need lines. College rule mostly, as they are narrow, and provide more room per page than wider lines.

See, I’m going crazy talking about things that most people would care less about. And don’t even get me started on ink color, or how there are these new pencils that are silver, but with black wood, instead of the usual tan.

I know I’m not alone in this obsession. I once read an article on Lifehacker about someone’s quest to find the perfect pens. I enjoyed that article immensely. One of these days I’ll actually remember which pens they recommended and try them out.

I can’t remember when my obsession started. It may have been at a very young age, in middle school perhaps. This would have been the time that I first started writing stories. So I would have needed notebooks and pens with which to do so. At that age, I thought my writing was the best stuff in the world. Looking back on it now, I can simply say that it wasn’t totally awful, but definitely had room for improvement.

But getting back to the point, I loved buying notebooks. I wanted lots of them, so that I could fill them with my words. But sometimes, I would just keep them around to have options. I wanted to be able to choose which notebook I wanted to write in. It may have also been spurred on by my love for the book Harriet the Spy. Harriet always carried around notebooks, and had many that she wrote in.

As a writer, this all makes sense to me. But as an outsider, I can imagine how someone could find my obsession a bit odd. And it’s not like I even fill all the notebooks I keep buying. I have several notebooks that are still waiting for my words to caress their tender pages. Sometimes, when I find a notebook with a pretty cover, or one with a folder built in, if the price is right, it’s mine. I tend to go for the recycled paper notebooks now, as the paper is softer, smoother, and easier to write on.

I just found one the other day that is slightly smaller than the regulation size notebook students use. So it’s tiny enough to fit into a larger sized purse. Of which I also have an obsession with, but that is for an entirely different post, for another day.

My newest obsession is with the Sharpie pen. In blue ink. It writes so divinely that I want to write with it all the time. The ink flows so nicely from this pen that I can write as fast as I think, which at times can be very fast. I’ve written some of my best stuff with this pen. The green ink is also nice, and if they ever had a purple one, that would be my favorite. But the blue is best for now.

I just saw the other day that they now have gel ink pens that are erasable. Erasable! I would have gotten it but it was a medium point, and that’s just way too big for me. Anything bigger than .5mm is just too much ink. It smudges, and you can’t fit as many words on a line. I’ve had my own wars with such pens, and it’s not pretty.

In my college days, I was in love with this red and silver pen, of which I still have, although it’s not the original I once had. I had to purchase a replacement after I lost it one day, walking around between classes. I think it was a Bic pen, and it came with replacement ink cartridges that you could buy. I still use it sometimes when I run out of the sharpie pens. And it works well, but the ink isn’t as smooth as the sharpie.

You might think I’m crazy going bananas over such things. But this is what I do. These are the simple things in life that make me happy. I surround myself with blank notebooks to coerce myself into writing more. When I write, I write more, and edit less, when I really sit and write it down, manually, without a computer. I’ve tried several times to write my novel by sitting at the laptop, typing, but I can never write as much as when I take out my pen and paper and get down to business. There’s just this thing about physically writing. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s as if the words are more alive on a piece of paper than they are on a computer screen. They have more meaning when they come straight from my hands. By forming the letters with my pen the words are born, they have a purpose, and I can’t so easily delete them. There’s no backspace when you write with ink. Only the scribbled line can take away what you may have jotted down.

I’m not sure where I wanted to go with this. I just wanted to share with you, my reader, the oddities of my life. I hope there are others out there who relish the thought of finding that perfect blank book or pen, as much as I do. I know they’re out there. It’s no use hiding either. You’ll be found out eventually, when you’re standing in the aisles at an office supply store, rejoicing at the amazing finds you’ve encountered, all the while realizing just how crazy you might be.