I say pen, but what I really mean is tool.
You could insert whatever you wanted into the place for “pen” that you thought would help you get your writing done better, faster, without struggle. I like pens and notebooks, sure, but I’m also always buying new courses, writing books, software in the hopes that I’ll discover the next best thing to get me to do the work without having to force myself to do it (sometimes painfully).
Of course, the perfect tool doesn’t really exist. That’s the nature of the problem: that you’re forever moving the goalposts of when you’ll write. I tell myself all the time I’ll write when I feel like it. When I have time. When I’ve learned this new skill. When I’ve found the perfect pen, met some impractical and silly goal that would require me to do the work rather than sit around dreaming of having met the goal.
There’s this quote by Austin Kleon that he made from one of his newspaper blackout poems: to be the noun you must first do the verb.
It’s kind of inspiring, isn’t it? If you want to be some noun, all you have to do is the verb that gets you there. I want to be a writer, all I have to do is write.
Except.
Except that the idea that all you have to do is [insert verb here] isn’t as easy as my brain makes it out to be. It’s much more fun to keep trying out new pens instead.
(# Of words I wrote for my manuscript today: 303)