Just Keep Writing

There is a drawer in your house filled with every pen you have ever used. Every Biro, every Bic, every Parker, every multipack own-brand…

There is a drawer in your house filled with every pen you have ever used. Every Biro, every Bic, every Parker, every multipack own-brand, every insurance agency freebie, the fountain pen you once tried when you were thirteen but never got the hang of, the HSBC black stick with the silver beaded chain still attached from where you ripped it from the paying-in counter, and the pile of blunted IKEA pencils you grabbed in handful when the store opened and which you only ever use if you really, truly, honestly can’t find anything else and have to cramp your hand around the stub and smear grey muck across the page because you absolutely, totally, completely just have to get these words out of your head before they start to scratch at the confines of your skull like the tortoiseshell tabby you put in the oven that summer when your parents were away just to see how long it would last and its screamed haunted your holidays like your great aunt’s ghost the time you had to travel down to help empty her house the weekend after the funeral where the graves were mixed up and everyone prayed around the wrong grave until you pointed to the real grave and everyone had to move to that grave and the service just carried on as if nobody cared that you had all just been praying around the wrong grave even though your great aunt wasn’t even in that grave and if she would have been alive and not in the grave she would have hated it and you couldn’t cope with the bullshit of it anymore and you took the priest’s ballpoint and started scrawling on the order of service until the voices went away and they took you home and you kept the priest’s ballpoint under your pillow for a week until the words slowed and you could sleep the dreamless, silent sleep of the wordless beast.

Even that pen.

Each one has its story. Each one had its time. Each one spilled its soul across the page. And now you keep them in the drawer, each one a secret diary of all of your words. Don’t keep them to yourself. Life is in the sharing.

Bank Street Writers is a community who writes together, talks together, and drink together. Times are changing, but we still love to tell a story. Because everything ends and it is more important than ever that, through the night and the light and the time in between, we all just keep writing.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

We meet every 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month at The Red Deer, Sheffield. (subs £2)

Be sure to join our group for the inside conversation: www.facebook.com/groups/blankstreetwriters