Author Cho Kyung-ran’s story: a pencil

A new semester started with sharpening pencils. Though my family was not rich, my dad used to buy me enough stationary such as pencils and notebooks. As it was in the late 1970s, they would have been pencils made by local brands such as Munwha or Donga. My very first pencil was a red pencil with a squared pencil lead that was tucked behind my dad’s ear when he returned home from construction sites in Saudi Arabia. Later, I learned that it was a pencil used by carpenters and I still keep it in a pencil container packed with other pencils.

I was the eldest daughter who was pretty good at sharpening pencils with a box cutter. I don’t know what went wrong but I was left alone in a room when I was 20. For five years ever since, my friends and siblings went to college and got a job, flying away like gorgeously beautiful butterflies. Meanwhile, I distanced myself from everything outside my room and was immersed in only eating, drinking and reading books only to find a pencil on my desk. It was like a pencil with the sharpest, darkest and longest pencil lead ever seen – enough to pop my powerlessness and isolated feelings. That night, I held the pencil and wrote down a poem for the first time.

“Adventures of Stationary” says British storyteller Roald Dahl used six pencils a day and American author John Steinbeck held a pencil for six hours a day. The most fabulous story about a pencil was about American author and director Paul Auster. To get an autograph from his favorite baseball player, he met the player after the match. But the eight-year-old boy failed to get an autograph because no one had a pencil. Since then, he had carried a pencil wherever he went. “If there's a pencil in your pocket, there's a good chance that one day you'[ll feel] tempted to start using it,” he said, confessing that this habit helped him become a writer.

I have been using pencils bearing two phrases since a few years ago: “Making efforts every day” and “A step by step forward.” Looking back what I have done with a pencil brings me a regrettable moment. While attending at elementary school, I was assigned to seat next to a boy whom I did not like. I drew a line in the middle of the desk with a pencil firmly and said bluntly, “Don’t cross the line.”

After holding pencils for a long time, I have eventually become a writer. I try to take time, hoping that I can write something that can erase many invisible lines that separate people and places. It would happen unless I give up on writing a dream with a pencil.