The first thing is that almost everyone hates thumbnails, but that's not a photo problem. The background is distracting and there's too much of it. What we all want to see is just the pen or pencil as the case may be, so you should crop the photo much tighter. The prop for the pen is OK, but the leaves don't add anything. The white balance and lighting both look very good. The focus seems a hair off, but maybe it's my monitor or the CA fumes. Did you have the camera set for macro and were you within the specified range? If you didn't use a macro setting or your camera doesn't have one, then you need to move a bit further away. All that said, it's a very good first attempt. Pens are not easy things to photograph.