The Write Stuff -- Garbo
I know, I know. . The title of this post is right off a shelf unit sign at an office supply store. Let's get on with the stuff!
Over hundreds -- well, thousands at this point - of hours spent writing, I've come to care what tools I use to put words together. It's possible for me to use a washable marker to scrawl story ideas on the back of the gas bill envelope, but I need to conserve my waning energy, frankly. Life has made me somewhat weary.
Writing has always been a struggle, even when I was less weary. The struggle part never changes. Since I'm not Alexander Solzhenitsyn smuggling my words out of a labor camp in Kazakhstan, why should I do things the hard way? I can make it easier for myself by making careful choices, using a plastic card with a magnetic strip on the back -- best writing tool of all, haha.
I've become a major fan of the binder clip. At one time, I used old-fashioned metal paper clips -- cheap, plentiful, and one didn't have to flip the double wire handles up before opening the clip. Paper clips do work well. . .
. . .unless I have to move the clipped-together sheets around. And I do almost nothing else.
I must do something besides pick up batches of print-outs and put them on a different spot on my work table, but some days it doesn't feel like it. Also, I bring my work with me when I leave home. During a visit with in-laws, I might do parallel-play by sitting at a nearby coffee table to edit while the rest of the family laughs about The Great Dr. Pepper Incident of 1971. Sometimes my spouse and I go to the thrift store, and one of us wants to stay half an hour and the other wants to stay ten minutes. If I'm in the latter mode, I can go out to the car and listen to the radio and pull out a wad of manuscript pages to figure out if this version of Chapter 3 is a rewrite or a duplicate of this other copy. So basically, any of my working manuscripts is also a portable manuscript.
And this is why the binder clip is one of my essential writing tools. Once a page detaches and wanders off on its own, there is hell to pay. More than once, an entire story or article has come to a screeching halt for an entire day (or longer!) as I searched the surface of Planet Earth for the revision of Page 17, the one covered with hard-won hours' worth of proofreader's marks and margin scribbles.
When the groupings of paper are fatter than the maximum expansion of the largest binder clip known to humankind, I move on to the literature mailer to keep things organized. These mailers can also be storage boxes. They're usually made of brown corrugated cardboard, with a tuck-in flap. The size I use will hold legal-size sheets, maybe 300 of them. The structure of the mailer is sturdy enough to hold books or other small items associated with my projects. I can write the name of the project on the outer rim of the box and on the flap, so I know what it is whether or not the lid is tucked in. And the boxes stack on top of each other or can be set up on their ends like a set of encyclopedias.
Like many people, I used to keep my notes in boxes designed to hold copy paper. Offices often had these to give away, and after I ran out of freebies I could buy foldable versions of the storage cartons at the office supply store in bundles of ten. Convenient for both storage and transport -- when I moved from one state to another several hundred miles away, these lidded boxes with their inset grip handles were perfect for gathering everything and whirling it off to where I needed it to go.
The big roomy boxes were perfect when I had each project tucked into a manila folder and each folded tucked upright in order. But once I'd unpacked and begun work in my new office, i found that too much room is a bad thing when I have a working manuscript and a lot of research material. It all swims around in there like the worst-organized archeaological dig ever. I sift and sift and sift, setting collapsing sliding piles of pages next to the box, where hey intermingle in the most diabolical way.
No, I need the restraint forced by the limits of the document mailer. I can search it without jumbling the contents too badly, and then mark off that Box J does not have that illustrated article about men's hatband styles of the early 1900s.
Once I have all the pages binder-clipped and sorted into their slender boxes, I need to interpret the margin scribbles and proofreader's marks. Because of this, every messenger bag or carry case I own has at least one pair of reading glasses and a magnifying glass tucked into its zippered compartments. In addition, there are glasses and magnifiers at my PC, on the "project table," and in several drawers in my office.
My eyes aren't all they could be, and age isn't helping. At one time, I could hold a sheet of paper close enough (or put my face close enough) to a line of text to make out any blurred or slashed-through wordage. Not now. My arms are incapable of the fine-tuned zoom-ins and zoom-outs I require to read small messy things. These days, I use the strongest reading glasses one can buy from a spinning rack at the drugstore, supplemented with a magnifier.
Important note: To work, this tool has to be a real magnifier, not the widely available magnifying-glass-shaped objects with a slightly distorting pane of useless plastic inset into the sturdy black handle. Really look like they'll do the job, boy; they do nothing. I need something that will magnify to at least 3x power, and it's best if there's a small bubble inside the larger lens -- a small fish-eye super-strong lens. If I'd had a lot of caffeine when I made that last edit, or I was editing on an Amtrak trip, with the rail car swaying side to side bumpety bump, my margin notes may be nearly indecipherable and now of course I can't even remember writing any of that story, much less remember what that word that looks like "mrrnsl" was supposed to be.
With manuscript pages organized and visible, all that's left for me, task-wise, is to, you know, write something. Or rather, to re-write something. First drafts just flow from me, no problem. I can type out reams. And of all that creative material, about forty percent will prove usable, and even that portion will need substantial edits.
I must have the right kind of ballpoint pen, though I usually compose at the computer keyboard. I prefer to write by hand, but I've had to give it up. Transcribing takes time I just don't have. I type quickly enough, but the vision issues which require all that magnification make it hard to see the source material I'm typing from, especially if i have to keep turning pages sideways or over to see what notes run up and down the left or right margins, or which fill the back of the sheet, with a sloppy arrow indicating that the material to be inserted continues on the back of the following page.
So I type a first draft and then the next couple of revisions are done by hand with pen in hand. And I cannot use a generic knock-off from a multi-pack of pens modeled on the Bic stick pen. I need a retractable ballpoint, one which has a clip.
I'm fussy but not excessively fussy. I see a lot of write-ups about ballpints' barrels and grips, but that part I don't care about. Hard plastic or a a spongier cover, ergonomic design or basic cylinder, fun colors or boring appearance -- it's all fine with me.
In fact, I don't like ballpoint pens trying to pass themselves off as fine writing instruments. I always suspect that the manufacturing effort and cost went into outer design and the darn thing will run out of ink much sooner than I expect. And I shed pens like Fawkes the phoenix sheds his plumage, so I don't want anything that seems too costly.
Design means little to me but I care intensely about what happens when the ink moves from the pen to the paper. I can make do with a scritchy fine-point pens if I must. However, a medium or bold tip pen which looks all right but is poorly made can can be difficult to use. When I feel that I am fighting the fibers in the paper, pushing the point of the pen when it does not really want to turn around a spread the ink, that's when I feel a kind of gloom that pulls away about half my motivation. I definitely have issues with processes that turn out to be extraordinarily difficult for no good reason whatsoever.
There are ballpoint pens which fight the process of ink transfer to page so vigorously that I can understand why Johannes Gutenberg threw his writing quill across the room and built a printing press. I need my pen to glide. I recognize that for some people (particularly left-handed folk) this means the ink smears. But I naturally hold the pen at an angle which prevents smearing. (By this I mean I was more or less tortured by my grade school teachers until I held my writing utensil correctly, and then I have blanked out several years of my life to hide the trauma.)
When I do find a ballpoint pen which does what I need, I glory in it. I could have been having a terrible day, and I pick up a random pen and find that the ink transfers smoothly and easily to the places where I want it, and all seems right in the world to me. Which is the place I need to be when I write.
Next week: The literal places I need to be when I write.
Over hundreds -- well, thousands at this point - of hours spent writing, I've come to care what tools I use to put words together. It's possible for me to use a washable marker to scrawl story ideas on the back of the gas bill envelope, but I need to conserve my waning energy, frankly. Life has made me somewhat weary.
Writing has always been a struggle, even when I was less weary. The struggle part never changes. Since I'm not Alexander Solzhenitsyn smuggling my words out of a labor camp in Kazakhstan, why should I do things the hard way? I can make it easier for myself by making careful choices, using a plastic card with a magnetic strip on the back -- best writing tool of all, haha.
. . .unless I have to move the clipped-together sheets around. And I do almost nothing else.
I must do something besides pick up batches of print-outs and put them on a different spot on my work table, but some days it doesn't feel like it. Also, I bring my work with me when I leave home. During a visit with in-laws, I might do parallel-play by sitting at a nearby coffee table to edit while the rest of the family laughs about The Great Dr. Pepper Incident of 1971. Sometimes my spouse and I go to the thrift store, and one of us wants to stay half an hour and the other wants to stay ten minutes. If I'm in the latter mode, I can go out to the car and listen to the radio and pull out a wad of manuscript pages to figure out if this version of Chapter 3 is a rewrite or a duplicate of this other copy. So basically, any of my working manuscripts is also a portable manuscript.
And this is why the binder clip is one of my essential writing tools. Once a page detaches and wanders off on its own, there is hell to pay. More than once, an entire story or article has come to a screeching halt for an entire day (or longer!) as I searched the surface of Planet Earth for the revision of Page 17, the one covered with hard-won hours' worth of proofreader's marks and margin scribbles.
When the groupings of paper are fatter than the maximum expansion of the largest binder clip known to humankind, I move on to the literature mailer to keep things organized. These mailers can also be storage boxes. They're usually made of brown corrugated cardboard, with a tuck-in flap. The size I use will hold legal-size sheets, maybe 300 of them. The structure of the mailer is sturdy enough to hold books or other small items associated with my projects. I can write the name of the project on the outer rim of the box and on the flap, so I know what it is whether or not the lid is tucked in. And the boxes stack on top of each other or can be set up on their ends like a set of encyclopedias.
Like many people, I used to keep my notes in boxes designed to hold copy paper. Offices often had these to give away, and after I ran out of freebies I could buy foldable versions of the storage cartons at the office supply store in bundles of ten. Convenient for both storage and transport -- when I moved from one state to another several hundred miles away, these lidded boxes with their inset grip handles were perfect for gathering everything and whirling it off to where I needed it to go.
No, I need the restraint forced by the limits of the document mailer. I can search it without jumbling the contents too badly, and then mark off that Box J does not have that illustrated article about men's hatband styles of the early 1900s.
Once I have all the pages binder-clipped and sorted into their slender boxes, I need to interpret the margin scribbles and proofreader's marks. Because of this, every messenger bag or carry case I own has at least one pair of reading glasses and a magnifying glass tucked into its zippered compartments. In addition, there are glasses and magnifiers at my PC, on the "project table," and in several drawers in my office.
My eyes aren't all they could be, and age isn't helping. At one time, I could hold a sheet of paper close enough (or put my face close enough) to a line of text to make out any blurred or slashed-through wordage. Not now. My arms are incapable of the fine-tuned zoom-ins and zoom-outs I require to read small messy things. These days, I use the strongest reading glasses one can buy from a spinning rack at the drugstore, supplemented with a magnifier.
Important note: To work, this tool has to be a real magnifier, not the widely available magnifying-glass-shaped objects with a slightly distorting pane of useless plastic inset into the sturdy black handle. Really look like they'll do the job, boy; they do nothing. I need something that will magnify to at least 3x power, and it's best if there's a small bubble inside the larger lens -- a small fish-eye super-strong lens. If I'd had a lot of caffeine when I made that last edit, or I was editing on an Amtrak trip, with the rail car swaying side to side bumpety bump, my margin notes may be nearly indecipherable and now of course I can't even remember writing any of that story, much less remember what that word that looks like "mrrnsl" was supposed to be.
With manuscript pages organized and visible, all that's left for me, task-wise, is to, you know, write something. Or rather, to re-write something. First drafts just flow from me, no problem. I can type out reams. And of all that creative material, about forty percent will prove usable, and even that portion will need substantial edits.
I must have the right kind of ballpoint pen, though I usually compose at the computer keyboard. I prefer to write by hand, but I've had to give it up. Transcribing takes time I just don't have. I type quickly enough, but the vision issues which require all that magnification make it hard to see the source material I'm typing from, especially if i have to keep turning pages sideways or over to see what notes run up and down the left or right margins, or which fill the back of the sheet, with a sloppy arrow indicating that the material to be inserted continues on the back of the following page.
So I type a first draft and then the next couple of revisions are done by hand with pen in hand. And I cannot use a generic knock-off from a multi-pack of pens modeled on the Bic stick pen. I need a retractable ballpoint, one which has a clip.
I'm fussy but not excessively fussy. I see a lot of write-ups about ballpints' barrels and grips, but that part I don't care about. Hard plastic or a a spongier cover, ergonomic design or basic cylinder, fun colors or boring appearance -- it's all fine with me.
In fact, I don't like ballpoint pens trying to pass themselves off as fine writing instruments. I always suspect that the manufacturing effort and cost went into outer design and the darn thing will run out of ink much sooner than I expect. And I shed pens like Fawkes the phoenix sheds his plumage, so I don't want anything that seems too costly.
Design means little to me but I care intensely about what happens when the ink moves from the pen to the paper. I can make do with a scritchy fine-point pens if I must. However, a medium or bold tip pen which looks all right but is poorly made can can be difficult to use. When I feel that I am fighting the fibers in the paper, pushing the point of the pen when it does not really want to turn around a spread the ink, that's when I feel a kind of gloom that pulls away about half my motivation. I definitely have issues with processes that turn out to be extraordinarily difficult for no good reason whatsoever.
There are ballpoint pens which fight the process of ink transfer to page so vigorously that I can understand why Johannes Gutenberg threw his writing quill across the room and built a printing press. I need my pen to glide. I recognize that for some people (particularly left-handed folk) this means the ink smears. But I naturally hold the pen at an angle which prevents smearing. (By this I mean I was more or less tortured by my grade school teachers until I held my writing utensil correctly, and then I have blanked out several years of my life to hide the trauma.)
When I do find a ballpoint pen which does what I need, I glory in it. I could have been having a terrible day, and I pick up a random pen and find that the ink transfers smoothly and easily to the places where I want it, and all seems right in the world to me. Which is the place I need to be when I write.
Next week: The literal places I need to be when I write.
 |
| Garbo |
Satisfying! I love anything that describes method in detail. I, too, can be depressed by an ink pen. Someone at work was telling me about some dollar store ink pens after I commented what a nice shade of blue the ink was. She loves the way they write. We need blue pens to sign our IEP's. I'll try to get the brand for you.
ReplyDeleteAlways looking for the brands that work!
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