Eternal Notebook Questions

For those of us who have the bad habit of continually buying blank books, is there anything tougher than picking which one to use next?

Do I go with the Rite in the Rain, thus restricting myself to pencil or ballpoint?

Composition book?

A gift journal with slightly iffy paper?

My very last Moleskine?

It's about the most first world of first world problems, but ARGH.

NaNoWriMo 2013 by Pencil: SUCCESS

I scored this little fella late last night.

50k+ words completed in 26 days. One composition book filled, plus the first few pages of a second, in which I'll continue working on the story until the first draft tells me it's complete.

Just over half a Field Notes Expedition Edition filled with notes--I'll continue to use that. Yes, almost everything smears on that paper, which annoys me, but I do like how sturdy the thing is and how smooth it is to write in. I also like the fact that the front cover is BRIGHT HI-VISIBILITY ORANGE and thus easily locatable the dozen times a day I drop it or lose it amongst the things on my desk.

I can work at a slower pace now, but I'd like to finish this draft by Christmas if I can. (Self, please revisit this statement frequently.)

NaNoWroMo 2013: Week Three Update

The post-it note's text (At some point, inertia takes over) was actually for another purpose entirely, but I thought it kinda fit, so I left it on the desk.

Week Three. Somewhere around 34000 words. 138 pages into my composition book.

I'm doing better than Week Two, mostly because I've accepted the fact that the honeymoon is over, and the best way to make progress is to strap myself in my highchair (metaphorically speaking) and not let me up until I've written for an hour or three pages or whatever my current goal is, no matter how much I scream and cry and sulk (metaphorically speaking). (Mostly.)

Going to a coffee house or some such thing can be helpful, since I have no option for walking over to stare at the computer every thirty seconds. However, this has its own set of drawbacks. Those of you who follow me on twitter (eliz_herreid) witnessed my mini-meltdown over coffee house lighting and wobbly tables.

The excuses we can come up with, no? But life goes on. This morning I gritted my teeth and sat down at the coffee-house-down-the-street and wrote about a thousand words despite funky shadows, a napkin-propped table, and giant sucking plot holes.

Pretty sure I'll make 50k this year. Whether I'll make something of this story, however, remains to be seen.

Repeat after me: this is just a first draft. This is just a first draft. This is just a FIRST draft.

The Most Dangerous Time of the Year, 2013 Edition

This, my friends, is why I should not be allowed to roam Staples unsupervised, especially at back to school time. In my defense, at least some of it was on sale, or even clearance. The pink Signo pens were 50 cents apiece, for example. And I resisted the half-gross container of Ticonderogas.

These were kinda sorta what I went in for. Pencil Revolution just gave them a pretty positive review, and I find them very attractive to boot. (Go look at the photos on Pencil Revolution, not mine!) They were on sale for five dollars for 36 pencils, plus the two bonus erasers, so...how could I resist?

These were purely a curiosity buy. I've seen all-graphite pencils in art stores, but never in an office supply store with the regular pencils. And besides, the packaging is all shiny and stuff... I may do a bit of a review on these at some point, since I've not seen much about them on the web previously. Really curious if they do last longer.

And I pretty much always stock up on composition books this time of year, the more when I can find them with good stiff covers and decent paper--harder and harder these days. I went through all of them looking for Made in Brazil notebooks, and took a gamble on a few of the Made in Egypt ones. You'd think Egypt would know paper, right? We'll see.

Off to play with the new toys!

Not Quite DIY, Semi-Premium, Semi-Custom Notebooks

You'll have to pardon the cell phone photos...my camera wasn't available.

I believe I've previously mentioned my fondness for HP Premium Choice 32 lb. LaserJet paper (ain't that a mouthful?) for fountain pen use. It is lusciously silky smooth, but less slickery than some other nice papers. Inks spread a teensy bit more than they do on Clairefontaine, but I like the way inks look on this paper, and they dry within a reasonable time frame, too.

It's pricey stuff at about $18 a ream. Ouch! But awhile back, Office Depot had a seriously discounted special: eight dollars a ream. I snatched up two reams immediately, to add to the half a ream I still had on hand. That's a lot of paper. I use it mostly for general writing, letters (heavy though it is), and sometimes in my Circa / Staples Arc notebooks...though at this point I've come to use Circa most for temporary work notes, and for that, I prefer to use scrap paper...seems a shame to waste anything nicer. As for journals, I prefer more permanent binding solutions, but I have no bookbinding skills of my own.

So...I took two notebook-sized stacks of the paper (96 sheets each) to a local copy shop and had them coil bound. They aren't fancy, but I'm still quite pleased with the results.

From the research I did, the total cost for covers and binding is typically between $3.50 and $6.00 depending on where you go, with office supply stores being predictably more affordable than Kinko's. This makes these notebooks a far cry from 50 cent composition books. However, if I compare the total cost to something like Clairefontaine, they aren't too bad, *and* you get to pick your paper (cream or white or whatever, weight, texture) and your ruling, or lack thereof. This first batch of two notebooks is blank, but I may print lines or dot grids next time around. I've used this site in the past, and find it very useful. My normal handwriting is on the bold side, so I prefer something close to the wide ruling in comp books (slightly smaller is nice, but not much): the ruled versions of most Moleskine clones feel very cramped. Incompetech templates let you choose your exact druthers--very cool.

I've just started using the first journal. There are a few quirks: unlike many fancy hardbound journals, the corners aren't rounded off, and of course it doesn't have the same sleek feel in the hand. But oh, that paper is nice, and I like having letter size pages on which to stretch out.

The label on the front cover is just something I slapped on there primarily to give me a visual clue as to which way is up...the plain black cover didn't give any indication. But you could decorate as you saw fit. ;)

Just another option out there for us lovers of ink and paper things!

Verdict: Blueline A9 - NOT Fountain Pen Friendly

Mini-review: I just finished off a Clairfontaine notebook I'd been using as a journal (in pencil, for those keeping score at home), and started in on a Blueline A9 I've had around awhile. In case anyone was wondering, the Blueline A9 notebook is very far from fountain pen friendly. Much feathering and bleeding.

For the record, that's the *back* of a page...mucho bleed-through! Yikes...

Considering the 30% recycled paper, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it's still disappointing: there's so much to like about this notebook otherwise. It's basically composition book sized (my favorite) with a nice hard cover and details I like a lot: stickers for labeling for archival purposes, and spaces on the pages for the date and page number. But...bleh.

I'll stick it out, but can only use one side of the page unless I use pencil or ballpoint.

Thus far the best bet for an inexpensive, fountain pen friendly journal still seems to be my el cheapo Made in Brazil Wal-Mart composition books...those work with almost anything. And they're about a quarter apiece at back to school time. I wish I'd bought a lot more back in the good old days when they didn't have floppy covers, but I guess you can't have everything.

The Nice Notebook Dilemma

Some of the notebooks awaiting use

As has been well established within the pages of this blog, I am something of a notebook addict. I have scads of notebooks squirreled away: mostly cheap composition books, but also a second Rhodia Webnotebook (I used my first awhile back), an empty Moleskine, a hard bound Rite in the Rain notebook, a cloth-bound Clairefontaine, a Leuchtturm1917, and a hardcover Blueline, among others. Pretty much every time I finish a notebook, I take these nicer journals and notebooks off the shelf and finger them...and then ultimately put them back and grab one of the ubiquitous composition books.

It's not so much that I'm intimidated by them, I don't think. I've never been one to worry about ruining that first page with less-than-profound thoughts and messy handwriting. I think it's more that right now, they're mine as objects to be treasured (and gloated over). Once used, the notebooks themselves no longer matter--only the words inside matter. The notebooks fade into the background and become just another repository for my scribbles.

>
Some past notebooks, which I wrote about here.

I have a strange mental block against letting them go. Which, I suppose, is something of a hoarder mentality, and probably not very healthy.

I think I shall resolve to live more openly (recklessly?) and to embrace what my hoarded goods may become, even if it means letting go of what they are now. What have I got to lose?

Except for those lovely empty notebooks...

Oh dear.

Encoded

Our alphabet code, entered in a notebook when I was 12.

When I was a kid, back in the dark days before Encarta and Wikipedia and all that, we had a couple of sets of encyclopedias. They were great sources of knowledge, as well as interesting snapshots of a given period in time--one set dated from the 60s, another was slightly more recent, though still out of date, so the science items in particular were occasionally unintentionally comical. (You can imagine the example photos they had in the article about "Computer," for example...)

My brother John and I spent many a rainy day or winter evening with those books, either tracing themes from one volume to another, or just reading straight through. Sometimes I'd take a volume to bed with me and fall asleep reading about aardvarks and Albania and the Appalachian Trail. I also liked studying the very first page of those volumes, where they discussed the history of whatever-letter-it-was.

Now...like most kids, we were also captivated by secret codes. Who wasn't? We came up with various forms of encryption, like the old standard of using a key word to come up with a 26 number alphabet code. Remember that? Basically, you'd pick a random word with no repeated letters, write that out, followed by the remaining letters of the alphabet, and write the numbers 1 through 26 by them. Unless the recipient knew the keyword, it was hard to figure out which numbers meant what.

But like I said, I also found those historical predecessors to the current alphabet very interesting, and somewhere along the line, we hit upon the idea of using those to make a simple to use and intuitive "code" to use amongst ourselves. It was pretty easy to break, but easy to memorize and fun. Some letters had common predecessors or no very interesting variations, so we had to make up a few letter shapes, but most came straight from older forms. I kept journal entries in code some of the time back then, and even as an older teenager away from home used to write letters to my brother using these letters. Kinda fun.

I used to write portions of my journal entry in code, even if it wasn't really anything secretive...

What sort of codes have you played around with? What did you use them for, and with whom?

Blithering Re-entry

I planted some pretty flowers and they're not dead yet! See? Blithering, as promised!

For the last few months, I've felt like I've had nothing worth saying. Thus, I've primarily resorted to the site dedicated almost entirely to people with nothing much to say, and said a lot of nothing on Facebook. But lately, I've had so much nothing to say, I feel like saying nothing on a grander scale. So I'm back. Maybe. Kinda. Lucky you.

Aside from saying a lot of nothing, I continue to be obsessed with music. Along with playing with friends whenever possible, I'm still going to the Wednesday night Irish session at Tugboat Annie's in Olympia, WA most weeks, which is a blast. I'm still getting the tunes under my fingers, but have most of the most common tunes pretty well down, so long as we don't go to warp speed.

A few weeks ago, I got my hands on a tenor banjo.

My Alvarez Minstrel banjo, complete with groovy '70s orange fuzz lined case...

Tenor banjos differ from your average bluegrass or old time banjo in that they have just four strings (no short fifth string off to the side) and a shorter neck, and are played with a plectrum (or pick, if you prefer). For Irish music, tenor banjos are typically tuned GDAE: same as a mandolin or fiddle, but an octave lower, which means all the tunes translate over pretty much instantly, though the banjo has a much longer neck...quite an adjustment there!

It's also much louder than mandolin. This I like. I like a lot.

I'm also back in a pencil phase, after several months of pretty much not writing at all. Summer is a good time for carefree writing utensils! Currently-in-heavy-rotation pencils include the Musgrave Test Scoring 100 (I have a review for these I may post soon if I can get some satisfactory pictures taken) and a few varieties of USA Gold pencils. It's also almost that wonderful time of year: back-to-school sale season. Aren't you excited? Personally, I'm hoping for more 25 cent Norcom composition books, and maybe a chance to stock up on Papermate Black Pearl erasers.

As a final update, I remain utterly enamored of my Kindle Touch. I take back all the bad things I ever said about e-readers. I like the light weight, the flat "pages," the instant bookmarking--lots of little things I'm coming to take for granted. I'm also fortunate to live in an area with a good library system and access to about a zillion Kindle library books. Let me tell you, it's pretty awesome to be able to finish a library book at nine o'clock on a Saturday evening and be able to have a new library book in your hands in moments instead of waiting a long and miserable two days until you can get to the library after work on Monday.

OK, that makes me sound like a junky. But maybe I am, a bit.

Lately, I admit I've mostly been reading rather light fantasy/sci-fi novels (Tad Williams' Otherland series at the moment, and Terry Pratchett's Discworld books). Hey, it's summer, or as well as, though you'd be hard pressed to tell based on the current cold and blustery weather here in the Pacific Northwest. I do have some non-fiction and classics stacked up for later reading, though, plus a bunch of Mary Roberts Rinehart mysteries, plus I want to go back and read the flawed-but-interesting biography Kent Gustavson wrote about Doc Watson, a musical hero of mine to say the least, who passed away on May 29th. What a musician and man he was!

Renaissance Art Leather Composition Book Cover #2

I've already been carting this around a few weeks, so it has a bit of "character" already!

This is now a two Renaissance Art composition book cover household.

Renaissance Art recently began carrying composition book covers as a standard item, and offered an introductory discount. Since I typically have at least two comp books going at once, one as a journal and one for other writing, and since I'd already been thinking about getting a simpler second one without the wrap and tie, I jumped on the offer.

The two covers compared

I considered going with one of their "Rustic Elegance" leathers this time around: these are thinner, and come in all sorts of beautiful colors (from the on-screen swatches, I'm particular fond of the Twilight Blue and the Merlot). They make for a sleeker, slimmer, more civilized looking cover. But in the end, I chickened out and went with what I know: the same thick, rustic brown leather as my other Renaissance Art cover. It's slightly less expensive, and it is bombproof. This leather can also be "distressed", which I find amusing and entertaining. The new notebook cover doesn't seem to change as much with this process as the old one does...not sure if this is age difference, or just variation between two pieces of leather. Still, it's rather fascinating.

Close-up of the old cover--the top portion of the flap has been mangled a la the video I linked to above, while I smoothed out the bottom portion and left it as is.

My new cover came in a matter of just a few days, which was pretty nifty. And there isn't a great deal for me to add to my original review of the first cover. The leather feels and smells great, the cover fits well, and while it doesn't have the classy, luxurious appearance of something like a Levenger Circa Bomber Jacket folio, I like the rugged, homespun look of it. And like my other cover, this will likely outlive me.

Inside, showing how the notebook fits inside...sorry for the funky coloring on this photo...

I like it. Renaissance Art makes good stuff. (Or, for the British, Renaissance Art make good stuff.)

Rehashing, Revisiting and Re-reviewing

For various reasons, I've found myself returning to some old posts, reviews, and thoughts, and I thought it might be fun to do a little recap post.

1. Remember this leather composition book cover I was so excited about?  I'm still thrilled with it.  For the last little bit I've mostly used it as a cover for my journal, since I keep coming back to using cheap composition books as journals--fancy notebooks intimidate me, I guess.  The cord has held up well, the leather still feels and smells great and if anything has become more beautiful with time.  I look forward to using it for years to come.  Have any drawbacks arisen?  One minor one, I suppose: it left what look like slightly oily spots on the inside cover of a few of the first notebooks that passed through it, maybe from the adhesive used where the edges fold under?  A small price to pay for the use of that lovely leather, I'd say, but possibly a concern.

2. The Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener: a few months in, I'm still pretty psyched about this thing.  I love the point it produces and the way it stops when a point is reached.  No additional downsides have arisen since my initial review, but just to reiterate the two that I encountered: first and foremost, the gripping mechanism leaves little bite marks on the pencil, which may or may not bother you.  Some days it bothers me more than others.  Secondly, though this isn't really a fault of the sharpener and can happen with other sharpeners as well, if the pencil lead is off-center, the sharpener won't automatically stop sharpening after a point is reached...because the point will be lopsided and still sort of catch the mechanism.  Just something to be aware of--if you run into a pencil that has this issue, just turn the crank a few times when sharpening and then stop.

3. Index cards: I admit, for story ideas, quick notes, poems, etc., I've mostly returned to using the small notebook I carry everywhere.  Why?  Because even though it's cluttered and jumbled and can't be reorganized, it's all in one place, bound together so it can't be lost unless I lose the whole thing (an idea so scary I refuse to let it fully take shape in my mind).  I like being able to flip through it when I'm looking for inspiration, and not having to search for a card I used last week.  I still use index cards a lot for to-dos, lists, addresses, etc., so they are always with me...but not as I had envisioned.  I tried to use them for story outlining a few more times, and again found that no matter how much or how little detail I tried to include, once I started writing the story, the story veered away from any  outline.  Maybe this dooms me as a writer, I don't know.  I have stacks of scene cards and character sketches that meant nothing four or five pages into the actual writing.  Will this prevent me from trying again to plan ahead?  Of course not.  There's a fine line between an eternal optimist and a fool, and I walk that line.

4. My use of Circa things has also undergone some revision.  I use Circa for my work notebooks quite a bit, since I like being able to move pages around and like that I can reuse scrap paper by just Circa punching it.  I still use it some for binding typewritten pages, too: one of these days I'm going to put all my old typecasts into a Circa notebook, I think, since I can easily mix all the different sizes of pages I use for typecasts--not something I could do with a three-ring binder.  But for everyday scribbling-in-a-notebook use, I keep coming back to the composition books.  No, I can't reorganize the pages, which means I have page number references and arrows everywhere as I try to make sense of the jumble.  But I like the size, the sturdiness, and they soothe my paranoia about pages going missing.  And they're just so doggone cheap and friendly.

5. Yesterday I stumbled across a post I wrote about a lumberjack throw I made for my first little nephew, who's now...um...three.  Actually had to check the date of the post to remember.  Time flies when you're having fun!  I had every intention of making several more of these in different color combinations for other family members, since they look pretty cool, work up pretty fast, and aren't too terribly difficult to do (I'm not exactly a master of crochet).  I bought at least some of the yarn...but never started.  Story of my life.  Last night I decided to take the first step toward remedying this situation, and finished the first few rows of a second throw, which will use a slightly darker red.  Crocheting is soothing--the rhythm of stitching, the feel of the yarn as it moves through your fingers, the way the piece slowly grows in your hands.  Nice to come back to that.

The Downside

I managed to remember my lunch today (sometimes a rare occurance), but forgot my entire backpack, which contains my current reading book (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), my current writing books (journal, full sized notebook, the little brain dump notebook, and assorted index cards), and my box o' pencils.

I feel like I'm missing an arm.  And what am I gonna do during lunch??

If I lived in "the cloud," I wouldn't hafta be in mourning.

2010 NaNoWriMo by Pencil: Week Four Report

My random thoughts are going to be even more random and thrown together than usual, I'm afraid.  Had no time to think any of this out ahead of time.  It's been a crazy week!

1. Oh, Happy Day!
I was at Fred Meyer today (Fred Meyer = a Northwestern chain of big supermarket/drugstore/everything else under one roof stores--like a Super Wal-mart but nicer) looking for a lantern to prevent further power outages ('cause you know as soon as I get a good one, the power will remain rock solid for the rest of the winter), and happened to walk through the art supplies section.  I noticed first of all that they actually carry a pretty good supply of sketch books (which make good blank books for pencil, especially if you kinda *like* having no lines).  And then I spotted these!



I really liked the Cedar Pointes that came in the goody assortment of pencils Speculator sent me awhile back, but until now, the only real source I'd found for them was Dick Blick on-line, and the shipping charges were exorbitant, and I decided I'd live without them.  But hey, I can get them locally!  They weren't cheap at $2.75 for the package, and I'd rather have had a full dozen pencils rather than yet another pencil sharpener, but still...Cedar Pointes!  Locally!

But no, I still don't have a lantern.

2. Erasers and paper
I had a dream a few days ago that a) I had moved into an apartment right next door to a coffee shop, and b) I had invited all of my siblings over to the new place for an eraser showdown.  In my dream, the Black Pearl melted into tarry goo if used strenuously, whereas the Mars Plastic worked like, well, a dream.  My brothers (who would never do this in real life) spent most of the dream passing the Mars around, scribbling heavy lines and erasing them and saying, "Where have these been all our lives?  How come no one told us????"

Ahem.  We will not analyze the dream.  But I will say, that Mars Plastic is a wonderful thing.  I could only dream of such erasers when I was a kid.  I'm also fond of the Pentel Clics, especially for quick mistakes.  And actually, in real life that Black Pearl works almost as well as the Mars Plastic, and the shape--with a pointed rim  all the way around the oval--means it can get into small areas pretty well.  Also--and this is a big plus--it doesn't get grungy looking.  The Mars Plastic flunks that category big time.  If I was really going to keep it clean, I'd need to spend as much time erasing blank spaces as erasing mistakes, to work the mess off of it.  I probably should have done so before taking the photo, but that's another story.

Paper: I'm now working my way through one of the Norcom composition books, after writing the first big chunk of the story in a bagasse composition book from Staples.  I have to say, although the bagasse paper is marvelous with fountain pens, it's less than great for pencils.  I had a great deal of ghosting between pages in the bagasse, pencils wrote lighter than on other paper, and it's sort of hard and smoothish compared to regular paper.  It didn't feel good.  The Norcom paper is much better.  Now I know.

Quick stats:

• Composition book pages killed: 281...but the day isn't over yet.
• Pencils obliterated: none this week, but the first Palomino will be the next to go.
• Words written: 43,555, but I'm hoping to get in another seven hundred to a thousand tonight.  We'll see.  I really intended to get a ton of words in yesterday, but I gave blood in the morning, and my right arm (where the needle stick went in) felt...funny if I wrote much.  No pain, just felt really tired, like I'd lifted weights.  So I cut it short.

I'm not out of this yet.  If I have to, I may resort to (gasp!) using the computer in the next few days, just because there are more times when I can squeeze in two or three minutes of computer writing than there are times when I can grab a pencil and my notebook for the same amount of time.  But I really, really want to say I pulled it off by hand.  And I'm awful stubborn...

Rule number 3427 of NaNoWriMo writing

Scribbled on early in the month, during thinking moments and then in one long obsessive session.  I don't like the colors--shoulda left it greyscale--but once I started, there wasn't any going back.  "EP" is a childhood nickname my family still uses.   Short for Epsi.  And I dunno where Epsi came from.

Rule number 3427 of NaNoWriMo writing: when all else fails, blow something up.  A cherry bomb can work.  So can the spectacular destruction of an entire planet.  However, although it may be a temptation, it is best (no matter how bad the story may be) to stop short of annihilating the universe and all life therein.

There are only so many words one can write about an annihilated universe.

Another crazy week, and I'm still behind.  If I can write three thousand words today, three thousand tomorrow, and a little over two thousand the next two days, I can still beat this thing.  I'm not out yet.

Ka BOOM!!

2010 NaNoWriMo by Pencil: Week One Report

All pointied up and ready to rock and roll!

I went to take out the trash this morning, and it seemed to be mostly pencil shavings, coffee grinds, and spent tea leaves. Ah, NaNoWriMo, what have you done to me?

Coupla first thoughts:
1. I'm using one of Staples' sugarcane paper composition books (the line is now called Eco-Easy, I believe), which has a slightly different texture than regular paper. It's wonderful for fountain pens, but maybe a little hard and smooth for pencils. Some pencils I really enjoy on other paper feel slickery or strange. I'll switch to a regular composition book next.

2. I'm finding it's easiest to spend a few minutes at the beginning of each writing session sharpening up a whole *bunch* of pencils to use in sequence rather than stopping over and over to sharpen. It gives me a few minutes of reflection time before taking the plunge, too. A nice ritual.

Stats and such:
 NOTE: you may want to imagine the headers of the next two items as they would sound if read by one of those guys who does commercials for monster truck rallies and large power tools. < deep echoey voice mode > "COMP-oh-ZIIIH-shun book pages KILLLLLED!!!!!" < /voice > And so forth.

• Composition book pages killed: 85
• Pencils obliterated: none, but the Forest Choice will soon be assuming semi-retired status in the jar of shorties and a new Forest Choice subbed in. It was short to begin with, and has had a busy week.
• Words written: 12750 as a low estimate. On the pages I counted, I had somewhere between 155 and 170 words, so I'm estimating 150 so as not to cheat. If I get ambitious or stuck, I'll start transcribing, and likely get a good boost. With the current estimate, I'm a little behind, but not terribly. If I could just get away with writing uninterrupted during lunch once in awhile...

Next up, some Pencil Achievement Awards.

• Most fun to sharpen: the Rhodia given to me awhile back. They're linden wood, so you don't get the cedar smell, but the triangular shape produces interesting shavings, plus those shavings are a lovely velvety black with orange trim. They fascinate me.
• Purtiest: The Palominos are beautifully finished in thick blue lacquer and lovely silver writing, but I'm still captivated by the deep red-orange Golden Bears with blue erasers.
• Most aromatic: probably the Golden Bears, with the Mirados a close second.

It's turning out that some of the pencils I like most in the "off season" are not the greatest NaNoWriMo pencils. The Helix Oxford, for example. It writes a nice dark line that really stands out when I look back through the pages of my journal...*but* it requires frequent enough sharpening that it's less than satisfactory for long slogs. It's also one of the pencils that feels funny on the sugarcane paper.

And how is the story going? You *would* have to ask that. Wellll...I'm finally *mostly* finished writing about a century's worth of history regarding space exploration in the late 21st and early 22nd centuries, so maybe the story can finally truly begin. As usual, I got a little sidetracked by secondary characters I hadn't even dreamed of when I started out. I like them anyway.

Wholesale Pen Slaughter, or Pen-conomics

In spite of my love for fountain pens, I have a habit of picking up many of the more standard pens that catch my fancy. Add to this the seductive charms of Jetpens.com, and I have a ridiculous number of gel / ballpoint / roller ball pens in cups and drawers around the house.


Some of my recently used composition books

Lately I've been using composition books for my journals (despite their dubious archival qualities). When I'm writing consistently (which doesn't happen consistently), I go through about one a month as a general rule. Most are either Staples bagasse paper (bagasse=sugar cane waste) or "Made in Brazil" Norcom comp books from Wal-mart, which have the additional charm of costing just a quarter apiece at some points in the year. These two types both have very fountain pen friendly paper; i.e. ink doesn't feather like crazy or soak into the paper and through the other side as a general rule. However, I have a few composition books of poorer quality paper, at least where fountain pens are concerned: a few of the last "Made in the USA" Meads, and some Staples brand comp books with nice sturdy covers but rather porous paper. I've been shuffling these aside for a few years now, but this month, I set myself a sort of experiment. I've been using one of the Staples comp books, and restricting myself to the myriad of non-fountain pen writing instruments I have around.

The damage so far: in my current not-quite-full notebook (and a small amount of writing at work) I have used up
1 Zebra Sarasa gel pen
2 Pilot G2 gel pens
Approximately 5 Pentel Wow! Gel pens and counting (they're cheap, but they literally only last me about a day and a half)
1 Uniball Jetstream and a portion of another
1 Zebra Surari "emulsion ink" pen


Just *some* of the carnage!

For standard ballpoints (the Jetstream and Surari are not really typical ballpoints), I've briefly used a Zebra F-701, a Bic Cristal, and a Fisher bullet pen; but I didn't stick with them for long. Ballpoints make my hand ache too much, and the the not-really-blackness of the black ink bugs me. The black Jetstreams and Surari are better in this regard: more vivid. For other ballpoints, I'd be better off with blue--any shade of blue is still blue.

I've also used a certain amount of pencil. In the grand scheme of things, pencil is probably the most cost-efficient writing instrument out there, and in many ways, I prefer it to ballpoint. It feels better. My only real quibble with it is that I can't seem to avoid a certain amount of transfer from one page to another, so everything ends up a little messy looking.

You know what else fascinates me? If I take the whole notebook and flip through the pages like a flip book, the ballpoint-written pages with their rather embossed text make a loud crackling sound, the gel and pencil pages a softer, whispery crackling sound, and a few experimental fountain pen pages make no sound at all.

I am easily entertained.

It's freeing to use these things up. I think I've also proven, however, that fountain pens, while perhaps not as cost efficient as pencil, are far more cost efficient than most of the other alternatives. Even the very cheapest gel pens are typically at least seventy-five cents or a dollar apiece, and obviously, the very cheapest gel pens don't last very long--only ten or eleven comp book pages in the case of those Pentels. On the other hand, a tiny sip of bottled ink in my Lamy 2000 will write for thirty to forty pages, and a ten dollar bottle will last...at least a year or two? Suddenly the bargain gel pens don't seem like such a bargain, do they?

I don't know exactly how long an ink bottle will last since I have yet to really use one start to finish. I've had a bad habit of buying more colors. I'm working on simplifying and using up rather than making any more purchases of any kind, and I probably have enough ink to last me a decade or two. (And enough notebooks to last me at least two or three years...truth be told). But based on how very little the level of ink in the bottle of Aircorp Blue-Black has dropped in the year I've been using it fairly steadily (though by no means exclusively), it's obvious ink lasts a good while. For the frugal, a basic fountain pen (especially one with a fine nib) and a single bottle of something like Noodler's Black would break down to a much, much cheaper overall cost than buying the equivalent gel pens or rollers or likely even most ballpoints.

Ah, the lengths we go to to justify our addictions!


Trying to show how little ink is gone by holding the bottle of AC BB to the light. And yes, that is a freaky label, isn't it?

The current experiment will continue for a few more months until I use up the bad comp books (and most of the excess "cheap" pens), and then I'll go back to fountain pens. Hm...the next experiment could be to see how long a bottle of ink lasts.... Of course, this is all terribly unscientific. There are so many unquantified variables: the size of my handwriting, the number of pages I write a day, the width of the pen, whether or not a particular ink is absorbed by a particular paper.... It still fascinates me, though.

Writing on Wednesday: Sketching the Words

My current carry-around writing book, complete with ever-growing doodle.

Two of my brothers are artists of one caliber or another. For one brother, it has become a vocation in graphic design and painting; for the other, it is a passionate on-again, off-again hobby.

Like most artsy types, both of them went through childhood and adolescence and into adulthood with a sketchbook always in evidence: a tattered bound book, ready at a moment's notice for doodles, cartoons, sketches, skeletal ideas to be filled out later. Most of what went into those books was strictly for practice, and stayed within those pages; not valueless by any means, but having served its purpose already. A few ideas stood out, and were brought out and restated in more complete works.

For whatever reason, until the last few months, I've tended to approach writing with a far more formal air. For the most part, I've worked on one project at a time, and taken each project very seriously, no matter the content. Abandoned stories, long and short - and I have a number of them - made me feel miserably guilty.

But something clicked for me recently. Part of it is that I've gone back to using nice cheap composition books, I think. Part of it is just a dawning realization that it's OK to play with writing. It's OK to just practice. It's OK to try out and reject. Yeah, it only took me about twenty-five years to figure this out.

So I've been "sketching". I'll sit there with my notebook as I drink coffee before work, or at lunch, or on the couch in the evenings, and write whatever pops into my head. I might scribble down a scene, or the start of an essay, or a conversation between two people I don't know yet. I'll pick at a picture the way I might do for a poem - which, oddly, I've always been less strict about. I'll take an object or a face or a situation and write around it, without worrying if it's going to go anywhere. Now...I've had my brain-dump notebook for awhile now, but this is a different concept. That notebook is more quick notes, fragments, comments on works-in-progress: nothing very long. In this notebook, I write as much as I want of whatever I want - and if it doesn't pan out, I move on.

The notebook is starting to get full; filled with overlapping pieces of stories, fragments of poetry, disjointed thoughts. Is this better than my "old" organized, serial style of writing? I'm not sure. All I know is that I have three short stories and some potential blog posts that will almost certainly get finished, and a whole assemblage of other bits and pieces I can probably use elsewhere. It gets me writing. And for once, I don't feel guilty about the mess.

Weekend stuff

Quite a productive long weekend.

1. Reading stuff:



My first act of the weekend on Saturday morning was to run to the library and obtain a goodly stack-o'-books. I forgot to add Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones to the photo pile...oops. But it came home with me, too.

Finished one of the Ralph McInerny mysteries pretty much instantly, skimmed through and read parts of Writing Down the Bones, and just started The Bonesetter's Daughter. It's my first experience with Amy Tan, but I've heard good things. We'll see.

2. Walking stuff:

Summer may have officially started, but lately we've had anything but here in Western Washington: it has been cold and rainy and generally not altogether pleasant. Sunday afternoon the rain slowed to a drizzle, so I grabbed the dog and we went for a nice long jaunt on the trail. It was well worth being out in the damp. There are still spring flowers everywhere, birds were singing, everything smells fresh and green. The streams and rivers running near the trail were all running high, the churning water something to see - and to hear! Fast running water is frightening and enlivening all at once.

Somewhere off in the distance, someone was taking advantage of the damp to do some burning of brush. You could just barely smell the smoke. I had a sudden intense craving for roasted marshmallows - not the carefully toasted golden brown sort, but the charred, wood-smoky variety you can only get around a campfire. When I was little, as one of a big family we typically only got a few marshmallows apiece, to make it fair. To prolong things, I used to burn the outside, peel it off and eat it slowly, burn the next layer and peel that off - until there was nothing left but the gooey middle on the stick. Good times....

We (the dog and I, returning to the present) came back a little footsore and tired, but refreshed. Long walks are good for body, mind and soul.

3. Writing stuff:

I finally finished doing all the scanning and OCR work on the first 100 pages of my '09 NaNoWriMo project, which was all typed on the Olympia SG-1. It only took me six months to buckle down and get it done. For those curious about the technical details, I used the basic / older version of Omnipage that came with my Canon LiDE 90 scanner a few years ago. It does an admirable job, for the most part. My one quibble with it is that it does funky stuff to the font size and other formatting, so I end up copying into the word processor as plain text and doing all formatting there. It takes a little while, but it's easier than fighting Omnipage, and still far quicker than retyping everything.

So...now I pretty much have the rough draft of that story finished, except for the second-to-the-last chapter. Except...now I'm back to that stage where I have it in a single humongous unwieldy document, and once again I'm seriously frustrated by this stage: I keep losing track of where I put things and what I've edited or not or how I really intended to order this bit and that. And I'm once again wishing I had a nice logical editing program. I've downloaded Liquid Story Binder several times over the years, but it's complex and (to me, anyway) very unintuitive. I've also played with yWriter, but it strikes me as the writing software equivalent to Linux: something for those who enjoy tinkering as well as just writing. I don't want to tinker. I just want something that works. And it has too many options for me. I know you don't have to use them, but they're there, waiting for you, asking for input - all the spaces for character information, point of view, items, other busyness. I also don't like (really, really don't like) that I can't see individual scenes within chapters unless that chapter is in focus. There's no total tree view of everything, except a slightly clunky storyboard. I appreciate the thought behind it, but despite quite a bit of time spent with it, I can't warm up to it.

And then I made the mistake of watching some of the video tutorials for Scrivener. I was practically tearing up at some points - it's so perfectly suited to the way I work and what I want to do: a simple layout where you can divide up your writing into workable chunks, connect them with "index cards" you can shuffle around, add notes and research and pictures that are easily viewable but don't print on the manuscript, and all of it with simple drag-and-drop reorganization available. Oh, and the ability to take snapshots before you start chopping up a scene to rewrite. Brilliant! And that's just scratching the surface. Every feature that was mentioned made sense to me. It's a dream come true. Where have you been all my life, Scrivener?

But of course, there's a catch. It only runs on Mac! Grrrr!

My main computer at this point is an over four-year-old hand-me-down desktop PC, and I'm thinking of selling the netbook - so maybe I can start working on justifying a new system this summer. Or a used system. Buying used electronics kinda scares me, but there are lots of used Macs on Craigslist and such. We'll see. Must...have...Scrivener.

Meanwhile, I started back into producing *more* writing that I'll ultimately need to transcribe and organize. At least they're just short stories. Those don't make me frantic as I try to edit in a standard word processor. I've been primarily writing by hand lately (again), in bagasse composition books with either my Lamy 2000 EF with Noodler's Aircorp Blue-Black ink, or my beat-up Parker 51 with Noodler's Navy ink. I'm drawn to rather conservative ink colors in my old age. They don't draw my attention away from what I'm writing, and they're easy on the eyes over long writing sessions. Both of these also have a waterproof component: important for me, with my tendency to knock beverages over or drip condensation on my work.

4. One more bit of stuff:

Apropos of nothing, here's Halvah attempting camouflage on the new couch where she's really not supposed to be. Not bad, is she? "No, really, I'm just a little round sofa cushion. Nothing to see here!"

Glimpse Insight (partial pencast)

I have a tendency to backslide where some aspects of writing are concerned--or, to put it more positively, to come back to the tried and true. For example, no matter how far or how long I stray, for hand-writing fiction, I pretty much always come back to the humble composition book with its just-right in between A5 and A4 size, its durable stitched binding and wide ruling. The pages are large enough not to feel claustrophobic, small enough that I fill 'em quickly, there's just enough of a margin for notes and comments, and I actually *like* the fact that the pages don't move around. I get paranoid about losing things. For work, I've pretty much gone Circa all the way, but for fictiony things...I'm back to my beloved cheapie composition books.

And for thoughts on the go, I've slowly wandered back from the world of index cards. Oh, index cards still have a part to play: they get used for lists and to-dos, for phone numbers and addresses, for quick reminders. I carry them with me at all times. But the brain dump notebook has quietly reinserted itself into my life.



My current notebook for such purposes is one o' those pretentious mini Moleskines. Yes, they are outrageously expensive, and I'm not sure what I'll replace it with once the little stash I have is gone. But I like 'em. The current one has ridden in coat pockets and purses, bike panniers and backpacks. It gets man-handled, dropped, spilled on, and otherwise abused, and it holds up well. It's full of all *sorts* of thoughts--everything from notes on stories-in-progress to descriptions of odd things I've run into along the way to fragments of future poems to summaries of stories-to-be-written to dreams to...well, you get the idea. Some ideas will likely remain forever sealed within its pages; some will blossom into full stories or conversations or poems or blog posts or smart-alecky remarks on Facebook. It's all good.





I only have some thirty-odd pages left in this current notebook. Spent some time today looking through it--rather a walk down my own literary memory lane, since it has story notes going back over four years. However, it's such a mishmash, it looks like the ramblings of a sick mind.... So of course I'm revealing some of it. Just for kicks. Good luck reading my speed handwriting!

More fear and loathing. Everybody's doin' it! Also, pen geekery writ large.

Ironically, these tend to be the times when I obsess the most over the tools of the trade, as if I could make everything turn around if I could just find the right pen or ink or paper or typewriter or what-have-you. And I don't give up writing when I feel like this. I'm just disgusted by every word is all. I write, but feel guilty and miserable for trying, sick that I had the hubris to try and run with the big dogs at times, when in reality, my stories are pale pablum not fit for human consumption.

There, you see what I did just then? Mixed metaphors all dumped together in a navel gazing whole that needs to go on that burn pile. ASAP.

But back to the obsession thing. Pens. I recently spent a bunch of time slummin' it with "inexpensive" pens--it's all relative, of course. Most of these were pens I've picked up over the years--I have a cup o' pens in almost every room of the house. Some rooms have two. It's a sickness. They pretty much all have good and bad points. Ballpoints, for instance, are available everywhere (often for free) write practically forever (some of the super smooth pens like the Pilot Dr. Grip Center of Gravity being the exception--they don't last much longer than gel pens), dry instantly and will write on even the roughest, spongiest paper. They're a carefree lot, ballpoints are, and there's a certain freedom to using them: no worries about paper quality or stray moisture, and they smell mahvelous.

Downsides? Yes, many. First and most obvious, they put down a rather anemic line. "Black" ballpoint ink is typically more of a streaky purplish-grey. It can be hard to read.

Their biggest downside for me, though, is that because of their thick, pasty ink, they require a certain amount of pressure to write with, which in turn also makes you grip them more tightly, all of which leads to hand and wrist cramping. When I hear people say, "Oh, I could never write more than a few words by hand," I pretty much assume they've never used anything but ballpoints. Don't get me wrong, ballpoints are great in their place, but I don't like 'em for intense writing.

I also have a number of gel pens around the house, mainly a handful of the ubiquitous Pilot G-2. I like these a lot. They put down a nice dark line, almost always write immediately even when they've been sitting, the ink is (mostly) waterproof and archival. They do require a little bit of hand pressure, but are much more comfortable than ballpoint. As you write, they have a slightly sticky feel to them, which grows on me, actually. It's like...I dunno...writing through honey. Gives you a feeling of control on the paper, but i do find it hard to really zip along with them. Also, they smear. Sometimes a lot. And they're pickier about paper than ballpoints are.

The biggest downside to them for me is that I could go through 'em like water. For me, they typically last somewhere around 40 comp book pages. That may sound like a lot, but it really isn't. On a typical day outside of NaNoWriMo season, I may write four pages in my journal and another four in my story notebook--I get 150-200 words a page, at a guess, so we're not talking a ton of words, honestly. At that rate, I go through a gel pen in five days, provided I don't also use it at work. Seems wasteful to me, especially since most of the time the refills cost as much as the pen, so you're throwing away a pen a week.

Next up would be rollerballs, I guess: liquid ink rolling ball pens. I've used Uniball rollers now and again for years. I'm also a fan of the Pilot v5. Roller balls can be rather like a compromise between gel/ballpoint pens and true fountain pens--with their water-based inks, they only need to touch the page to put down a line. But if the ball doesn't roll freely, they skip, and many styles don't have water-resistant ink.

And now I come back, as I always do, to fountain pens. Do they have downsides? You betcha. They can leak, many of the inks can fade or wash away easily (I'm looking at you, Waterman Florida Blue, or would be if you hadn't vamoosed), they aren't readily available, they can be expensive, their watery ink and pointy nibs are incredibly finicky about paper, and you have to hold them at the right angle or they won't write at all. You have to guard against dropping them or co-workers mangling them, because if a fountain pen nib gets damaged, it isn't as though you can just swap in a refill to replace it--the nib is an integral part of the pen, and it's relatively fragile, especially if it's a gold nib on a nicer pen.

Also they (and the ink and paper that go with 'em) are addictive. If you have the slightest tendencies toward office supplies geekery, for the love of Pete stay away from the things, or next thing you know you'll be cruising Fountain Pen Network at all hours of the day and night, hiding pen and ink acquisitions in the backs of drawers, endlessly scribbling about scribbling, and planning how to obtain your next hit.

I'm primarily an ink addict, though at this point I tend to stick to Noodler's Black and Noodler's "near bulletproof" colors, mostly thanks to the bad taste Waterman Florida Blue left in my mouth (not literally...I'm not *that* much of a junkie...): some of my old journal pages are approaching unreadable, and we're not even talking about much time here. I'm not sure I *want* anyone to read my notebooks in a hundred years, but I'd like to be able to read my own notes for at least five or ten or twenty years.

As for pens, in the last ten years or so I've been fortunate enough to own or try many of the flagship standards out there. My favorite pen is the Parker 51 I picked up for $30 about three years back. It's very, very user-grade: the cap is dinged and worn, the pen has lots of scratches and such, and the ink sac is stained. But writing with that pen is a transcendent experience--no pressure required at all, the words almost float onto the page as I think them. Everyone should have the experience of writing with a pen like that at least once.

I also have quite a few knock-around Chinese Hero 329s and 616s (they come up in packages of 10 for next to nothing on eBay now and again). I give these away to anyone wanting to try a fountain pen, though they do require bottled ink (rather than cartridges). They're also fun to fill with colors I don't use a ton of.

My most recent expensive pen acquisition was a total impulse buy, which I lay squarely in the court of one Marko Kloos, AKA The Munchkin Wrangler: it's a Lamy 2000 like the one at the top of his blog page, with Lamy's XF nib (making it more of a fine in most other worlds). I am very, very impressed with it so far. It's beautifully understated, extremely comfortable in the hand, and very smooth on the page. It holds a ton of ink, too. It may give the 51 a run for its money, especially once we get used to one another. There's also something to be said for a pen that is still being made. Nice to know I *could* replace it if I had to.

Um...I think I had a point, but I lost it somewhere along the way. Babbling as security blanket, I guess. I'll go back to writing bad prose now. ;-)