Given, Received, Resolved - Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas Day! Did you receive any pen/pencil/typewriter related gifts? Interesting books? Music? Fun toys?

In my case, I did a bit to spread the pencil revolution: gave my little nieces some Ticonderoga Noir pencils (they liked the sparkle) and some little notebooks for scribbling in, and I gave their mother a Classroom Friendly pencil sharpener. They homeschool and the girls are now at an age where they are starting to use pencils quite a bit, but all she had to sharpen them with was a poor quality hand-held sharpener or a knife: a sad state of affairs.

I didn't receive any reading or writing related gifts, but I did buy myself the Kindle editions of C.S. Lewis' space trilogy books just before Christmas (they're on sale for $1.99 now!), ordered a bunch more ink samples recently, and also used an Amazon gift card I got for Christmas toward a new fountain pen. Which brings me tidily to my New Year's resolutions. If I put them out there in public, maybe I'll be more likely to stick with them! We'll start off with:

1. As I have done several times before, I resolve not to make any pen/paper/ink purchases, at least not until I've used up a lot more of my current stash. I think thus far April is the longest I've managed to hold out, and that year I quite literally had dreams where I was buying Clairefontaine notebooks...so we'll see how this goes.

2. Practice mandolin/guitar at least fifteen minutes a day. This sounds like a pathetically small goal, but the reality is if I pick up one of the instruments at all, I usually end up playing and practicing a lot longer than fifteen minutes. If I set the bar low, I'm more likely to do the picking up part.

3. Reserve sweets for special occasions (holidays, some Sundays, sometimes when with friends). Because, even though I wouldn't necessarily say I have a serious sweet tooth, I have a tendency to go on x-treme ice cream benders and such, given free rein.

4. Exercise regularly--I've been spending an hour on the elliptical three nights a week, plus a long walk on the trail on the weekends. I'd like to keep that up, or the equivalent once it's no longer quite so dark out. My overall goal is to lose about a pound a month via diet and exercise, which would bring me close to my high school graduation weight by the end of the year...I'd be happy with half that, though.

5. (Because I am a natural slob in the extreme.) Leave the house a little tidier/more organized when I go to bed than it was when I got up. If I somehow actually reach a point where this is no longer possible (doubtful), then just always try to leave the house as tidy as it was when I got up.

6. Do a good deed per day--it can be something as small as a note of thanks to a friend, or saying a quick prayer for someone I see in passing. Really more about adjusting my mindset than a cut-and-dried numerical goal.

Summing everything up: this year I want to work on self-discipline and charity.

How about you?

The Perils of Journaling

(And if I may state right up front: I have very mixed feelings about using "journal" as a verb...)

As mentioned in some previous posts, I've kept a journal or diary off and on since before I could write. Journals have been different things for me at different times. When I was little, they mostly tended to be one or two lines about what I saw as the most interesting or important event of the day, and maybe a countdown to the next big holiday.

As I grew up, my entries expanded somewhat. I wrote more detailed reports of my days, some days almost minute by minute as I carried my notebook with me into the woods or watched younger siblings play. Once in awhile I recorded my dreams of the future or indulged in a bit of complaining about dealing with one particular brother or another, but for the most part, these entries remained primarily factual and in-the-moment.

I think it was after I joined the military and moved overseas that my journals became introspective and personal. I was alone a lot, especially when I first arrived. It took me awhile to find my crowd: I've never been much for the club or the bar scene, and back then I was a bookish, rather sheltered and naive kid, completely overwhelmed by new information and new places and new people. My closest friends were my family, who were now in a time zone six hours away, and this was before any of us had so much as e-mail. Mom and I wrote letters back and forth, and a few friends wrote now and then...but it wasn't exactly the same as being able to talk at any time.

So, partly at Mom's suggestion, I started keeping a journal again, but this time, I told it everything. At first (and this may be a little hokey), I addressed my pages as letters to an imaginary person--it made it easier to bare my soul to a notebook. Eventually I did away with that, but continued to write down anything and everything: not just daily happenings, but all the feelings and fears I would have told Mom or a friend had they been there.

It's a habit I've kept up, off and on, ever since. The proportion of facts to contemplation and complaining has fluctuated somewhat, but it's almost always a part of what I write. Some of the time, I believe it's helpful: when my head is spinning out of control, writing down my thoughts can help me pinpoint exactly what it is that's bothering me, so I can work on it. But sometimes...?

I came across this brief article recently and found it interesting. It's more to do with journaling about broken relationships, but I would think applies to other subjects as well.

I think there's likely some truth in it. I mean...I don't know about you, but I tend to remember things when I write them down. It's one reason I take copious notes in meetings and classes: even if I never look at my notes again, I'm far more likely to remember the material covered if I wrote something down. Writing things down makes them stick in my head. In some senses, it may be that writing down very negative thoughts gives them a credence and weight they wouldn't otherwise have.

I don't think I could completely give up the occasional vent, but perhaps I could make a New Year's resolution to avoid using my journal as a means of turing my psyche into a punching bag. I get very frustrated with my failings at times, but it would be better to come up with positive actions to work toward moving past them (and write about these postive actions so I remember!) rather than dwelling on them ad nauseum. A spiritual director I once had used to stress always stating goals in a positive way: "Practice random acts of kindness," rather than "Avoid being such a cranky sourpuss." Heh..or something like that. In any case, I think there's a lot of wisdom to that approach to life.

What about you? What is keeping a journal to you? Is it a bare statement of facts? A record of special happenings, the activities and accomplishments of your children? Or (if you're willing to admit this out loud) do you ever find yourself wallowing in the darkest bits of your life? If so, do you think it helps or hinders?

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.

Bleargh

I'm not doing NaNo this year, for a variety of reasons.  But this is the first time in a very, very long time I've not taken part, and I miss it.  I feel...itchy, somehow. It's like...some beautifully apt simile I would come up with if I wasn't completely lacking in words of any kind.  I want to write *something*.  I'd write at least a short story if I could.  But my words are all gone.

I miss most the physical act: scribbling away with a pen or pencil or banging on the typewriter and seeing and feeling the pages fill up.  But I got nothing.  I can't even seem to manage poems lately.  I have one single line rattling around in the hollow void of my noggin, but it doesn't tie to anything at all, AND it's about a sunset, which is terribly hackneyed as poetic subjects go.

I've tried free-writing, just writing anything and everything that pops into my head or writing about writing, and even that petered out.

And now I'm writing about writing about writing.  I make me cry.

At least there's turkey in my near future!  And I don't seem to be having the same issues with music.  So there's that.

Not Dead Yet: UJTU Late September 2012

I have sadly neglected the blogosphere as of late. I may well have missed any number of earth-shattering, life-changing, world-altering posts from some of you. One of these days maybe I'll find some time to catch up!

1. First off, this is rather marvelous. It's like a verbal banquet. I like words, too. Don't you?

2. I haven't been doing much writing. I have, however, been playing and listening to a great deal of music. Made it to quite a few local bluegrass festivals, some of which were mostly listening, some of which were mostly hanging out with friends and playing music. I saw this thingamabob at an old time festival in Centralia, WA in August, and tried stumblingly to describe it to friends...until it showed up at another festival in Rainier, WA a few weeks later and was able to capture photographic proof. It's half Ford Pinto (painted hearse-style) and half motorcycle. Fascinating.

It'd make for an interesting vehicle for a NaNoWriMo character, no?

The bluegrass season is over, but I'm still playing tenor banjo at the local Irish session, practicing mandolin whenever I can (working on various waltzes lately, mostly--waltzes go well with fall weather), and trying to get better at playing accompaniment/backup chords, which is something I struggle with. Not nearly as intuitive as picking up melodies.

3. Other things I've been up to: last weekend I made my first solo venture into canning, and made a batch of apple butter (partly using apples I got from a friend's trees, in return for which I'll barter them back some apple butter, which makes me feel all pioneerly and such). The making of the apple butter wasn't hard, but I was pretty terrified of the canning portion, based on all the dire warnings it is possible to find on-line and my own heightened ability to ponder Every Thing That Could Possibly Go Wrong. The jars must be filled full, or they won't seal, but not TOO full, or they'll explode when processing, and if you don't heat them long enough in the processing stage, the apple butter will become angry and toxic, stalk you while you are sleeping, and inject nerve gas into your bloodstream, whereupon you will die a horrible, painful death. Or something like that. But I did the best I could, and (wonder of wonders), they all appear to have sealed properly and they look kinda purty.

Only catch? After all that work, it seems a real shame to actually break the seal on one and eat the stuff...

4. As a final note, after a certain amount of soul-searching (and wallet pummeling), I believe I will be putting many of my typewriters up for sale. Much though I mourn a few of the ones that got away (mostly the Hermes 3000), I'm just not cut out to be a collector. The Lettera 31 will stick around, and I'll figure out a few others, but if you see any ads with my photos attached on Craigslist...it isn't a photo thief. It's just me, having lost my mind.

Imagining a Perfect Space

A quick blueprint style sketch of my imaginary writing room, sketched on the back of an envelope, 'cause that's how I roll.

Strikethru recently started a discussion regarding what one might want in an ideal writing space. I'm a little late to the party, but I had to respond. I love this subject. I've spent many, many hours when I could be writing or otherwise gainfully employed browsing through flickr photos of writing desks and articles on how and where "real" writers like to write.

As for me, I think I'd like something a bit bigger than a shack or trailer. This may stem from either the fact that I've pretty much never had anything *but* cramped and cluttered quarters, or my general tendency toward claustrophobia. In any case, I'll take a slightly different stance. Here's what I'd like in my (fairly airy and spacious) writing room:

- Big windows or French doors, set away enough from the rest of the room that I can avoid glare and weird shadows, and with good blinds for those times when I want to close out the outside world. There would be a view--not necessarily a vista (though vistas are nice), but at least an ever-changing panorama of some sort. Not close to a street: people-watching is all well and good, but if I feel like they're watching me back, I can't concentrate. I'd rather have rolling fields or cow pastures or distant woods, or maybe a nice water view. Having something like bird feeders on a patio just outside would be good,too: something to watch more or less mindlessly. I do love a bird feeder. (I need to set up my hummingbird feeder again one of these days, come to think of it.)

- A ginormous heavy old table--like a farm table or board room table, preferably with plenty of character--for spreading out papers and such as I write by hand or typewriter or on the laptop with nothing else attached. In real life, I know such a table would almost instantly become and remain cluttered, but in my writing room dream, it is a beautifully open and inviting surface, always at the ready and picked up tidily after use. I'd probably also want some equally well-lived chairs to go with it.

- A place for an electric kettle and coffee and tea supplies, and a water supply for making such. Enough said. Also a mini fridge. Good call, Speegle.

- A decent speaker setup. Though to be honest, while I like the *idea* of writing to music, I don't really listen to it all that often when I'm really trying to get things done--I'm too easily distracted, even by wordless classical music. But sometimes, you *need* a little U2 or Holst or Merle Haggard or what-have-you to set the mood. It all depends. Gotta be ready. Having a place to keep a guitar or mandolin on a stand for noodling on while I'm thinking could be good, too.

- A big leather recliner with a blanket draped over the back: a good place to read, and comfortable enough for snoozing whilst contemplating, but not quite bed-like enough to encourage escape-by-napping. I'd also keep a lap desk by the side of it for times I felt like writing or computing there, and a cup o' pencils on the side table.

Actually, on second thought make that *two* pencil cups, one for sharps and one for dulls, with some sort of system for making it obvious which is which (green and red, maybe?), and add additional dual pencil cups around the room.

- An old medicine cabinet type thing with lots of interesting nooks and crannies for storing ink and pens and pencils and other assorted supplies. Actually, what'd be really cool (while I'm in complete fantasy mode here) would be a custom designed cabinet with bookshelves at the very top for reference books and binders and used notebooks, little bitty drawers for things like pen nibs and pencil leads, slightly bigger ones for index cards and pens and pencils, and a space at the bottom for storing unused notebooks and paper. Yeah. That wouldn't cost much to do, would it?

- A fairly barebones computer desk, with space for a nice big monitor and logical places for my scanner and printer and all. I'd also want enough room to set out notebooks or papers I was transcribing, or reference materials, but I'd guess I'd do most of my initial writing at the big ol' table.

- A cat. Cats make for good writing companions: sleeping cats have a nice dreamy aura about 'em to aid in creativity. I'm biased enough to believe this is particularly true of Siamese. And fortunately I have one on hand, with a spare half-Siamese as backup. Some dogs make good muses as well...my current dog is, however, faulty in this regard, being as how he is sitting-still-for-more-than-moments-impaired.

So there you have it. No big surprises to those who've been following along for awhile, I don't think.

It's that big ol' table that most grips my imagination, for some reason. There's just something about a big ol' table. Maybe it's just the idea of having a writing surface that can be approached from all four sides? Or else it's the former homeschooler in me....

A Matter of (Sentimental) Value

I had to go out of town for work a few weeks back--an extremely rare occurrence for me, which made it all the more stressful (read: I am a total wimp when it comes to leaving familiar ground). We went to Eastern Washington, which (generally unlike Western Washington) is quite hot during the summer. Knowing that there was a good possibility my belongings would be exposed to being left in a hot car, pencil made better sense than fountain pen to bring along for writing. I also knew I'd likely be wayyy too busy and on-the-go to mess around with sharpening, so mechanical pencil it was. Finally, I knew I'd be going to multiple sites, under major time constraints, so the chances of my leaving a pencil behind were pretty much guaranteed.

With all this factored in, I took along a purple Pentel Twist-Erase: rugged, dependable, well-equipped in the eraser department, and not too pricey or difficult to replace should the all-but-inevitable occur and it get permanently borrowed or left behind. I stuffed it full of leads, and off we went.

It had a pretty tough week: heavy and rough usage, and not just by me. Since I seemed to always be the one who always had a writing instrument at the ready, it got passed around a lot. People broke leads, it was dropped, tossed in linty purse pockets, and left (as predicted) in a car hot enough to do this to the gummy vitamins I foolishly toted along:

A few times I thought I'd lost it, or that someone had wandered off with it. But somehow, it came through it all without a hitch. We're still together. It got me through what was, to me, a very tense week, one little thing I could always depend on.

And now...now I was just realizing I'm kind of nervous about taking it away from my desk, for fear I'll lose it. Because now it's special. We've adventured together, this little Twist-Erase and I. It's like the hero's horse in a quest: seems like now it deserves to be put out to pasture to live a life of luxury, lest something dreadful happen to such a well-loved and loyal servant.

OK, so that's all rather hokey. And I suspect I'll get over it sooner or later. Otherwise I could go broke buying inexpensive-ish mechanical pencils I'm afraid to take anywhere...

Scribble Tweet: Anonymous

But I can stop any time I want.

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.

Type Tweet: Pet Peeved

Not to mention "its" from "it's" and "to" from "too" and (particularly onerous) "loose" from "lose." I'd also like to require remedial education for those who insist on putting random apostrophes in plural words: "kid's" instead of "kids," for example.