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Five days: Tools of the Trade
I've been a writer of some stripe since I could pick up a pencil and string words together. Perhaps before that: I recall distinctly being quite young, like 6 or so, and creating a picture book, only a couple pages long, called 'Cats at Work', mostly illustrating what my mother and father do at work all day. Cats in ties and cats in dresses vaccuuming. That was my first book.
Since then, I've become something of a kleptomaniac when it comes to nice pens. I'm not talking nice pens, like they cost $50 and have refills and fancy holders and such (although I do have a very nice wooden pen set given to me on the occasion of my bachelor's degree by my wonderful friend, Minda, and her amazing husband, Bill, two of the best friends a girl could ever ask for). I'm talking pens that leak just a little bit. Pens that have a good scent to the ink. Pens that feel good in the hand. Pens that write swiftly. And if you give me a pen to sign a form and it happens to fall into one of those categories, the odds of you getting it back are slim. Be forewarned.
I've also become a huge fan of paper in general. If you were to see my office, you would see I have nice journals, lots of those notebooks that go for 10 cents on sale during school supply season, multi-subject notebooks, strange odds and ends from Big Lots, loose leaf paper...you name it, I probably have it. It's actually becoming something of a problem.
My name is Toni. I'm addicted to office supplies. Don't get me started on labels, notecards, high lighters, folders, binders...we could be here all night.
Then there's some things that are tools that are more like habits I have developed. And one of them is a problem for national playwriting month: writing long hand. It's a habit I cultivated in college that has worked very well for me, even to this day, and even through my bout with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. There's something more primal and immediate for me about writing long hand--the paper, the pen (this is where the smell of the ink comes in). It's the tactile experience of writing that keeps me going. I've tried to type first drafts, but it's harder for me. The inspiration doesn't come; it just isn't comfortable. Handwriting my drafts means I really have NO IDEA what my page count is until I actually type it up. Last year, I tried to type it up, without editing, as I went along. Perhaps this year I will wait until the very end to type it all up. We will see.
The other is something that some of my writer friends have marveled at my ability to do, and that's watching television and listening to music with words. When I was in college and I didn't have a television, I listened to a lot of music and downloaded tons of it from the internet (shhhh, don't tell anyone!). Stuart Davis, various 80s music, Duncan Sheik, ABBA--it's all in there somewhere in my college plays. Now, it's the music of Jonathan Coulton, They Might be Giants, Paul and Storm, but added to the soundtrack is television. Project Runway, Law and Order, The Simpsons, Futurama, and Family Guy are all involved.
I have to have some kind of noise going on because I have this part of my brain that doesn't want to do anything but freak out and get distracted by shiny things. I call it my monkey brain--because it simply goes ape. So without some kind of noise, and some kind of noise that I am familiar with and I don't have to pay that close of attention to--I'm good to go.
So I got my giant basket of pens, a stack of notebooks, and my family guy and futurama DVDs. I am armed with my weapons for NaPlWriMo.
Are you?
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I too wrote my "first book" when I was about six. It was near the end of kindergarten, and our parents were visiting class that day for some reason. My mother was helping me by writing the words down that I was dictating to her to go along with some pictures I was drawing. It was about two flowers who I think went for a walk and got lost, but then a red stripe in the sky came out to save them and help them find their way home. And I remember that the "red stripe" was supposed to be a rainbow at first but I stopped drawing it after making the first red bar to the rainbow, so in the story it just became a red stripe. It totally made sense in my head at the time.
That is the best story! I love it. I wish I still had my book. You don't have yours, do you? When I have kids, I am totally going to save all that kind of stuff. I know I wish my parents had.
I was about six or seven, and in the hospital for chemo, so it was a story about using my bedsheets to rappel out the window and escape on a motorcycle hahahahaha
I also drew a series of cartoons about the Fleas [think big round noses and antennae].
My name is Shelley, and I, too, am addicted to office supplies.
Right up there with haunting used bookstores [if I packed a lunch, I could stay in a bookstore for weeks) is patrolling the aisles of the local Business Depot/Staples whatever. The gleaming sheets of fresh paper, the stacks of spiral bound notebooks, the lovely pens with the fine tips and gel ink...the smell of pencils fresh from the sharpener....sigh. It's all about possibilities and worlds that exist only in my head.
I think it started when my dad brought home pads of scrap paper that his workplace made - recycling before recycling was fancy. Stubs of various kinds of pencils [except the really hard 4Hs] he used for his drafting were also received with joy. My very first typewriter I got as a Christmas present when I was about eight or nine. A loving partner once bought me a thesaurus for my birthday.
I was destined for writer geekdom. You too, I'm sure!
I bet if I went to each of your homes AND each of your vehicles, I would find envelopes, backs of receipts, bits of flyers, etc. with notes on them: "remember to add adversity" "Jonas name not reliable" "think about colour of uniform", and other arcane, esoteric minutiae that absolutely MUST BE WRITTEN DOWN NOW.
What amuses me is that, despite my supply of various versions of notebooks, I never have one with me during the MUST WRITE THIS DOWN NOW moments.
We are crazy. But pleasantly so, eh?
Thumper
one of my favorite smells of ALL TIME is the smell of the Pink Pearl eraser. I LOVE IT.
my own father worked at the Rock Island Arsenal and was FOREVER bringing home paper for me to draw on the back of. He also brought me pens, pencils, rubber bands, anything he thought that I might enjoy using. He fostered in me a love for books, writing and office supplies.
I don't have my first typewriter anymore, but I was gifted a sweet manual typewriter I keep meaning to get into the shop to get cleaned and re-ribboned. My neighbor in Iowa City had it in a pile of crap outside his apartment that he was getting rid of. He was trying to get me to take the coat rack--i fell in love with the typewriter. It's in a box in the garage, waiting the day for me to have a house of my own where i could display it.
I love the Pink Pearl eraser scent too! And I love new notebooks that haven't been written in yet. And you should've seen how long it took me to pick out pens when I went pre-grad school shopping. I had to pick just the right ones.
Oh, and I may have that flower story somewhere. I'll have to check and see if it's still there where I think it is. I am also going to save everything my future kids write someday. I'm very packrat-ish as it is so saving all of that will be second-nature to me.
you should scan it and put it up somewhere on the net. It would be a hoot to see.