Handmade stories

Once, I wrote all my stories by hand.

It was a matter of necessity; for some reason, I couldn’t think straight while staring at a computer screen, and couldn’t compose at a keyboard. I had to work out my stories with a pen, on paper, before I did anything else. I needed the smell of paper and ink, the scratch of a point along pale blue lines, the nervous fingering of pages if I was going to write anything of value. (All of my old notebooks have slightly dingy edges where I’ve riffled the pages over and over in order to think.)

I made three different attempts to learn touch-typing before I began using my notebooks for practice. Keying in my handwritten words, something finally clicked, and now I can type far faster than I can hand-write.

And now it’s the other way around. I have to compose at a keyboard because I can’t write fast enough to keep up with the sentences flying through my brain; typing is as close as I can come to thinking speed, because I don’t have to form the letters. Perhaps someday I’ll have to use dictation software and write at a speaking pace, although at the moment I can’t seem to compose out loud, and anyway I don’t live in a place that takes kindly to hearing me talk for hours on end.

But when I’m busy, or stressed, or unable to carve out that lovely hour or two to hammer out a chapter, I go back to the old methods. I carry around a notebook and a pen, and jot down sentences and paragraphs as they occur to me. Quite a lot of The Novel is getting written this way, just because it’s being sandwiched between other things … and also because it just seems to suit The Novel better. There’s something handmade about the story, and not just because a key plot point involves the hand-copying of contraband books.

I realized this recently when I noticed I had nearly filled up the spiral journal in which I’ve been keeping my notes on The Novel … and remembered that I had seen a duplicate of that journal on the clearance rack at Barnes and Noble months ago, and impulsively bought it as a backup. I dug it out of a box with surprising speed; I knew exactly where it was, as if it had been waiting for me. Normally it only takes me one notebook to make a novel, but this one’s taking two, because so much of it is turning out to be handwritten. And some nervous little part of my brain realized last summer that I was running out of pages, and that I would desperately need more. I’m not usually that prescient; this story has really moved in and colonized my brain.

There’s something different about this story—something tactile about it. I’m used to characters murmuring in my ear, but these voices have funny harmonies to them that remind me of my feeble attempts to play the guitar, so much so that I can almost feel the strings against my fingers. I’m currently working on a chapter in which the two main characters are trapped in a cave for several hours during a storm, with nothing to do but talk to each other; little bits of the scene often come to me as I’m settling into bed at night, and for a moment I can almost feel the body heat of whichever character is speaking, as if they were sitting next to me. I feel like I’ve left my fingerprints all over the characters and the world, even though it’s the most involved fictional world I’ve ever created, and the characters are the most vivid people I’ve ever written—the most not-me, in other words. And so perhaps it’s no surprise that I feel the need to have that pen back in my hands. The edges of my notebook pages are getting dingy.

They say handmade is best. I can’t wait to see how The Novel will turn out …

Requiem for an ink-stick

I am down to my last pen.

This is really quite traumatic for me. When I say my last pen, I don’t mean just any pen—I mean my pen. I may use dozens of pens in a given day, but my pens are different. I am very choosy about my pens, and I have found God’s own pen. And now I am running out of them.

My drug—er, pen of choice is the Sanford Liquid Expresso, Extra Fine Point. Perfect for writing and my feeble attempts to draw, its archive-quality ink never fades and makes even my handwriting look good, and its porous tip mimics the action of a fountain pen without forcing me to buy, and learn to use, a fountain pen. That means it writes so smoothly that it takes me an hour of scribbling to get writer’s cramp, even if I’m writing a fight scene. (Fight scenes mean I can’t sit still. If I’m hand-writing one, my pen carves deep grooves in the paper and my fingers go white at the knuckles and lock in place. If I’m typing one, I twitch in my seat. I once sprained my ankle while writing a particularly dramatic confrontation. I kid you not.)

I am not alone in my love of my pens. The reason I’m down to my last pen, less than a year after buying a fistful and guarding them like nuclear launch codes, is that nobody can leave my pens alone. I cannot, in good conscience, refuse to lend one to a friend—and they’re so perfect that I cannot, in good conscience, refuse to give one to someone who for one reason or another needs a truly perfect pen. I bought my father a box of them for Christmas just so he’d stop stealing mine. (I think arthritis is setting in.) Now the local art-supply store that has been selling me my beloved pens has closed, and no one’s answering e-mails through their website. Sanford is shutting down the Liquid Expresso line. I am bereft. And my very last pen—the medium-point felt-tip Expresso that I bought by mistake but that still writes more smoothly than any ballpoint, gel pen, or what have you—is sputtering as its ink runs out. I watch it miserably, mourning its passing. Don’t leave me!

It seems silly to get this worked up about a mere ink-stick. But I’m hardly alone in the obsession. Anybody who writes a lot—I mean really writes a lot--knows how important the right utensil can be. Nicole is fussy about her pencils and art pens; musicians are fussy about their instruments; I am fussy about that perfect line on a page, so smooth and easy that I no longer have to think about the process of writing (turn the tip this way to make sure it crosses the T) and can just let the words flow out.

I used to hand-write all my stories. The first 90 or so of the 100 stories that make up the foundation of Masks were composed longhand in a spiral notebook with a ballpoint pen. I couldn’t concentrate when I was sitting at a keyboard, possibly because I had failed three successive typing classes and would have failed the fourth one if I hadn’t thrown the assigned typing exercises out the window and spent 45 minutes a day typing my own handwritten stories into a computer file. Now, however, I literally can’t write fast enough to keep up with the words flowing out of my brain--unless I am using one of my pens, my perfect, nearly frictionless pens.

So now I must trust Amazon to distinguish between mere Fine Point and the sublime Extra Fine Point, and try to figure out whether something called a Liquid Flair is some kind of replacement for a Liquid Expresso. I have sent pleading emails to suppliers in the U.S. and Canada, researched variations on the trade name, and generally spent more skullsweat on these pens than I have on my taxes. Because taxes are once a year, and writing is every day! I’m willing to buy a box or two—heck, if I had the money, I’d buy a case. It seems excessive, but people have been asking me for weeks to sign zines for them. I firmly believe that if someone is going to go to such trouble for an autographed publication, or meet all kinds of crazy contest requirements to win one, the ink on that signature should not fade before the year is out. I have notebooks more than ten years old. I know what lasts and what doesn’t.

Hmm, maybe I can steal one of Dad’s to tide me over …