Dear Reader,
There aren’t many things that I’m too particular about. Besides my penchant for nice clothes and good food, I am pretty simple (though if you ask my wife, she might say something to the contrary) and can get by quite easily without the creature comforts most urban city dwellers take for granted. But despite my laid-back approach to most things, there is one area where I refuse to compromise: my writing tools.
A craftsman is only as good as his tools. Chefs take pride in their sharpened knives, painters their delicate brushes, and fishermen their collection of exotic lures. Their tools are an extension of themselves and reflect their passion for their craft.
Writing is a lot like being a craftsman. Unlike the musician who conjures melodies out of thin air, the writer is grounded, working within the confines of the line and page, piecing together disparate sentences into a cohesive narrative and drawing the poetic out of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. How a writer goes about his craft reflects their process and, ultimately, their style. The tools we use inform how we write; like any good craftsman, we’re particular about what we write on and with.
Life imitates art.
In sharing the tools I use, I hope to give you a sneak peek into my process. Often the process behind the art is as interesting as the art itself, and as you continue to read my work, maybe you’ll see the connections between the tools I use and the finished products they produce.
The Notebook: Black Pocket Moleskine w/ Brown Leather Cover
I’ve been using Moleskine since I started writing in college. Maybe they’re overhyped or benefit from good press, but nothing feels better in hand than a soft-cover Moleskine. The hardback ones are too straight-laced and severe; there’s a rigidity to them that isn’t conducive to the creative process. Hardback notebooks are for business people and academics, for the focused and organized, suitable only for note taking and minutes.
I purchased the notebook cover for the aesthetics. The simplicity of the Moleskine is its genius, black and simple, with no garish monograms or colored branding. And leather notebooks never quite measure up. They always take forever to break into shape, and no one wants to hold down pages while writing. The leather cover gives you all the aesthetics of a leather notebook with none of the hassle, and when one notebook is filled, you can replace it with another and begin again. And because it’s small enough to fit into my coat pocket, it goes everywhere with me.
The Pen: Pilot G-2 07
A good pen is hard to find. When I’m writing, I don’t want to think about what my body is doing. I need to be in my head, focused on the words pouring out onto the page. Most pens require too much pressure to write. It turns writing into a bore, constantly slowed down by the nib dragging across the page. Of course, Fountain pens are perfect, but fussy and don’t travel well.
The Pilot G-2 is a dream. It glides across the page like a skier cutting across banks of snow. Sure it smudges and dries relatively slowly, but I cannot find a more perfect pen. At this point, using any other pen would be sacrilegious, and I’d rather type something into the note section of my phone than force my hand to pick up a lackluster pen. I cannot write without one.
The Typewriter: Hermes Baby
I’m a bit of a romantic and suffer from terrible bouts of nostalgia. It was then only fit that I bought a typewriter and wrote my poetry there. All of my poetry begins on the page written in long hand. But after I brood over it for some time, I type it up on my typewriter. Again, there is something about the tactile nature of it all, the kinesthetics that goes into hitting keys and pressing letters onto a blank page. It is impractical, but that’s part of the point. In slowing down to type, you learn to watch yourself as you write, and rather than vomiting into a word processor, you are careful with your words, knowing the effort that goes into typing them.
I wish I had the courage to use the typewriter for my prose, but then again, if I did, nothing would ever get done.
PS
I will be taking a break until mid-January from my weekly posts. Until then feel free to come through the archive or read some of my published work over on my website.
Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!
-Ryan