This Is This

I read something a few weeks ago in The Guardian about the circumstances under which writers prefer to write and there were loads of different setups.

Some like to write in their studies with views overlooking the river. Others disappeared into attics with laptops. Some woke early, made a coffee, and got into bed with notepads. In fact, the only pattern that emerged was that each writer is particular, to the point of a fetish, about their preferences.

I’m no different, so I thought I’d share my own special quirks about the effort I put in to the stuff you put in the effort to read.

Medium
I normally write on paper (remember that?) instead of straight into a computer. I type pretty quickly and everytime I read back something I’ve written straight into a keyboard, I realise that writing down ideas as fast as I can think them ends up making little sense. It reads like I talk sometimes, when people have cause to squint at me and pitch their heads to one side, like a dog hearing a strange noise for the first time.

Tools
a) Spiral notepads that open out like books, NOT the flippy over-the-top Columbo style reporters notepads.
b) 2B pencils, eraser tipped, sharpened with a knife. Pencils sharpened with pencil sharpeners have points which are too brittle and wear down too fast.
c) Or, if I’m writing at a table (more about that later), I’ll use a cheap but favourite Parker fountain pen with black permanent ink.

That all ends up looking like this:

(click picture for larger image)

The black Parker fountain pen is the one I used in the header you can see at the top of this page.

Environment
I normally write on the bus, because there’s nothing to do and boredom is the father of invention. Necessity is the mother, as you know, and deadlines provide the wine, soft lighting, music and - well, we’re all adults here aren’t we?

Writing on the bus is why I normally use pencils, because I’m not going to carry a cheap fountain pen with permanent black ink around in my pocket.

Why don’t I buy a better one that is guaranteed not to leak? Because then it wouldn’t be my pen. Plus I have lost every expensive pen I have ever bought.

The story goes like this. Boy buys pen, boy gets attached to pen. Boy carrries pen around every where and loses pen, but boy can’t retrace his steps because he has been so many places with it and writes stuff down all the time.

Time
As you can tell, I’m pretty easygoing. I don’t have a particular time when I find it easiest to write. Mornings are good, but then so are evenings. It’s 11pm as I write this, sitting with a whisky. And when I type it in, it’s 6:39 and I’m sitting listening to The Carpenters’ On Top Of The World on a bus  making its way though the rain to my home. Holidays are good for writing because my head winds down in ways my job doesn’t let allow, so lots of stuff comes to the surface even though you would expect the opposite to happen. I think.

Material
I’m always writing whatever. I started writing a blog because I wanted to get some of these ideas down because I enjoy writing so much. Get a blog, I thought, and you can get a couple of ideas down and that will be that. Then you came along and started reading this and I discovered that having this site actually encouraged more ideas and, well, here we are.

Also on This Is This
It all happens. Illusions, mostly. When life gives you lemons, hey - you’ve got some lemons there. Doesn’t mean anything.
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This entry was posted on Monday, October 30th, 2006 at 8:30 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.