Category Archives: Writing

The Temple of Pens and Paper and Stuff

I’ve said before that Japan is the Mecca of stationery and things to write with. For part of today, I got the chance to head down to Tokyo to visit Itoya, the central temple of that Mecca. I was mildly disappointed by the trip.

I’ve also mentioned my affinity for places that are both grandiose and kind of creepy. When I first moved to Tokyo, Itoya met both those criteria. Behind it’s signature red paper clip sign was seven floors (and one basement level) of office supplies fountain pens, ball-point pens, paper, and every office gadget imaginable housed in a thin building that looked kind of worn out and felt vaguely dangerous, as if you’d had to go to a store in the bad part of town (instead of just a block from what used to be the most expensive property on Earth). It had low doors and I had to pay attention as I moved from floor to floor. I was immediately smitten by it all and started spending. If I had nickle for every dime I spent there, well, I’d have someone else writing these posts whilst I studied mathematics.

Part of the fun is that, because the Japanese also have an unhealthy interest in office supplies, Japanese stationers have pens and other items that never make it to the West. Some of the items aren’t worth sending, but the ones that are seem subject to the whims of the manufacturers who may decide that the pen or pencil won’t sell well overseas. When you house it in a creepy building it’s even better.

Unfortunately, the creepiness is gone as the Itoya main building is now a construction site. The basic pens and paper have been moved to a six story building around the corner that lacks the red paper clip any character.

Clean but lacks character.

Just down the alley is K. Itoya,which used to be a satellite of the main store, and now houses the fountain pens and art supplies. It also lacks any character, but I like the fountain pen sign.

Nice sign. No character.

I’m also convinced that the new stores have less stuff than before. Part of the charm of old Itoya was that you could roam around for an hour discovering stuff that you didn’t know existed but suddenly couldn’t live without. The new store is too clean and compact. It’s like replacing the XYZ Shopping Mall with a large convenience store but still calling it the XYZ Shopping Mall.

I hope the new building gets its creepiness and sense of danger back. If it doesn’t, I just hope it has more stuff.

A Commitment to Writing by Committee Commitments

Inspiration So Pure So Smooth So Precious

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One of the things ordinary, normal people don’t get about writers is our affinity for notebooks. Not the digital carry it with you and send email kind, but the kind made from wood pulp.

To a normal person, a notebook is a thing used to record things, like notes. For a writer, a notebook is inspiration. It is precious and has magic powers. Like the new running shoes in Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Summer Running”–which the narrator is convinced will make him run faster–a notebook contains the purest form of all writing: the things we hope to write before we actually sit down to write them. There are no awkward sentences, no under-developed characters, no plot holes. Everything is perfect–well, at least until the first marks are made on the page.

To understand the effects of this, you have to understand how normal people and writers buy notebooks and then what happens after. A normal person buying a notebook will pay the money, say something like “Thanks, I really needed one of these” and immediately start scribbling notes. A writer buying a notebook will suddenly grow twenty feet tall like Galadriel in the film version of The Fellowship of the Ring and announce “Within these mighty pages are a great novel/epic poem and all that is necessary for me to reveal it is for me to leave white the things that are not a great novel/epic poem and lay marks upon the things that are. All shall love me and despair!”

The normal person behind me then says “Hurry up, moron, some of us have places to be. Oh, and you know Galadriel was a chick, don’t you?”

Basking in the glow, we get our brand new notebooks back to our writing space. There’s then a few moments whilst we arrange the space properly and then break out our pen. That’s when the problems hit. The shinier, more perfect the notebook, the less likely we are to begin writing in it. The ultra-smooth, fountain pen friendly paper of our Apica Premium CD Notebook is too smooth and pure to be ruined by the horrible scrawls we are about to inflict on it. It is the paper for something that people will be studying 300 years from now. It is not for the notes of a crap action novel or the notes for some pathetic blog. It deserves better. Hell, I don’t even have a proper pen for it.

It is precious.

In my case, at this point my internal editor/heckler–her name is Kimberly–starts snickering. (I’ll tell you more about Kimberly in a future post; all you need to know now is that she’s a snarky, ruthless bitch.) She hears the opening line that’s been rolling around in my head and says “Didn’t that meth lord guy say that on Breaking Bad in like season one or was that like Macbeth? It doesn’t matter, it still stinks. You’re not the one who knocks, you’re the one who stinks. And you can’t even smell. (See, I told you what she was like.)

I therefore put the nice, shiny notebook away and drag out some handmade ones that I assembled several years back out of unused handouts and old student evaluations. Kimberly messes with her hair–her hair is always perfect but she always complains she can’t do anything with it–and says “Changing to crappy paper won’t help. It’s just crap on crap. Stinky, stinky, stinky.” She sighs. “And how much time did you waste making those nasty things when you could have been writing? How many blank notebooks do you have anyway?” My answer to that question is “shut up”. All she needs to know is I now have a moldering stack of old paper held together with rusting staples.

As I’ve been working on this blog I’ve discovered that one of the advantages of computer screens is that there’s nothing particularly tactile about writing on them. You never have that “my words are crap and will despoil these precious pages” moment. (Well, unless you own a Mac, in which case, yes you will.)

Kimberly just laughs at that. “I’ll be here whatever you choose, you loser. I’m precious that way.”

Slogging and Blathering and Assessing

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Today’s post, unless I’ve miscounted, is post number 37 which means I’m 10% finished with this daily project. Since I’m coming down off a minor migraine, I’ve decided to assess what’s happened thus far and where I hope things will go from here.

I went in to this project with very little plan and I was worried about having enough interesting ideas. (Ha Ha Ha. Too late, DL, looks to me like you’ve already run out. That’s funny. Ha ha. I get it. Now shut up.) My friend Steve was much wiser in that respect, and his new daily poetry project looks interesting, too. On the other hand, having no plan gives me a much broader range of topics. But when you can go anywhere, where do you go first?

I keep a notebook of possible topics, but prefer to blather on about whatever strikes my interest on the day–hence haircuts and lots of stuff about marking exams. I want to keep a good portion of the possibles list as “I Got Nothin'” back-up topics.

I also decided by the end of the first week to limit myself to one hour of writing for each post. One of the reasons I haven’t done anything like this before–and also why I’m dubious about daily diaries–is the time spent on things that don’t necessarily pay. The consequences of the time limit have been mixed. Although it forces me to write quickly–I don’t count any prior notes or scribbled lines toward the time limit– I feel a number of the entries just kind of stopped without a satisfying concluding punch–The Corpse of Peace, for example.

I’ve also been worried about balancing the mix of serious, funny, seriously funny, falsely profound and downright tragic, but that might be a result of deciding how honest to get with all of this. I also don’t want this to be another version of the barely breathing The Crazy Japan Times, although I may start cross-posting some stuff over there.

I do have an eye toward readership–the blog’s been doing reasonably well thanks to Brad Dowdy of The Pen Addict including one of my posts in his regular Ink Links. (Note: that’s NOT the Ink Links my post is in.) I’ll probably add a tip jar one of these days, although that possibility changes depending on what day it is.

I also want to work on a couple connected series of posts, one about Albania and the Peace Corps, one about university and why I am a grad-school dropout and one tentatively involving “Daddyhood”. (Once again, though, I’m saving those for the “No, really, I got nothin’. Really, I don’t.” days

Thanks to everyone who’s commented, either on a post or on Facebook. I hope you’ll share these with others. I also hope I manage to keep your interest the rest of the way, despite cheating posts such as this.

The Glorious Scribbly Scrawls of Madness

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I spent part of the day transcribing novel number two into a computer.

Because I am a lunatic, and an old-fashioned one at that, I tend to write the first drafts of books by hand. This is actually quite convenient as I find it easier to break out a notepad and write on it, even whilst riding on a train, than to drag out a laptop computer and try to position it correctly on my lap. Also, notepads don’t have pre-installed games.

The disadvantage is I also have to have a fairly accurate “book bible” that keeps track of all my settings and my characters and their backgrounds. If I don’t, I end up wasting a lot of time, ink and paper. This happened on book two when I realized I’d spent thousands of words writing about a character’s family and getting his background wrong.

After I declare the manuscript finished, I hide it away for a couple months and then attack it with fresh eyes. I cross things out; cut things out; and tape and glue things in a different order. I call this the “assembled draft”. I then attempt to enter it all in computer, usually making even more changes as I go.

This step, however, is hindered by my handwriting. At a slow speed, my handwriting’s sloppy but legible. Then I begin to speed up. As the ideas and words begin to flow my handwriting becomes semi-legible scrawl bordering on sheer madness. Even I can’t read it and have showed it to other people for their opinion on what word they thought a particular scribble might be. They often scream at this point and flee whilst crossing themselves and saying Sancta Maria mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae but that may be for other reasons than my handwriting.

For an example I offer the following for your consideration. It shows the various steps my handwriting goes through:

Gaze upon the madness.

Gaze upon this at your own risk. (And this is only average madness.)

For the record, the Madness was not an exaggeration. I just quickly wrote the first thing that popped into my head. (And, no, I didn’t think of “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” until just now.)

Now imagine trying to work your way through 600 pages of such Madness.

I’ve tried slowing down, but can’t seem to manage it. I’ve also been, on occasion, doing some handwriting improvement exercises, but again, I have to be going slowly for that to work. Also, the last few months, I’ve been doing my best to work on computers but that requires fully charged batteries and no internet connection of any kind. These daily postings are also supposed to help me develop the habit of thinking on the keyboard (something you’ll notice I haven’t managed to do yet in these postings).

I’m not a luddite. I love having a computer for editing and research, for photography and for just good old fashioned time wasting. Still, there’s nothing like that scratching of fountain pen on paper. (Yes, pen snobs, that means I need a smoother nib or better paper. I know.) And seeing the word count on the screen isn’t as satisfying as seeing a stack of paper grow larger as you work.

You actually feel as if you’ve accomplished something. Even if you can’t read it.

A Bad Reputation and Too Many Pens

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I spent part of the day at the 15th Annual World Fountain Pen Festival. Despite the temptation, I didn’t feed my addiction. I was more like an alcoholic walking around a bar picking up glasses and sniffing them.

For this addiction, I can definitely blame my father as he’s the first to slip me the drug. Someone had given him, I think as part of a set, a Cross Century fountain pen. He didn’t want it and I’d never tried a fountain pen before so I accepted it.

The first hit was free. (This is the replacement, though. It wasn’t free.)

It was love at first, er, write. (Something like that.) To use it, I was forced to do the thing that none of my teachers had been able to make me do: hold my pen correctly. I used to have a claw grip. Hold your pencil normally, then pull the tip toward your palm and write with the pencil vertical and the tip directly under your index finger knuckle. Feel free to grip the pencil as tightly as possible. Writing that way gave me impressive calluses on my middle finger and my little finger but didn’t do much for my handwriting.

Using the Cross was more comfortable and, for a while, although it would eventually become barely legible, my handwriting improved. I kept that pen longer than any other pen I’d ever owned but eventually lost it. I quickly replaced it and still have the replacement. Then, while I was in the Peace Corps, I bought a couple cheap Chinese Hero pens, that are direct copies of the Parker 51. I wrote a lot with them, but found the nibs too thin. I still have them and they still work. (Not bad for 15 cents apiece.)

This one's been used. The one in the box has never been taken out of the plastic.

This one’s been used. There’s one in the box that has never even been taken out of the plastic.

Then, while I was at Ole Miss, I bought an early Retro 51 fountain pen (200 series?). It had a thicker barrel and a bit more weight. I used it a while–and still have it, by the way–but then a friend introduced me to fountain pen crack: the Pilot/Namiki Vanishing Point. A fountain pen that acts like a clicky ball-point pen. There’s no cap. You just click it and use it. Let me say that again: you click it like a ball-point pen, but it’s a fountain pen. Genius. I used them so much that the barrels began to break. I still have them, but don’t use them. Instead I use a more contemporary version.

An okay pen that has always felt creaky when I used it. Nice weight, though.

They look like pens, but they are actually coated with a drug that makes you want more. And more. And more.

Unfortunately, about the time I got the Cross, I developed a sudden aversion to lending my pens to other people. Nothing wins friends and influences people more than having a pen in your hand and saying “No” when asked “Do you have a pen I can borrow?” The few times I did lend my fountain pens, the borrowers gripped them by the nibs and got ink all over their fingers. Oddly, they blamed this on me which neither won friends nor influenced people. (Although saying “Don’t ruin the nib you moron” might have contributed to that, too.)

I quickly learned to carry spare pens to loan to the unwashed masses lest they become inky and, well, forced to wash. This led to the spectacle of me holding a pen but saying, “just a minute, I need to find a lesser pen for you to use” (something like that) when asked “May I borrow your pen?”.

I then moved to Japan, which is the Mecca of stationery and pointy writey things. And, of course, I must try them so I can experience Japanese stationery culture, or something. This means I have roller balls and gel ink pens. Pens with glass tips. Pens with brush tips. Actual brushes, and an old brush and ink kit that looks kind of like a pipe.

Also, just about 40 years since my father gave me that first hit of Cross, I have several fountain pens, some of which actually work, with a couple more on order (damn you Kickstarter!) I also have several bottles of ink occupying space on my desk.

As for the pen show, it wasn’t as much fun as the Pointy Stabby Things show because everything was being sold by store clerks and not by the actual makers. (The one maker who was there was constantly busy and I never got a chance to talk to him.) They also didn’t seem keen on photography. Sailor Pens’ relatively famous custom ink blender was there, but there was no other ink for sale. I did get to try a bunch of pens but didn’t buy anything. I am, however, casually checking out the prices on the internet. Just for curiosity’s sake.

I can quit any time I want.

Note: Updated 8 March 2015 with pictures.

One Film to in the Darkness Bind Them

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I’m in the mood to talk about stinkers today. The influence of reading too many bad student essays may be the cause of this.

The other cause is that an acquaintance of mine is about to, or already has, crossed a major turning point in his life. He is about to watch Tommy Wiseau’s epic disaster The Room.

Back when I was at university, discussions of bad films with my English Department friends always included some version of the following exchange:

A–Dude, that movie sucked.
B–Was it worse than Stalker?
C–(appearing out of nowhere and interrupting like a Greek chorus) Nothing is worse than Stalker. (C disappears.)

Stalker is a Russian sci fi film with an interesting premise and lots of atmosphere but very little else. It has a running time of 163 minutes, although it feels much longer. It was the worst movie I’d ever seen until I saw After Dark, My Sweet which is another slow atmospheric film with little going on underneath the cinematography.

Both these films satisfy my main requirement for being truly epic stinkers: They take themselves oh so seriously. Plan 9 from Outer Space is cult classic bad because it tried so hard to be Shakespeare. The remake, Independence Day, just sucked because it was a spoof of a long dead genre. Roadside Picnic, the novel Stalker was based on, had humans living in a world changed after aliens paused a bit for lunch and a toilet break and left their trash behind. Stalker wanted to be about dreams and wishes in a bleak world but instead showed us people riding carts for several minutes or watching water go calm with no action and no dialogue. Believe it or not, it was slower than Heaven’s Gate. After Dark, My Sweet had Jason Patric, Rachel Ward, Bruce Dern and a Jim Thompson pedigree, but it went nowhere slowly and then slowed down for effect.

The Room, however, exceeds them all and it is fair to say that there only two kinds of people on this earth: those who’ve seen The Room and those who still have souls.

Tommy Wiseau’s acting style combines William Shatner’s staccato and LOOK-AT-ME! ego with Christopher Walken’s random inflection on top of an accent that is not of this world. Scenes happen almost at random; serious issues are brought up and then dropped; one character changes actors and characters because the actor had to leave–they do give the new guy a new name, just no reason for him to be there; men toss around a football from only a few feet away from each other–it’s no joke to say the football is the best actor in the film–and Wiseau can turn trashing a room into a boring, yet comic masterpiece as he pulls the drawers out with much angry fury.

After you see it, you’ll see someone throw a ball and always think “Oh, hi, Mark.” After a friend tells you a horrible story of pain and death, you’ll laugh and say “Ha ha ha. What a story, (person’s name)”. At your birthday party you’ll say “You invited all my friends, good thinking!” When you meet a woman named Lisa you’ll always think “You ahhre tearing me apahhrt, Lisa!” which is simultaneously shouted and lifeless in the film.

Also, before you are tempted to watch it, remember this: One does not simply watch The Room. Its black heart is populated by more than just bad actors. There is evil there that does not sleep. Tommy Wiseau’s eyes are ever watchful and his melted-wax ass unforgettable. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire, ash, and dust. The very dialogue you hear is a poisonous fume. Not even with 10,000 beers and all the lights on should you watch this. It is folly.

I’ve never actually met this acquaintance. He is a friend of a friend and I only know him via Facebook and email. He seemed like an interesting guy.

I wish I’d had the chance to meet him before he watched The Room, though. The person I’ve been exchanging emails and texts with for several years no longer exists. He is no longer who he was.