clickthing

A Tale of Two Hangers

2012-01-27T15:53:00.000-08:00

So, I hate wire clothes hangers. Not in the extreme sense, but I still dislike them because they are disastrous to my shirts. I'm a pretty big guy with broad shoulders, and using cheapo hangers on my shirts makes them pucker up into most-unmanly "shoulder nipples" of fabric. (And hello to all those random Googlers who were looking for something else when they typed "shoulder nipples" into the search box. Sorry to disappoint you. Also: ick.) We've been able to banish all but a few of these from our home, leaving a couple for kid's art projects or for snagging hand towels that fall behind the dryer.

Tubular plastic hangers are only slightly better in that they don't crumple under the weight of normal adult clothing, but they are used mainly for hanging up damp swimsuits in the shower in the summer. Slowly, over the years, I've been replacing both of these organizational abominations with wooden hangers. They're more solid, they are shaped like clothes are actually shaped, and keep my shirts neat. So of course I was delighted when my local thrift store put out a big bin of FREE HANGER'S (sic) TAKE ALL YOU WANT

Oh yes. Yes I will.

So I loaded up. A bunch from Ikea, to join the bunches from Ikea already holding up our coats at home. A few more that were in good shape and looked pretty sturdy. And then, down at the bottom of the bin, I found these two fellows.

This one caught my eye first, because it has printing stamped into both the front and back. This is the front, pictured above, and here's a detail from the back:

The full statement on the back is "Four Modern Hotels of Courtesy, Comfort & Service." And when this hanger was in regular use, I'm sure that was the case. Check out the modernity!

Image from Postcard Ranch

I have no idea how this (pilfered?) hanger from a Midwestern, mid-century hotel quartet wound up in Northern California, though I know an estate sale just unloaded a number of items in this shop, so it's likely that the former owner has passed on, leaving this memento of a comfortable stay in one of these fine AAA hotels. What caught my eye the most, though, was that I was born in the selfsame city as one of these four (information thieves, take note.) It appears to still live on today as apartments.

The other hanger was underneath the first: a much thinner, cheaper, giveaway-quality example.

What made this interesting to me is that I know it's from San Francisco (Vicente St.) and it's relatively old, given the phone number "MO 5662" -- predating the three-digit dialing prefix. Sure enough, Google found a scan of a 1938 phone book with this business and their number, practically dwarfed on a page full of cleaners and a competitor's massive advertisement.

Source PDF document found here

It's not easy to tell what's there now: redevelopment happened, and Google Maps' best guess is that the cleaners address is now home to either a Starbucks or a Chase Bank.

View Larger Map

I have no way to know if these two items came from the same closet, if their former owner had, at one point in his life, made that same strange journey that I have, blowing West like a seed on a contrary jet stream. I know there's no significance to me finding them together, but it made me think of this story, made me do a little searching about two places that I have temporarily called home, and most importantly, saved me from the social shame of shoulder nipples.

Big Brother

2012-01-25T12:38:00.001-08:00

Typed on a 1966 Brother-made Signature 513

Wide Load

2012-01-20T14:03:00.000-08:00

Speaking of depreciation, the price I paid for this (in 2010 dollars) equates to $0.93 in 1967 dollars, roughly the price of a pound of ground coffee in the supermarket. This machine stayed local, as you can see from the owner's notes. Interestingly, our dining room table and living room furniture in our current home came from the same store, about 30 years later, just a handful of years before "Monkey Ward" disappeared entirely.

Teaser photo: test-typed on a Montgomery Ward Signature 513 (made by Brother)

Games (Old) People Play

2012-01-19T12:55:00.000-08:00

Typed on a 1930s Royal Model "O"

Spoilers

2012-01-11T15:32:00.000-08:00

Goodreads seems like a fairly decent way to document my reading (and monetize it, no doubt). I'm just starting to use it. No promises that it will keep me from reading trash, though.

Typed on a Hermes 3000

The Quest for Cover Art: Wisdom of the Bowker

2012-01-09T21:36:00.000-08:00

Rob Bowker passed along a very helpful email to me, and rather than butcher it by trying to recap, I'm going to include a slightly edited version here:

BEHOLD

Here are some suggestions about what to include in a brief to an illustrator:

Size, especially height to width ratio

Layout: do you want an illustration to bleed off the edges (no margin), or just a spot illustration?

Colour: a black line drawing with a spot colour will be less expensive than a full colour

Text area: to produce an all-over cover, the illustrator will need to know the precise positioning of the all the type - unless they are including the type as well.

If you are selling digital editions, the image will need to work as a smallish thumbnail.

Budget. An illustrator may ask for 50% down, 50% on completion. A full blown painted illustration may take a day or two, so could run to $1000 plus. You need to decide how much you can afford to spend. Remember, every time you change your mind, the meter keeps running. See above.

Show and tell: grab an example of something that tickles your fancy and say "like this".

Remember, there are a thousand different ways to illustrate your book - but you can only choose one. It will be a compromise. Also, it can be a bit of a roller-coaster ride and you may not end up where you thought you wanted to go - but it could still end in a perfectly good place if you treat it as a collaboration more than a simply transactional commission.

Concise and helpful, yes? I hope Rob doesn't mind me co-opting his email for what is basically a free post. I'll be sure to compensate him in whatever imaginary currency bloggers use. (I'll send you some of the Russian spammers that drop links in my comments, Rob.)

For a short while in my professional wanderings, I did happen to work for a spinoff of a printing company, so although I may not know the exact terminology, I do understand "gutter" and "bleed" and at least some of the issues of print... circa 1995 or so. Of course, the world has also changed dramatically since 1995. To wit: the company that I was working for was going to ride the Next Big Technical wave -- interactive CD-ROMs. It just so happened that I'd done some HTML, and then suddenly we found ourselves making web sites instead, with the culmination of me shaking hands with and receiving a signed mouse pad from Fabio. (Oh, the dot-com years were strange ones indeed, my friends.)

For those inclined to go the DIY route, there are certainly tools out there to simplify the process. NaNoWriMo folks get a discount on getting a proof copy printed up by CreateSpace (aka Amazon), which I've done with a much earlier draft of the book in question:

It was done in a hurry, with a stock layout and photo on the site, but like Mr. Speegle, I have to admit to the electric thrill of holding something bound with my name on the cover. But now there's the considerations of making only what amounts to a single image, possible rendered in gray-scale on an e-ink screen as well as a full-color tablet. When the bookshelf is virtual and the "book" is palm-sized, how does the illustrator's craft adapt? I've even toyed with the idea of per-chapter illustrations a la a certain other fantasy title (cough Harry Potter cough) but then realized that honestly, the whole layout of the book is really up in the air, as you can't depend on the device. You certainly don't want any additional art to distract from the reading experience.

Frankly, the whole thing takes me back to that job in the mid-90's, trying to reduce .GIF sizes and design to accommodate 640x480 screen resolutions and to make pages AOL-friendly. I should straighten up in case Fabio comes wandering by.

Illustrator Redux

2012-01-05T10:10:00.000-08:00

Once again, I get to show off how little I actually know. A few things I've learned since my initial call for an illutrator:

There are a lot of talented people out there
I should probably not ask for help over vacation, since I'm offline most of the time, and those same talented people now probably think I'm rude/dead
I'm actually only one of those things
It's probably a good idea to nail down the cover illustration while your draft is being read and revised, and not after, so you don't have this nagging sense that the process has come to a crashing halt, when in fact it's just taking The Right Amount of Time
There is no number 5
I know nothing about how to spec illustrations, or how this process is "supposed" to work
"Illustration" is a very broad term, which appears to mean "anything other than a photograph"

To everyone that's contacted me: I'm sorry I have not replied, please see point #2, above. One person is taking a swing at the cover, but as per #6, I don't know if it's standard/polite/acceptable to also ask other people to do the same, at the same time. That feels a bit unfair to me, and considering that the stakes are so low, I don't want to get anyone's hopes up. But clearly there's artsy talent out there, waiting to be tapped.

So, here's my promise to all the illustrators that I have been rude/dead to: I'm re-reading this year's NaNoWriMo draft, with the intent of digitizing the same and unleashing it on my unawares pre-readers. When that happens, I'll put out another call for a cover for that book, per #4. I can only do that, however, if I also learn what's expected of me. Illustrators, what do you need from an author?

Illustrator Wanted

2011-12-29T10:15:00.000-08:00

Just popping in for a moment here, before the family treks off on some mandated Togetherness Time. (Actual quote from my wife and I to kids: "We will have fun, it won't be boring, so put down the video games and get your shoes on!")

Rob Bowker correctly and kindly suggested that I need an illustrator for the vision I'm carrying around in my head for the cover of my honest-I'll-self-publish-any-day-now novel One Last Quest. Of course, I have no experience finding the same. How exactly does one find such talent these days? Craigslist posting? Comb through deviantArt? Hang out in Starbucks and Peet's and look for someone sketching? Does one even sketch any more, or is it all done with iPads these days?

If things get desperate, I can always hand the digitizing pen over to my nine-year-old daughter. At least she won't be riddled with self-doubt, and I can reimburse her in leftover Christmas cookies.

See the Mighty List Before Us

2011-12-24T06:42:00.000-08:00

Cards sent and cards received
Gifts bought and wrapped and hidden and shipped
Cookies to be made
Ingredients we need for more cookies
Wishes written in wobbly crayon to a certain Jolly Old Elf

'Tis the season for us compulsive list-makers for sure as we try to cram in all the final things before the end of the year. Most people do these as New Years Resolutions, but I resolved long ago to not "do" Resolutions. Here's my own personal to-do list, stuck on a yellow sticky note where I can't hide from it.

Pies

Just so you know that my priorities are straight. There are pies to make today, and over Thanksgiving I tried making my own crusts for the first time, after watching my mother and sister do this from scratch every year. It was time I took up the family tradition, so this Christmas, all the crusts are from scratch. Or will be, once I stop screwing around on the Internet and make them.

Web Site

For reasons that seemed good at the time, I volunteered to be in charge of our local youth track team. This is funny for a number of reasons, not the least of which is I can't run. Of sure, if there's a disaster or if I'm in mortal peril or there's pie waiting for me at the end, I can get there under my own power, but it certainly won't be pretty. Luckily, this is not a coaching-type job, so I won't inflict my own lack of grace, form, and athleticism on children. Instead, I am merely coordinating adults who have all of those things. Part of the deal, though, is that I want to redo the web site, which is a pain to maintain in its current form, and will give me another outlet to show off my accumulated knowledge.

Garage

My wife and I already gave each other our big Christmas gift: a new back porch! Yes, it's just as romantic and festive as it sounds, but we wrote out the check to the builder yesterday, and now I'm looking at all the stuff that we shoved into the garage while they were doing their work. Now we have to decide what goes back, and what's clutter and gets tossed.

As a bonus project, my large tool chest has, over the years, gotten to the point where it holds a ton of junk that's not-tools. It's like a microcosm of our back porch. Time to empty it into large boxes, and then replace things worth keeping, and toss or sell or donate the rest.

Donate

The ultimate fate for much of the salvageable clutter. Once all the "special" gifts are out of hiding in the back of the car (shhh) it gets loaded up with the old dishes and outgrown clothes and hauled off to Goodwill. And hey, while I'm there, might as well look for some familiar cases...

The simple fact is: there's a large tree in the middle of my small house, and it's keeping a mighty pile of gifts under its boughs. Come tomorrow morning, we're going to need to find places for all those things.I believe they have reached some sort of gift critical-mass and are now producing new gifts entirely on their own. Saint Nicholas is going to have a devil of a time finding room tonight.

Read

I'm exchanging read-my-novel favors with a friend, and am overdue to go through his draft and give him feedback. I'm hip-deep in a Victorian-era Gothic horror novel, and there's three books on inter-library loan sitting on my nightstand that must go back by January 5th. I finally got myself onto Goodreads, too, though I have yet to post any reviews of anything. At the moment I've used the site as a place to dump what books I can remember reading.

Also, I think the NaNo draft has ripened: it's time to have a big glass of something fortifying and hops-based and go through it, or through one of the drafts that are stacked in boxes on my dresser.

Letters

So many letters I owe to the Typosphere! It's embarrassing. I have managed to send exactly one letter since September, I think. I need to set up a typing station somewhere in the house. Thank-you notes will need to be sent out in a week's time or so, too.

Publish

This has to happen. I've got beta-readers finishing up my own novel over the holiday, and I'm in need of an illustrator to try and realize the half-formed notion I've got for cover art. I finally got myself hooked up on Smashwords as well, as a bookend to the Goodreads membership. It would be nice to see this link go away: "You have not published any books — Publish a Book"

So that's the list. Ambitious? You betcha. But not, I think, unreasonable. I've been relaxing for a few days, letting the kids drive me crazy, but use list-makers can only idle for so long.

I hope your own holidays are fulfilling, in whatever form they take. And if you wind up on the wrong side of someone's "Naughty or Nice" list, I hope, at least, that you earned it.

Doomsday in 2012?

2011-12-15T21:34:00.000-08:00

Whereupon I strap on the sandwich board and declare:

The End is Nigh!

No, not that kind of doomsday, although if you work for one of the institutions represented above, it probably feels like it. Once-mighty Kodak is now suffering the indignity of seeing its stock trade for less than a dollar per share, with the ravening wolves of bankruptcy snarling just outside its doors. The U.S. Postal Service offered to delay closure of large parts of its infrastructure until the end May, but it's clear that volume has dropped well below its capacity, never to return. And the newspaper industry continues to consolidate, restructure, reduce, and combine in an attempt to remain relevant in a world where nearly everyone carries a fully-connected two-way computer in their pockets.

As a photographer in a line of photographers, I'm sad to see Kodak being steamrolled by history. The silver film can up there belonged to my late grandfather, an ad man by trade, decades before Don Draper and friends made it cool. (Grandpa worked on the Westinghouse campaign, and others I don't recall.) Losing Kodak is losing a part of that connection to the hours spent under the dim red safety lights in his basement darkroom, watching images magically appear on paper, surrounded by amber bottles of mysterious liquids and yellow packets of dry chemicals. At least Fuji still seems to be in the film business, and there is a manufacturing outfit in eastern Europe that is still making film, but the loss of Kodak is truly the passing of a great American success story.

As a retronaut and sporadic letter-writer, I'm sad to see the post office falling away, becoming a niche service that even people like me only mainly use once a year for sending Christmas cards and packages. Unless SOPA passes and drives us all back to pre-Internet times and technology -- and boy, is the Typosphere ready for that eventuality -- I see the end times for the good old USPS coming sooner than they'd like, and later than is practical. I'd better write some more letters and use up those stamps.

As a reader, the loss of the newspaper should hit me the hardest, but as I picked up our paper this morning in the driveway, half-soaked because it slipped out of its protective bag and into the rain, I realized that we're only getting it for two things these days: comics and coupons. I'd like to say I'm reading it for news, but everything there is a day old at least. "Local" news has all but disappeared in the wake of our own paper's many mergers: shown in the photo is the Business "section", which is a huge misnomer, as it is simply one page of newsprint, folded into half. Four pages, and the last page is taken up by a 3/4 sized advertisement. Our delivery person is an anonymous stranger that drives up and down the neighborhood at 5:45 am each day, after having driven thirty miles or so from his home for the privilege of peppering our suburban neighborhood with a bundle of advertisements insulating yesterday's news.

So where is the bold, beautiful tomorrow?

To be completely honest, I think it's in our hands. Literally. Mike Speegle is off making his writing dream happen by just doing it, publishing his own book, and damn those writing-program naysayers. Typosphere godmother Cheryl Lowry is working for a certain large seller-of-everything-under-the-sun, and leveraging her writing skills and 'net savvy into some sort of position that requires her to carry about numerous cool toys. Rob Bowker is sending hand-typed letters to any and all takers, bringing back the lost art and simple joy of a handmade message (and maybe introducing a new generation to the idea.)

And, oh yes, there's that little "Occupy" movement that the kids are so het up about. Whether you see this as citizen democracy or hippie rabble, it's the same thing -- individuals trying to jump in and do something, make a change, with their hands and voices and actions.

Dissolving old institutions, and trying on new ones. Smaller, localized, and independent. Kodak's demise doesn't come at the cost of photography, citizen journalism brings an immediacy and intimacy that the printed page cannot, and the mail? Unless it's a letter from a pen pal, 90% of what I get in my mailbox goes right into the recycling bin.

Maybe it's time to bring back the Pony Express? I bet my newspaper carrier would be up for it. I have a sandwich board here that says he's going to be out of a job soon.

Yikes

2011-12-10T20:11:00.001-08:00

December 10th already? Egad, this month is flying by. Pie-baking and cookie-decorating ruled the day, and on Monday, the promise of meeting the Big Guy Himself. My daughters prepared their letters today before dinner: handwritten, of course. Does St. Nick even have an email address? And how do you know it's not an outsourced elf on the other end?

These are the kinds of things I worry about.

Wrap It Up

2011-12-01T06:00:00.000-08:00

Another November done and gone, another draft on the pile. The Typewriter Brigade was in rare form this year, with more purple winner's bars showing up than year's past. The Office of Letters and Light upgraded their servers this year and the forum software, and not only were there no meltdowns, but we also didn't get our topic split up into multiple chunks like years past. True to form, though, the typewriter people posted the most... and no, it wasn't all just me. We had new faces as well as veterans, plus proud members of the Typewriter Mafia (those without a functional typer) and cheerleaders a-plenty, as the humble Nano Rhino prodded one and all with a motivational horn to the sides. It was a magical time, and in those waning days, as my caffeine addiction reached its horrible peak, I realized that I look forward to November the same way my kids look forward to Christmas, with all the excitement of the good times to come, without fretting about the inevitable cleanup.

Ah, the cleanup. There's no avoiding that, is there? NaNoWriMo 2011 (a.k.a. The Ballad of Congo Willy) will go down in personal history as "the one where I just kept blathering on in circles in the middle of the book." I always try to do something new with each NaNo -- this year was letting go of some of my retentive planning process and just seeing what the characters would do in certain circumstances. And they did some strange, freaky stuff. They lied to each other. They got kicked out of the house. They waxed poetic about the slow pace of life on the byways of central Ohio. They rigged a revenge game of cowpie bingo. I'm pretty sure they even died. None of this was planned this year: my index cards were essentially a TripTik across the U.S., with a few scenic spots highlighted (and in some cases, entirely bypassed.) So this year's New Thing was: "write from the hip."

Now comes the hard part. After the gifts are all unwrapped and piled up under the tree, and the kids are all banished to their rooms for going stir-crazy, I'll be plopped down on the sofa with a fountain pen in hand, sifting through... something. Maybe this year's draft, or maybe even last year's, which is still unread and in a box in my bedroom. Right now, I need to get a little mental distance from the writing, and think about which story is ready to be wrapped up.

Getting a Head

2011-11-28T12:52:00.001-08:00

Typed with a 1968 Hermes 3000

Headless Typewriter Found in Bottomless Garage

2011-11-22T12:17:00.001-08:00

(Optional subtitle: "Hello/Goodbye")

Fresh on the heels of what I thought was an awesome score this summer, the universe seemed to decide that it had enough of my griping about the relative rarity of the Hermes brand in this part of the world, and aligned in such a way that three Hermes 3000's showed up on Craigslist within a week of the arrival of my own, including one in my very own neighborhood. Fortunately for my ego, they were all priced the same as what I'd paid (including shipping) so I could breathe easy. And then, inexplicably, one showed up again just last week, one that I remembered from the summer. At a Drastic Discount.

You already know how this story is going to end.

So, I was out on a Craigslist meet-and-greet yesterday, spending a very satisfactory conversation with the previous owner of the above-pictured machine, a slightly earlier model than the one I'd grabbed over the summer, and more critically to me, in the desirable pica type size. I've gotten to the point where I'm trying to be more restrictive about the machines I keep around, and have realized that I just prefer pica to elite. My other 3000 is an elite, this one is pica. Checking Ted's excellent NOMDA scans, I see that this is the Epoca typeface, which is a very handsome san-serif typeface, which is an added bonus. Perhaps after cleaning and a new ribbon it might even be suitable for OCR work.

The seller was the former academic dean at the local community college and something of a collector: his garage is packed with what he jokingly called "the museum," which featured a broad assortment of just plain stuff: vintage toy cars and a barber's chair with attached ash tray, turntables, movie projectors, brass hose nozzles, mobile phones from the late 80s, and everything neatly labeled and shelved, with still more stuff in the shed. Stuff that started to take over his house, until his wife gently-yet-firmly suggested that he move it out of the living room and into the garage. (Visions of me in about 20 years here...)

His son wrote the book on our town's local history -- literally, it's for sale all over town -- so we also discussed writing, and free-writing, and I (of course) brought up NaNoWriMo and the Typewriter Brigade. He had a lovely old Royal Quiet De Luxe on display that belonged to his father, and featured Norwegian keys added on later. That one was a keeper, he said, and I agreed: it had a special story, and he's got kids to pass that along to. The Hermes was a yard-sale find from a neighbor down the street, and he had no such attachment to it, though he did admit to getting an email flame from someone in the Los Angeles area who was mad that he was letting this machine go for so little, presumably devaluing the LA seller's own machines. And the seller was not ignorant, either: he'd affixed a sticker showing a sample of eBay prices to the machine. He simply knew that he was done with it, and didn't need it, and that it was time for it to move on.

The only downside to the entire transaction -- and it is a very slight one -- is that I'm lacking the lid to the case. The seller never had one, and perhaps it was lost or broken by the previous owner: who knows. So, I've already pestered a few of you about the possibility of locating a new lid, and thrown out a request on the TYPESWAP group for the same. That's still in the works. At the moment, this machine is sitting beneath the dust cover from the other 3000, the 3000 that's now a surplus machine, and might be ready to move on. And while I'm thinking about it, perhaps it's time for Moses to mosey along too, he of the elite typeface and the persnickety space bar. I think it's time to take a little inventory around here and round up the machines that are ready for new homes before my darling wife moves me into the garage, too.

Through the Desert

2011-11-19T19:15:00.001-08:00

Another week of NaNoWriMo down. My head cold is a distant memory, except in the sinus passages of my best beloved, who curses my name when she tries to sleep at night. The strange backstory issues that plagued me last week have all but dissipated, not so much out of figuring them out but more out of my poor battered muse throwing up a white flag. "Aw, that's good enough," she says, trying to rearrange her robes into something Inspiring. "You'll sort it out in the edit." And she's right, of course. She always is. Plot B is going to require a lot of reworking, though, as I kept approaching the intertwined histories of these secondary characters from different angles. I certainly understand them better now than I did in those naive halcyon days of yore, way back in October when I was trying to sort my notecards into some semblance of logical order.

Oh, the notecards. Like the Plot B backstories, my dear Nano Rhino has pooped all over those as well. "Chaos from order" best describes my process this year, as whole sections airlifted out of harm's way of the rampaging Rhino, choosing to settle in later in the story once some of his steam was let off. And I have made the 50,000 word mark, so my Rhino pal was suddenly distracted by his new skyward motion, letting me move on with Plot A. Perhaps as an apology for the aimless wanderings of the last week, my poor battered Muse decided that my "go crazy in the desert" note card needed a Weirdness Infusion, stat. We've just come out of the desert, the protagonist, the narrator and I: a strange walkabout starring twin sisters on 4x4s, an unsettling insectarium run by a strangely prophetic old woman, and a diner in the desert with a peculiar clientele and a highly specific and memorable menu. None of these people or settings appeared in the cards, but they are turning out to be my favorite part of the story so far, injecting a heady dose of the mythic into what was becoming a rather mundane road-trip. For a story that started out as a shameless crib on Jason and the Argonauts, this diversion is a welcome one, and it gives me permission to let the rest of the story get its freaky on, too, so to speak.

So now the characters are nearly there, their destination is on the horizon, lit by the mighty beacon of the Luxor. That airlifted scene is primed and ready to go in its new home, and the end of my trip is in sight as well. Although I've reached the word goal, the count was inflated by my brain doing idle donuts in the middle of the plot. (Mmmm... idle plot donuts.) We're through the desert now, heading for the lush pastures that await, and the always-magical sensation of being able to type "THE END" on another draft. Keep looking skyward, fellow NaNo'ers, but watch out for surprises from the Rhino.

Spinout

2011-11-14T17:16:00.001-08:00

I crossed a major NaNoWriMo milestone today. I've only got around 10,000 words to go to make the 50,000 mark, which is around four days worth of concentrated writing. So why is this Rhino looking so peeved?

It's because I've jumped into my second plot (the backstory section of the book), and that's less clearly defined than the main journey of my protagonist and his friends. I started off the month with sketches of these second-story characters, but I did not know who they were, thinking at the time that they would be Mysterious and Secret.

The characters had other plans.

They got all up in my face, yo this weekend, demanding that I spend some time figuring out who they were, where they came from, and what they were like. I learned all sorts of things -- one drove a laundry truck, the other fled North Korea. They are connected in a way that I did not expect, but which fits with the overall story perfectly (they knew this all along, I'm sure.) Both have exceptional gifts in their own way, though both are ultimately doomed. And maybe that's why they have been staring at me all weekend from the platen, demanding that I sort their sh*t out before I dispose of them. I've spun my wheels a lot these past four days, trying to figure out which of the many histories is truly theirs, and trying to see how they fit together into the bigger puzzle. They're getting their moment on the page before they are written off.

So, I've laid down a lot of words these past few days, but I know that many of them are destined for the axe. I'm still trying to get some traction on their stories, but right now am sliding all over the page. I'll settle it eventually, but I need to get back on track, because even though the word counter says I'm close to being done, I'm not. Right now, I'm just spinning my wheels.

Teh Suck! Teh Suck!

2011-11-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

It's the kickoff of week two on the NaNo calendar, when all those exuberant plans turn to suck. This is why you spend the first week building up a wordcount buffer, so Week Two can come by and consume it nom nom nom-style. I wrote a post on the Brigade topic about powering through this week. tl;dr version: just write anything, and count everything you write. And for the love of the Rhino, don't worry about what you've already written. There is no such thing as "continuity" in the first draft (or quality, or pacing) so if you're fretting about these things, stop right now, and write instead. Write about the fretting, even.I'm writing this on Saturday night, dosed up on cold medication and hot tea, on the cusp of the end of summer time and theoretically an extra hour of sleep (or writing. Let's not kid ourselves.) Plotwise, I'm about to step into that great unknown void in the middle of my story, where I know the characters need to get from point A to B, but I'm a little blurry on the specifics in between, and how some planned scenes fit into the schedule. The transitions will be rough and random, but I know I'll be able to smooth them out later, when I can breathe and look at the novel as a whole. That time is not now. Now it's time to embrace the suck, and move on, always on.

Keeping the Rhino Fed

2011-11-04T08:26:00.000-07:00

Weekends are tough for me at NaNo time. There's usually a couple of kid-related activities to attend to, plus action-packed items on my honey-do list, like cleaning gutters and taking down the Halloween cobwebs from the porch. Unlike weekdays when I'm operating on a schedule, it's tough to get a distraction-free writing session completed. I'm still getting up early, which gives me an hour or so to get something down on paper, but my catch-up lunch sessions fall away until Monday. I honestly dread Thanksgiving break for this same reason.

Don't get me wrong: I love my kids and my family, and being busy and all. But November is the time to feed the Rhino, and I enjoy that, too. So, I'll squeeze in what writing I can this weekend, maybe bring out a pica machine to fool myself into writing more. Six pages per day is my goal, regardless of type size. Come Monday, though, I know there's going to be a hungry beast lurking on the keys, waiting for sustenance.

...and begin!

2011-11-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

Is it bad form to start writing with a 5am blast from an air horn? (Past experience says: yes.)

Good luck, fellow Wrimos. May your muse be cooperative and your rhino tamed. I'm going to take a typecasting/social networking hiatus for the duration, though I may slip in an UJTU* now and again. I'll post mini blurbs on The Twitter if anyone is so inclined to follow @mpclemens: 140 characters may all be I'm willing to spare for a while.

See you on the other side, Wrimos!

* Patented Little Flower Petals "Update Just To Update"

Fingers at the ready...

2011-10-31T06:57:00.000-07:00

One day left! Where's my character name file? Do I have enough paper? Who moved my ribbons? For heaven's sake, how does this book start?

Pre-flight jitters here. How's everybody else?

Sweet

2011-10-27T14:56:00.000-07:00

Our scanner at work is black and white only, so here's a photo of my ad hoc test setup. The lines you can see on the paper are shining through from a lined pad I put underneath the sheet.

Ink feathering detail:

Paper texture detail:

The paper is by Sugarmade, and is acid-free, 20#, 92 brightness.

For the Lurkers

2011-10-26T16:35:00.001-07:00

Still on the fence about being trampled by the Rhino? Don't be. C'mon over to the Brigade. You can do this.

Royal Rising

2011-10-24T06:51:00.000-07:00

The view from last November

Wheeled el Beast out of its summering spot last night and have it set up. I think I need to wind on a fresh ribbon and clean out the typeslugs, but it's pretty much ready. Now it's a matter of sorting through my notes to find out if I'm ready.

The Company I Keep

2011-10-20T20:45:00.000-07:00

I was having a little discussion with someone on The Twitter today, recommending (again!) Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird as a great resource for writers, would-be writers, and the easily frustrated of either type. The chapter on Shitty First Drafts (PDF) should be required reading, every single November. I know that whenever I pick up my copy of the book, I wind up going back and re-reading the whole thing from the start. Every year I get more out of it.

Anyhow, the Twitter chat made me realize that I don't think I've ever collected all the titles in one place, though I know I've discussed them before. So, here's the contents of my "sage writing advice" shelf.

In photo order:

Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury
To be honest, not my favorite of the bunch, but it comes praised by many. Perhaps you'll get more out of it than I did?
The Elements of Style, Strunk and White
Because I can never remember how to do quotes. Also, because I am trying to become one with the philosophy of cutting surplus words, if not in this blog, then at least in my writing.
The Moon & I, Betsy Byars
Hilarious, unless you are snake-averse. Then probably seriously creepy. Writing advice disguised as autobiographical stories.
Self Editing for Fiction Writers, Browne & King
The book so nice I braved the vultures circling Borders books to get my own copy. Makes a good argument for putting the extra effort into revisions of your own work, and gives real-life examples. My post-NaNo Sherpa. I reviewed this one earlier, though you may also want to check out Bell's The Artful Edit and Lyon's Manuscript Makeover. I preferred the Browne & King book.
No Plot? No Problem!, Chris Baty
The pre-NaNo Sherpa. I picked this up after my first year of NaNo. Certainly not the most serious book, but then NaNo isn't the most serious creative endeavor, either. Baty's novel aftercare advice about summarizing scenes on index cards inspired my current pre-noveling process.
Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss
If your blood pressure ticks up a notch every time you see an abused apostrophe, read this. Funny for Type "A" personalities like yours truly. Obnoxious to everyone else, probably. Read immediately after (or in parallel with) Strunk & White.
Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg
Slightly hippy-trippy compared to the others in the stack, but her mantra -- keep your hand moving, always moving across the page -- is invaluable advice.
Steering the Craft, Ursula K. Le Guin
Meant more as a workbook than a read-from-cover-to-cover work. Le Guin does get into discussions of taking criticism in a peer writing group, which is the only book I've found that does this. Type "A" people need all the advice we can get about accepting criticism gracefully and silently.
On Writing, Stephen King
Also largely autobiographical, and King has led a colorful (and medicated) life. Solid advice, though, from someone who knows how to make popular, readable work. Also: a sample of before-and-after edited work.
Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
Still among the very best in the pile, in my opinion, especially for writing-and-life advice. So many books that I've read were very dry, highbrow, academic books written by Serious Authors Crafting Serious Art. This is not those books, thank goodness. This is the one that gets me back in the NaNo frame of mind every year. After reading it, I'm excited about writing something terrible and bloated and meandering and occasionally surprising and subtle and wonderful.

Now obviously, one or more of these books simply won't do it for you. (Hopefully you are not also a planning-obsessed control freak, 'cause this here blog ain't big enough for the both of us...) If you're looking for some advice from smart people, though, you could do worse than this stack of paper.

Occupy Your Brain

2011-10-19T12:26:00.001-07:00

Dictated to the italic 1958 Olympia SM3

Nor-Cal Mini Type-In

2011-10-13T17:27:00.000-07:00

Dedicated followers of the Typosphere know that for a while, I seemed to be the only California-based typecaster out there (or at least the only one willing to blog about it.) Cameron of Living in the Woods joined up this year, and when he said he'd be nearby, we arranged for the First Ever Type-In of the Northern California Branch of the Typosphere. We met today for lunch and typing, and some inspection of a couple of sick machines in Cameron's care: an Olympia SM3 with more than the usual amount of smooshed bushings, and a de-badged Olivetti with a loose top, letting me at last tell a fellow typecaster that he had a few screws loose.

My original meeting place of a coffee shop was passed up for the far larger table space in the adjoining courtyard: the same place where I filmed my one-man Typewriter Day celebration. Whether it was the sight of the mighty spread of machines (five between the two of us) or the the music of the typing as it echoed around the court, we talked with several passers-by about typewriters, the 'sphere, and this crazy thing of blogging on a typewriter and fielded many questions from an over-friendly security guard asking the worth of his old Underwood portable. Sigh. Note to graphic designers: we need to start passing out business cards with the Typosphere URL on it. Seriously.

As always, the live-typing seems incomplete compared to the amount of actual socializing we managed to squeeze into my lunch hour: Cameron did more typing than I did, as I got to look over the problem machines he brought along. I'm rather camera-shy, and didn't want to put Cameron on the spot by taking his picture, so you'll have to settle for my typecast and these photos, and imagine two dashing gentlemen typing away on a pleasant sunny day.

Cameron brought a Tippa at my request, and it's a cool little machine. I have a real soft spot for travel-size typewriters, and this one is very full-featured and well built. A little skip-prone with a "soft" left margin, but a fine machine nonetheless. Plus, it came with the manual and a load of accessories, including a ruler with which I demonstrated the magic "Olympia elite" typeface (11 characters per inch.)Touch control? I forgot to look this one up. But there's a clever "stencil" knob on the right-hand side. Both are features I haven't seen on a travel machine before.Love the plastic eraser shield that was in the case. Just outstanding.No space is wasted: a place to file everything. And leather! Not cheap vinyl.The back of Cameron's sick SM3. I took this to check against my own machines, which are newer.The other patient: a $5 Olivetti with a little rust and a loose top. Four screws will fix the top, cleaning is needed for the guts, and some Liquid Wrench or other penetrating oil is needed to loosen one of the spool nuts. It's just a Valentine, without the $200 plastic trash can attached.My view of the proceedings. Clockwise from lower left: Tippa, Skyriter, Baby, SM3, and Olivetti, hiding under the stack of lids.Cameron's view. Note the pile of smooshed bushings to the left of the Olympia. Kids! Always check your rubber. (ahem)Even the Nano Rhino got into the act, coming out at the promise of a meal. Cameron's joining the Typewriter Brigade for his first ever NaNoWriMo this year. What about you?

Regularity

2011-10-11T21:09:00.000-07:00

Just like clockwork, the NaNoWriMo.org website is up and running, this time sporting a new technology that may withstand the press of writers. I haven't noticed any major problems, though there's the usual assortment of new-platform bugs that the development team is shaking out. Of course there's a Typewriter Brigade topic for anyone considering joining up this year and using a typewriter to draft their work, even just for part of it. And the Brigade accepts all well-wishers and assorted hangers-on as needed. If you've done NaNo before, stop on by and say hello. If you haven't done it before, consider it! It's a lot of work and a lot of fun at the same time. You don't have to be an overplanner like me: the only secret I have to "winning" is to be regular. Write a little bit, every single day. If you can make that a habit for thirty days, even if you're not making the average word-count, you're a winner. If you can write a little on the days when you absolutely do not want to write, and your brain feels slushy and thick, then you've Won Everything. Simple as that.

Come join up.

The rest of this post is mostly reference for me, so I can document what I did this year to clean up my transcription. If it's helpful to you, hooray! But save a copy of your file before following any of this advice. The Word examples were untested at the time I wrote this, but I can refine it if there's interest.

I have already extolled the virtues of having your draft read aloud (see the last bullet point on this post) and I am seriously looking at voice transcription for this year's draft. What both of these miss, though, is subtle issues of punctuation and spacing. Good news, though: your word processor can help you out. These are the things that I get caught up on.

Double-spacing is out of fashion. This is bad news for those of us who originally learned to type on a typewriter, or who were taught by someone who learned that way. You may still double-space on the computer, but if you're posting on the Web (at least), that extra space is being absorbed anyway. Modern use appears to be leading us to single space über alles, so in your word processor's box, type two spaces in the "Find" box, and a single space in the "Replace With" box (or whatever your program calls them.) Click "replace all" and then marvel at the number of excess spaces that have crept in. You may have to click this a couple times if you triple-spaced anything.
Indent with styles, not tabs. Another typewriter holdover. All your indents should be done automatically by the style set in your text. If you're still tabbing or spacing over to indent or center things, you're in for a world of grief. I tend to do those only after typecasting something and then moving over to the keyboard. I also lose where the apostrophe key is, but that's just my own mental shortcoming.
Underline is out, italics are in. Same reason as above, really. Underlining is what you do on a typewriter because you can't do italics. I mess this up all the time.
Passive voice. Your English teacher was right; this is bad stuff. Passive voice is the air my novel breathes in November.

Finding styles -- like finding underlines, when it should have been italics -- can be done right in the find/replace box. This article explains how it's done in Word. In LibreOffice, it's similar, except underlining is treated as a "Font Effect" and not a "Style" (The reasoning, I think, is that italics actually changes the font to an italic version, underlining enhances the existing font.) In LibreOffice, choose "Find/Replace > More Options > Format... > Font Effects" to get to the proper place.
Beyond that, my find/replace magic pixies are something called "regular expressions," which are clever little ways to write things that you can't normally type in a find/replace box. Here be dragons.

In OpenOffice/LibreOffice, there is an option in the Find/Replace box to use them. In Word, these are called "wildcards," and work in a similar way. For example, if I normally press the Tab key in the find box (like to find a tab), the cursor moves. To actually find a tab in my work in LibreOffice, I can use the magical regular expression: \t

That's a "backslash-tee" for those reading aloud. In Word, the characters are slightly different: ^t ("carat-tee")

To look for a lowercase letter following a period -- which shouldn't ever happen -- I search for:

\. [a-z] (In LibreOffice: "backslash-dot-space-square bracket-a-dash-z")
. [a-z] (In Word: the dot is not a wildcard character, "dot-space-square bracket-a-dash-z")

[a-z] means "match any letters from a to z" here, so you want search-and-replace to be case-sensitive. Otherwise, you'll get altered to every single end-of-sentence. Annoying.

I mess up dialog a lot: I can never remember on which side of the quote the punctuation goes (inside, for U.S. style.) Also, I've been known to put commas when I mean periods, or vice versa. So:

"[\.,:;?!] in LibreOffice, to find the juxtaposed quote/punctuation

"[.,:;^?!] in Word

To look for commas at the end of dialog when there should have been a period... assuming that I capitalized correctly:

," [A-Z] in both LibreOffice and Word

To look for periods that should have been commas:

\." [a-z] in LibreOffice
." [a-z] in Word

Passive voice is a killer. I am particular fond of using the could (verb) construct instead of the more active form, as in "She could see the gorilla" instead of the far better "She saw the gorilla." So:

could [a-z]

Also, was (verb)ing shows up a lot in my writing. "She was running" versus "She ran." This is a strange one. It looks for "was", followed by a space, and a bunch of stuff that's not a space that ends in "ing" So:

was [^ ]+ing in LibreOffice
was ?@(ing)> in Word (I think: untested!)

These magic spells go a long way towards polishing out the really rough spots on a draft.

O HAI

2011-10-07T14:39:00.000-07:00

(For the origins, see the post on dictation software.)

UPDATE: full size images for your remixing pleasure. Download the above image or a simpler vertical version.

Speak and be heard

2011-10-04T19:42:00.000-07:00

Obviously, there are issues in the text. A few dropped words here and there, and "nano rhino" is an excellent malapropism. I would prefer numbers and ordinals to be spelled out ("2 daughters", "but 1st"). Frankly, I haven't even begun to plumb the depths of the documentation. This feels like it could be a configuration option somewhere. I'm also not sure how to introduce capitalization in the middle of a sentence, though the software is clever enough to pick up some proper nouns on its own: Google, and Elizabeth, and its own name.

Speaking of names, there was a question of how it would do with proper names, especially when dealing with character names. Elizabeth suggested using uncommon substitute words in the text ("rutabaga") and then running a find/replace operation afterwards. This isn't a bad idea. Just to test things, here's a list of baby names in the U.S., pulled from the Social Security Administration's web site:

Popularity	Male name	Dictated	Different?	Female name	Dictated	Different?
1	Jacob	Jacob		Isabella	Isabella
2	Ethan	Ethan		Sophia	Sophia
3	Michael	Michael		Emma	Emma
4	Jayden	Jason	Yes	Olivia	Olivia
5	William	William		Ava	Ava
6	Alexander	Alexander		Emily	Emily
7	Noah	Noah		Abigail	Abigail
8	Daniel	Daniel		Madison	Madison
9	Aiden	Stephen	Yes	Chloe	Chloe
10	Anthony	Anthony		Mia	Nina	Yes

100	Brian	Brian		Rachel	Rachel
101	Bentley	Bentley		Mya	Maye	Yes
102	Alejandro	Alejandra	Yes	Rylee	Riley	Yes
103	Sean	Sean		Katelyn	Caitlin	Yes
104	Nolan	Nolan		Ellie	Ellie
105	Riley	Riley		Isabelle	Isabel	Yes
106	Kaden	Kayden,	Yes	Vanessa	Vanessa
107	Kyle	L	Yes	Lilly	Lily	Yes
108	Micah	Mica	Yes	London	London
109	Vincent	Vincent		Mary	Mary
110	Antonio	Antonia	Yes	Kennedy	Kennedy

250	Corbin	Corbin		Alondra	A longer	Yes
251	Simon	Simon		Jazmin	jazzman	Yes
252	Clayton	Clayton		Breanna	Rihanna	Yes
253	Myles	Miles	Yes	Quinn	Quinn
254	Xander	Xander		Christina	Christina
255	Dante	Dante		Kyla	Kyler	Yes
256	Erik	Eric	Yes	Adalyn	paddling	Yes
257	Rafael	Rafael		Fiona	Fiona
258	Martin	Martin		Kaydence	cadence	Yes
259	Dominick	Dominick		Allyson	Alison	Yes

In general, it did better than I expected, and may do better still with additional training on my part. Homophones will surely give the software fits, though. It claims to be context-aware, which may be why it did so well on these name lists. But unless you're planning on writing about a longer jazzman named Breanna Jazmin, search/replace should be your friend.

Bannation For The Win

2011-10-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

One month to NaNoWriMo, and I have had a brilliant idea. October first marks the end of this year's national Banned Books Week, a time to think about all the books that have been denounced due to theme or content or because they upset one group or another. The local library and bookstores always set up a big display of the titles. "READ A BANNED BOOK TODAY" they say.

Guys, this is a total win.

Having trouble thinking up ideas for your book this year? Totally aim to get on the banned list. With a little work on your part, you can be sure that somebody, somewhere, will be upset enough to make a big public stink about it. Maybe, if you're lucky, they'll even hold a bonfire. Bonfires make great TV.

Struggling with being literary? Having trouble being refined and classy? Pfft. Write something titillating or shocking or just plain depraved and wait for fame to come knocking.

Getting Smashed

2011-09-23T13:09:00.000-07:00

We're not above the vast sums, I should say. Too many negatives, not enough mental capacity. Please read the following understanding that Mr. Speegle and I are greed-driven beings, all the way down the withered, charred stumps that used to be our souls. Raising children will do this to you.

Pretty much the most awesome typeface ever, on an Olympia SM3 from 1958

A Word to the Wise

2011-09-16T17:24:00.000-07:00

Publish or Perish?

2011-09-15T14:06:00.000-07:00

I'm not trying to imply that Mr. Speegle falls short of a "real writer" definition, by the way. I don't actually know what that definition includes.

Why Libraries? at Writing Ball
The ongoing saga of Pen and Platen at Just Write
Me, musing on the future of books, getting hyped about the nook

Typed on the Remington Monarch

Train Trip

2011-09-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

In the U.S., Labor Day weekend typically marks the end of summer and the beginning of the school year. My older kids have been doing school for a couple of weeks now, but the holiday gave us a chance to squeeze in one last hurrah. Our destination: "Gold Rush Days" in the historic section of Sacramento, our state capitol. We roused the kids early and headed off to the local train station to start our day.

Doesn't everyone look excited? Well, no, but they should. Train travel is eminently civilized, as Adwoa routinely proves. Sadly, this entry will not have glamour shots of typewriters-in-the-wild as her posts do. It's about 7:30 AM in this photo, and the kids (not shown) are alternately sleepy/excited about the trip north. They've been up here before, but this was my first time.

Boarded and heading out now, we're heading for the bridge near the middle of this photo, which spans a long eastward-reaching bay. If one were to put a boat in the water and paddle west, you'd eventually pass beneath the Golden Gate bridge. This is an industrial area, with oil refinery storage tanks visible on the hillside. This is a typical morning view, with the fog still coming in from the bay.

Across the bridge and heading north now, and you can see what I like about living here. When we first moved, the brown hills of late summer looked dead to me, coming as I did from a very wet climate. Now it just looks normal to me, and green hillsides seem strange. We rarely see rain between April and October, so most of the summer the hills are golden like this. That's the fog rolling back along the top of the hills. We're "inland", which means we have temperatures about 15-20 degrees Fahrenheit above what's felt in San Francisco, just a few miles on the other side of these hills. Today promised to be a hot one: it did not disappoint.

About half an hour more to the north now, and you can see that we're moving away from the hills. We passed some kind of hot-air balloon launch, just a handful of them, rising up in the morning air. That might have been my second choice of travel, if there were some way to do it on the ground.I've got a few pictures of Sacramento, but most feature my kids, which I don't like to post publicly, so you're going to have to settle for a few establishing shots, and more narration. Unlike most of Switzerland, there's simply not that much history in the U.S.: our oldest monuments and structures may date from the late 1700's at best, and in California, it's even younger. Most of the "olde timey" booths and actors were recreating the 1850s or later. So, quite a few tents selling modern takes on period fashion, like these hat pins:

And most of the acting was of the Wild West variety, including a mock shootout:

Not shown: the small Women's Suffrage demonstration that wound through the crowd just before this show, which mortified my teenage son. He kept us safely out of embarrassment’s way on the opposite sidewalk. In the spirit of recreation, the streets are covered in dirt, and with all the horses and horse-drawn equipment making laps around the city, a number of other "natural" products as well.

By this point, it was early afternoon, and getting hot. These guys had the right idea, waiting it out in the shade. We headed in for lunch and air conditioning, and planned out the rest of the day. Tragically, we seemed to have missed "The California Fire Brigade Rescues the Burning Brothel" show. Another opportunity to mortify my son wasted, though we did manage to rattle him quite a bit when we explained what a brothel was. Loudly.

After lunch, we took in the Red Circle Dancers, and by "take in" I mean "accidentally happened across." My wife and I insisted on forcing the kids to get educated, dammit, so we stayed and watched. This show, plus the Buffalo Solidier tent shows that Gold Rush Days depict a Kindler, Gentler, More Equitable Wild West.By now, the kids were in Full Grumble Mode: it was hot, and the crowds were picking up. Conveniently, there are a number of museums right in this section of Sacramento, and they all offer free admission during this weekend, so we circled the troops and headed off for the nearest one, passing a few costumed ladies from the brothel show en route, giving my wife and I the chance to point them out. Loudly.

Naturally, the insides of the museums are generally far too dark for photography, at least with the small lens and sensor on my digital camera, but I did manage one retro-typographical shot, near the historic presses and Linotype machine in the area sponsored by the local newspaper, the Sacramento Bee. Of course I had to see it up close, and for a small donation, had a old-timey Western WANTED posted made up for my daughter. I explained the whole process as they ran the paper through as only an obsessive can, and the volunteer working the press offered me a job. I might have to go back...

Being the contrarians that we are, our family went through this museum backwards, starting with California's role in modern agriculture, and then rewinding through the two world wars, early settlement, and the gold rush that made this area famous. A few typewriter spottings, including a Pittsburgh and a Sholes in a very dark cabinet (sigh), and a three-bank "Noiseless" set up on a display. No pictures, alas, but they're there. Our youngest -- age three -- had taken charge by this point, and was pulling us past the displays in search of Something Less Boring (bad news, kid!) so we left the county history museum and headed next door to the train museum.

Now, I am not -- mercifully -- a Train Nut, and aside from an HO scale layout I had as a kid, I've never seen the draw of trains. There's a small section devoted to train-related toys, a display celebrating the completion of the trans-continental railroad, and several restored engines and cars inside. But the high point of the trip -- as my kids promised -- was a walk through a restored Pullman passenger car and matching dining car. The Pullman is rigged up so that it has a slight rocking motion, and plays a loop of sounds and lights through the windows simulating a nighttime ride. I had to go through twice. Ah, so very, very elegant. I'd ride one of those in an instant, even with the teeny-tiny berths. I'd like my time machine now, please, and a cross-country ticket. (Also spotted: a Royal QDL inside the glassed-off luxury compartment.)Sadly, I had to sacrifice a third trip through in the name of ice cream -- I'd planned on hiding in a berth and just taking a nap -- so we left the museum behind and headed out in search of a final treat. Typically, we happened along another crowd, this time around a demonstration of a period cannon.

It looks innocent in the photo, just there in the middle of the lawn, but was enough to give a massive chest-pounding THUMP when fired. You can see there's quite a crowd now, and still more as we fought our way down for ice cream. A bit of a line greeted us at Sacramento Sweets, but the air inside was cool and diabolically (or diabetically) sweet-smelling. We all came out with ice creams bigger than our heads, and polished them off in short order.

The last stop of the day was the military museum, by request of my son: one can only take so much gingham and calico and brothel-talk. I was less awed by the displays of superior firepower and more by the ice-cold water available in the downstairs fountain. High temperatures for the day were expected to be in the upper 90s, and we met and exceeded expectations. After admiring all the forms of lethality on display, it was time to gather up the kids and trundle back to the train station for the return journey. As we clacked along in big aluminum and steel tube, I have to admit that my mind was still back in Sacramento, sitting in a private berth behind that QDL, rocking gently side to side as a night many generations gone slipped by outside the window.

The Mighty Monarch

2011-09-02T10:44:00.000-07:00

Here's the right-hand carriage knob. I stuck a washer in there for strength, and as a base for any future blinging that may need to be done.The chocolatey-looking glop in the center is the puddle of JB Weld that is filling up the inside of the knob.

This was the scary part: mucking around with a "live" mainspring. It's much nicer to replace drawbands when you don't need to look at the spring at all, but just slip it through a little hole in the drum. Not so here: the cord had to be wound through a little hole, knotted, and then wedged back in. Tricky.

Here's the view afterwards. Success!

Back in typing shape:

More Monarch

2011-08-30T14:14:00.000-07:00

Some up-close shots of the Monarch I picked up from the online auction, and which may have a future in front of the business end of a can of spray paint.

It's a problem child for sure, but beneath the cosmetic flaws, it's got good bones. The above was typed with the machine held up at an angle -- a gravity-assist carriage.

That unexpected bit of fishing line is the drawband. No, it's not supposed to look like that. But I'm digging the light green color. "Celery" if you're interior-design inclined.

This is the part of the repair job that concerns me the most: I need to remove the silver plate from the back of the drum, seen here from the top. The drawband is fastened inside somehow. There is no convenient knot-hole in which to slip a replacement cord. I am hoping the experience is not like opening one of those trick cans of peanut brittle with the toy snakes inside.

The ribbon is hopelessly twisted and bunched on the spools, with ragged, torn portions. A loss, sadly, but it had enough life near the end to type just a bit.

The king of typewriters? That might be stretching it a bit, but my experience with 1960s Remingtons is that they're snappy, crisp machines.

Whew! ... Now what?

2011-08-26T19:04:00.000-07:00

Lots of things happening here lately:

The Hermes "Tropical" I blogged about showed up in the hands of a local eBay'er, and went for over $100 U.S.. Not bad for a typewriter with what I suspect is a broken or jammed tab mechanism. Dishonest, perhaps, but not bad. I'm taking a Critical Eye at some of the less-than-stellar machines in my stable.
Speaking of auctions, I put a low bid on a machine at Goodwill's online site, after talking it up on Google+ and Twitter, trying to find an adoptive home. It finally shipped, and is mine now. It's got some issues, including a tricky-ish drawband replacement, and a chip in the frame that needs to be stuck back in place, and some largish paint damage. I've been considering picking up a can of appliance enamel paint for a refinishing job. I think I may have found the machine to try it out upon. Stay tuned.
Nearly two years after the fact, I finally finished what I consider "Rewrite 2.0" of my NaNoWriMo 2009 story, One Last Quest. A few in the typosphere have slogged through earlier versions, or the first half of this rewrite. Since this stage has taken so long, though, I don't feel that I've actually read the silly thing start-to-finish. So that's next: convert it to an .epub file and throw it on the Nook. But being done with it: what a feeling! This is easily the longest thing I've ever written. And without question, having the computer read it aloud sped up the rewrite, as my ear caught so many things that my eye missed. (For the curious, I used LibreOffice for transcription with the Read Text extension. Free, and cross-platform.)

Drive-Thru Book Review: This One's for the Ladies

2011-08-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

The Wonderful Writing Machine
by Bruce Bliven, Jr.
no ISBN, search on AbeBooks.com

I mentioned in a previous post that I met up with the guys filming the typewriter documentary, and that my interview was held in a local bookstore. Well, you have them to thank for this review, since the owner of the bookstore pulled this title off the shelf for me when I went out to talk with him face-to-face about the possibility of using his shop. My copy of this book is pretty beat up: it's a discard from a local library, though it amazingly still has its dust jacket on it. The book was written in 1954, and in the forward, the author thanks Royal Typewriter Company "[f]or complete freedom to explore its offices, factories and files, along with permissions to interrupt its busy personnel with my often foolish questions [...]" That little forward, plus the fact that this was written in 1954, led me to two immediate conclusions:

The book will be filled with shameless Royal cheerleading
The book will be filled with the pervasive sexism of the time

In other words, a great read. Of course I bought it and brought it home. Color me surprised, then, when I read all the way through it, and found almost none of what I'd expected. Almost. But more on that in a bit.

What I found, much to my surprise and delight, was a well-written, entertaining, and sometimes funny historical journey through the life of the typewriter, from the first crude inventions, to Sholes and the Remington partnership, through the adoption of the typewriter as a necessary tool of business. There's some hints that the manual, mechanical machine's days are numbered -- a brief allusion to advantages of the electric machine, and discussion of the labor-intensive nature of typewriter manufacture and adjustment -- but this book is clearly a product of the peak of the typewriter age. Classic photos and illustrations are sprinkled throughout the book, with (I assume) Bliven's captions: several photos of pre-Sholes machines, various period photos of "stylish typists" of the early twentieth century, and at the end -- and only the end -- photos from the Royal factory, which surely seemed high-tech and impressive in their day (hand-grinding the segment, for instance. Ye gods.)

Only in the last quarter of the book does Bliven really show allegiance to Royal, and even then it's a smirking one. The hijinks of one of Royal's more infamous marketing guys and his stunt to drop typewriters on parachutes from a plane, for example: that's good reading, no matter what your brand preference. Chapter 11 ("Adjuster at Work") goes on a bit, but as a contemporary caretaker of a machine or two *cough* it's a window into the level of attention that surely went into the big Royal I have at home. Somebody spent a few hours with it, just making sure the N lined up with the A and the O. Somebody in a big factory wing, seated side-by-side with a few dozen other somebodies.

The only cringe-worthy portion of the book is Bliven referring to "the girls" or "your girl" when referring to the typist, but again, this happens later in the book: late enough that it makes me wonder if it was grafted on. (The forward indicates that portions of the book were previously published in Atlantic Monthly and Collier's magazines.) Through the earlier chapters, Bliven is a good deal more equitable, and sometimes sounds downright progressive, even. But taken as a whole, it's fun book, and worth checking out if you can find a copy.

Catch a Wave

2011-08-17T12:46:00.000-07:00

One side-effect of finding this machine is that I'm incapable of remembering the model name properly. It is truly "Tropical" as I eventually stated. You can see it among the other Olivetti machines on Will Davis' site. Imagine the name badge says "Hermes" and you'll have it.

Also, this typecast topic got away from one of my original points, which was the documentary being filmed right now by the crew from LA. After some back-and-forth trying to get me to find a location, we met last week in a local used-book store, and I managed to sweat and mumble my way through a series of innocuous but otherwise mind-blanking questions ("What's your name, and what do you do" and "What's your first memory of a typewriter.") If I make it into the final product at all, it will be a testament to their editing skills. I know that folks at the L.A. and Phoenix type-ins met Gary and Chris and praised them for their professionalism and unobtrusiveness. They were particularly patient with me the entire time, despite me trying (and failing) to not stare at the one customer who hung out and watched the first half hour of the interview.

True to form, I managed to not even think to grab a crappy cell-phone photo of the experience. If you happen to get contacted by these guys, please do your best to be courteous and polite to them, so they can get some usable quotes out of the experience. And pick someplace air-conditioned, so you don't look like Nixon sweating his way through a debate.

Typed on "Lennon", a 1972 Hermes 3000 with only a slightly confused heritage

Imagine

2011-08-11T14:58:00.001-07:00

New Guy

2011-08-09T14:54:00.000-07:00

Hey, who's that over there on the desk?

Hmm, I don't think I've ever seen him before. Swiss, is he? Or French?

Eñe guesses?

Ooh! I think I know!

He's from the future.

Stickers of the Dead

2011-08-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

From the original receipt found with my church-bazaar find, a late-model Olivetti 32. Purchased for $99.50 in October 1975 (not including sales tax.) An online inflation calculator makes this $420.20 in 2011 dollars, or about the cost of a budget laptop. 2247 Market in San Francisco is currently Lime Restaurant.

Adhered to the front of a Smith-Corona Sterling, this fine badge from Key Typewriter in Sunnyvale, down in the heart of Silicon Valley. No search engine matches for this business, but the telephone number uses a three-digit exchange, which probably dates it from at least the 1960s.

This is inside the case lid of the same Sterling. Presumably when Key went the way of the buggy-whip, Century Business stepped in and got the previous owner's, um, business. Century is still around.

My favorite one by far, stuck to the side of my big Royal standard machine. I'm not sure if Berkeley Office Equipment morphed into Berkeley Typewriter or California Typewriter, or was a third business entirely. With a major University just down the street, there would have been a demand for administrative machines and student machines alike.

Deserted

2011-08-05T14:59:00.000-07:00

Typed with "Morticia", the 1956 Olympia SM3

(If) There Can Be Only One at LFP

First Flight

2011-07-30T14:37:00.000-07:00

I suppose it's noteworthy that at no point did I think to use the screen-shot software, but that I had to use the camera, to document this in true type-in fashion. Yeah, that's my excuse.

The Good, The Bad, and the Secondary Characters

2011-07-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

Typed on the Camp machine, a Smith-Corona Silent Super

Lightness Into Dark

2011-07-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

Oh, botheration: that's "the wishes they make" in the first part, and and "shine a little light" in the next to last paragraph, not "sine." This story is mostly free of trigonometric issues. Why do I only see typos in these fauxcasts after they're posted? I'm sure there are more. Get out your red pencils and have fun!

Gratitude once again for Richard Polt's free typewriter font collection: this is Cassandre Graphike.

Summer Break(down)

2011-07-10T08:20:00.000-07:00

Typos included for extra authenticity.

Faux typecast using Richard Polt's "Remington Noiseless" font. The process for making a faux-cast is easy: install the font, use your favorite text editor to write it up, and then get a screen grab to upload.

Advice

2011-07-02T15:31:00.000-07:00

C-c-courage

2011-07-01T20:24:00.000-07:00

The awful reality

by mikeleeorg

The hopeful scene

Faux typecast using Richard Polt's Royal Vogue font recently discussed on the portable typewriter forum.

Camp

2011-06-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

Typed on a backpack-perfect Hermes Baby:

Happy Typewriter Day

2011-06-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

The scene for today's Typewriter Day celebrations. I've got video to splice together of the actual typing, such as it is. It was very difficult to pack up at the end of my lunch hour and head back indoors.

Babied

2011-06-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

My morning walking companion, determined that a leaf blowing across the street is actually a squirrel, and thus demands a halt in our walk for a stare-down.

Typed on a 1943 Hermes "baby"

No Post Today

2011-06-11T13:07:00.000-07:00

No post today, for I am restoring my mental

by rummaging through the titles at the used book sale at the local

with my kids. (That's my daughter's elbow in the above pic.) Gadget lust can't replace the joy of the hunt.

Simplicity Redux

2011-06-08T15:01:00.000-07:00

For those of you playing along at home, the process was:

Write post in LibreOffice
Unnecessarily save as HTML
Realize USB cable is sitting at home
Walk to electronics store on lunch to get another cable
Connect reader to computer
Run Calibre to convert to .epub and install on reader
Scan reader, paging between scans
Re-scan for pages that changed accidentally due to button presses
Open scan in gimp, realize it is in Black & White and not Greyscale mode
Edit out the frame from the scans, which was the whole point
Post anyway

Ah, technology. How you simplify our lives!

Attention Strippers

2011-06-05T20:01:00.000-07:00

No, no, no, not that sort of stripper...

For those of you making Silver Surfers, I wonder: have any of you considered re-painting with appliance enamel? I'm sitting here staring at my stove, and thinking how nice a glossy white finish might look on some of these machines. Now, it's usually easier to get paint off a typewriter than it is to apply new paint on, but still... I wonder.

Skyriter Manual Scan

2011-06-03T08:26:00.000-07:00

Requested by someone on an older post, here's a greyscale PDF scan of the manual from a Smith-Corona Skyriter circa mid-1950s.

Memorable

2011-05-30T20:30:00.000-07:00

Inaugural typecast on the dipped-and-dunked Olivetti Lettera 32:

There's Something in the Water

2011-05-28T12:40:00.000-07:00

In my last pencast, I mentioned finding a Lettera 32 at the church rummage sale. It came with the original sales receipt from 1975, plus an instruction card, and (typically) about 30 years of accumulated eraser shavings baked onto every surface.

This is the first weekend I've not had something scheduled, so I removed the ribbon and stripped off the shell and inspected the crud in detail.

Removing the shell of these machines is pretty easy. Take off the feet first to remove the bottom panel: I used a binder clip to get a better purchase on them. The panel just hinges off with the feet gone. The metal shell removes with four screws: two under the ribbon cover, another two at the rear underneath the carriage (you'll have to move it to the sides to get at them.) The shell comes off in one piece -- start on the left side so you don't get caught up in the carriage lock lever.

We have a rectangular bucket that has the good fortune to fit our sink and a portable typewriter with ease. Fill with warm water and a squirt of mild dish soap, and ease the typewriter inside.

Lift and lower the machine a few times to get the water to run through. I turned it so each of the four sides was "up" and repeated this for a while, then rinsed it off with the sprayer hose on our sink.

Now place outside in a sunny spot to dry!

I see a few areas that the dip-n-dunk missed, but they're reachable with a cotton swab. But now the cracks and crevices are crudless. I also scrubbed off the shell and the bottom panel with soap and a plastic scouring pad and placed them outside to dry.

Final step is to add a dab of sewing machine oil to the rails and at the joints of the type-bar linkages, and then wrestle the shell back on (they always seem to come off easier than they go on.) Maybe I'll put a little caranuba wax on some of the surfaces too, just to shine it up. After 30 years, this little gal deserves it.

Simplicity and Souvenirs

2011-05-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

Typed on "Moses," a 1952 Remington Quiet-Riter

No Rapture, Be Happy

2011-05-21T22:23:00.001-07:00

To Kanae Hasegawa

2011-05-18T20:34:00.000-07:00

Kanae, you didn't leave me any way to get in touch with you. I see you've reached Matt Cidoni, though. Matt is something of an unofficial ambassador of the Typosphere, and has radio-interview experience, too. He'll do a great job!

Cinnamon and Stargazers

2011-05-08T10:48:00.000-07:00

Typed on Gomez, an Olympia SM-3

The Cheapitudes

2011-04-29T12:18:00.000-07:00

Typed using Richard Polt's Oliver Printype TrueType font.

Regrets Unfounded?

2011-04-26T12:31:00.000-07:00

Typed, with growing admiration, on an SCM Corsair Deluxe

A Typewriter for a Wizard @ Dante's Wardrobe
The purchase

Now They've Gone Too Far

2011-04-21T12:22:00.000-07:00

What's wrong with this photo?

Typed, with tongue in cheek, on the re-felted Silver-Reed 750

Back in the Saddle

2011-04-17T16:23:00.000-07:00

Typed on "Gomez," the Olympia SM3

Noise Reduction

2011-04-06T19:39:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure which engineer it was, but someone thought that paper was a suitable soundproofing medium. It is, in fact, not.

I've swapped in the Silver-Reed "Fast-Spacer 750" (by Silver-Seiko, but made by Brother) and used it for a letter. It's entirely metal-bodied, so not as boomy as the Remington, but still rather jangly, as typers of this era tend to be. It also has -- or had -- a piece of black paperish material epoxied to the bottom inside panel. At one point in its life it had something dumped on it. I'm thinking instant oatmeal, from the color and texture. It was not pleasant to look at, peeping out from under the keys, and it certainly did nothing by way of much-needed soundproofing.

Today, while waiting for an operating system update to go horribly wrong, I shelled the typer, and ripped off as much of the nasty paper as I could. A piece of Kelly green polyester felt* and a tube of superglue later, and there's a fresh layer of sort-of-soundproofing inside.

The pictures don't do it justice: the green is subtle, but is a nice contrast to the red special-function keys, and the overall grey and silver color scheme of the typewriter. It still won't win any awards for silence, but I think it's better. At least, I tell myself it's better. It's certainly more attractive, and doesn't look like something chunky got sloshed through the works.

Speaking of quiet, I'm due for a little blog-cation myself. I'll be unplugging from the Series of Typewritten Tubes for about a week. I need to find a little peace, before I'm tempted to dump oatmeal over my own head. Keep the typosphere running, everybody, and I'll see you in a few days.

* It's nothing like felt at all, however, being made of recycled soda bottles. It's fairly stiff, and comes in a sheet large enough to cover the entire bottom of the machine with slight trimming. Those of you of the feminine persuasion would be wise to note that it also comes in a variety of patterns and prints, which would look pretty outstanding under the keys of the right machine. I've used regular "craft felt" for another typewriter re-lining project, and the improvement in looks is significant, and at least all my fumbling around didn't make it louder. The recycled stuff is a little easier to work with, though: it cuts a cleaner edge, and is rigid enough not to flop around as you're trying to stick it down. And this footnote has gone on way too long, which is another sign I need a break. I ramble.

Poetry Sunday

2011-04-03T09:24:00.001-07:00

Last weekend I had pulled out the typewriter to work on a letter. My eight-year-old daughter came in and asked if she could "use your typewriter to write some poems." I finished up the letter and set this up in her room, gave her the quick overview of the controls, and let her go. About an hour later, this was the result.

M____'s Book of Poems

The old tree sits on a hill
Near a meadow past a stream
CRACK!
The tree falls down

Bird it flies it chirps
Letting its song
Ring out
In the open air

Horse
Jumping, trotting
Always nice
Living in a stable

Turtles
Slow but steady as a rock
Live in sea or marsh
God's favorite animals

Tiger
Tiger's soft stripes
Blends in
The jungle
Eats meat

Dot
Dot grows to be
A large animal
That can take
You on an adventure

Books
Can take you
On an adventure
Even by reading
A single page

Sun
Brightly shining
Happily glowing
Warming the park
Hot summer day

Soccer
Lights flash
Green grass
Far away
The crowds cheer

Update Time

2011-04-01T14:36:00.000-07:00

No time for a typecast this week, so just a digital update to let you know I'm still breathing.

The Typosphere is growing strong. A writeup in the NY Times, and now a followup gallery from LIFE magazine? Sure, it's just the short-attention span of the media, distracted by the novelty of young 'uns at the keys, but that's OK. Maybe we'll convert a keychopper or two to the dork side. Fear of a typewriter-availability-Armageddon as as result of the publicity may have happened: Craigslist is strangly silent these last few days, except for the same Selectric being flogged over and over again. ("Worked last time we used it." Encouraging.) If a tulip-bulb-style price craze starts, rest assured that I will miss it entirely despite a keeping few adoptable machines around. I could pat myself on the back for showing Exceptional Restraint for bypassing the Royal 10 standard machine at the thrift store, but a) it's $50 and b) it's in bad, bad shape, certainly not $50 shape. Barely typeable. Lacks a pair of feet. Actually crusty in spots. Nothing like Richard Polt's (ahem) April First Find, but still pretty bad.

Ryan P.'s mail exchange is awesome. I know I've said it before, but Google says I suddenly have more readers (waves hello) so I'm going to promote it again. I've been exchanging mail with various people for -- let me check -- a year now, or even slightly longer in some cases. If you don't get any Real Mail any more (bills and catalogs are not Real Mail), then you owe it to yourself to sign up. Do it. Do it now. All of my mail was outbound, and I've been eagerly checking the mailbox for a week to see if anything came in, and then trying to hide my disappointment when it didn't. And then all of a sudden, I've got six letters in, all at once, typewritten, handwritten, artsy and plain. I feel like a king. It doesn't take much: just shoot Ryan your snail mail address and get a few in return. You'll like it. And did you put your name down for the Round Ribbon exchange as well? Just tell Ryan you want to do that, too, when you send him your address. He's a one-stop-shop for snail-mail delight.

Speaking of mail, Flat Stanley's addresses were due into the classroom today. My daughter picked the first address -- Rino! -- and then we'll go from there. It didn't feel fair making other people pay international postage, so I think we'll send Stanley out-and-back to non-US friends first, and then manage some kind of loop through the US typecasting community. That means Adwoa, you're likely to be next. I'll probably stick a "Where's Stanley" page up here once he gets going.

Speaking again of mail, next up from Clickthing Mad Science Labs: Cheap-Ass Crafty-Guy Mail. A few of you have already received my tests: wax seals, random rubber stamps, perhaps an interesting envelope... a photo-heavy post is planned. Until then, typecasters, keep spreading the word, making the posters, and checking those lonesome thrift store corners...

UPDATE: Following some advice I read... somewhere, I had the computer read my revised to me aloud last night. Oh the mistakes! So, I've yanked the .pdf down for now as I clean it up. If you have a text-to-speech program, I highly recommended this. Hearing the draft spoken aloud by a disinterested third party uncovers a lot of goofs that my eye glossed over, like missed articles, and redundant word usage. So, it's once again not ready for prime time.

And one last item. I've put up the first three chapters of One Last Quest, my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel. Back in college -- the old days! -- one of the guys in the dorm turned me on to Terry Pratcheet (now Sir Terry to us peasants) and I ripped through the few Discworld books that were available at the time. They were a lot of fun, and I appreciated their blending of humor and fantasy, and their light-read-ability. (Far more readable than a certain other title in my life at that time with a fantasy theme, at least on the cover.) I think being a geeky, computer-loving kid growing up in the 80's pretty much ensured that you would also get into Dungeons & Dragons, and the whole fantasy sci-fi thing, and I was no exception. I just recently unearthed an oversized index card at home, in fact, that outlined the algorithm for my "Random D&D Character Maker" program (TI-994A BASIC for the win, baby.) I found Douglas Adams and Piers Anthony then, too, and I think all of those things together give you a pretty clear picture of my world view at the time: swords and sorcery and geekery and Dr. Who on PBS late Saturday night. Sci-fi... skewed.

I tried my hand at a Serious Novel in 2010, a Serious Sci-Fi Novel, in fact, and although I told the story I wanted to tell, I didn't have nearly as much fun writing it as I did Quest. I'm catching up on the many Discworld books* that have come out in the meantime, and during this slow slog through Quest, I've realized that I'm probably aping Sir Terry more than a real author should -- in genre and tone, at least. (That sound you hear is my ego inflating.) But I have decided, thanks to the whole rewrite process, that this is the way I'm going to go from here on out with NaNoWriMo. Some people are destined to write Great Serious Fiction, and some are just not. I'm not, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. If you've got the chance, please read through it and let me know what you think.

* Going Postal: highly recommended. Hogfather: not so much. Monstrous Regiment: I'll let you know.

We are GO for Stanley!

2011-03-28T19:06:00.000-07:00

Well, I wasn't sure that was going to happen, but details have finally come home with my daughter. Flat Stanley is ready for his travels through the typosphere if you, gentle readers, are willing to receive him. It looks like we need to gather at least five names and addresses, and then Stanley will make round trips from here to each destination. From the assignment sheet:

We will ask each host to keep [Stanley] for a short visit and then send him back telling us something about their city and the exciting things Flat Stanley saw or did while he was there. Some Great Flat Stanleys we have heard about have come back dressed in clothing from the area, with souveniers, area-appropriate mementos, travel brochures, photographs, postcards, and more.

Thanks to the kindness of Strikethru, we've got a selection of flat typewriter stamps to choose from, and one may get tucked along in the envelope. More details are coming, but for now, I need the names and addresses of anyone willing to act as a host for Stanley, to be turned in by this Friday. You don't have to post them here if you don't want to, just send them to mpclemens at gmail dot com and we'll take it from there.

Thanks typosphere!

Gary is...

2011-03-24T16:33:00.000-07:00

Gary may be a lot of things, but I'll always remember him as the guy that forgot how to put the carbon paper in the typewriter. I found this message peeking out at me this morning from the platen of my Remington Premier, which is currently in rotation on my desk. I was transcribing from one of my notebooks onto a stack of index cards, had the desk lamp to battle the darkness of our Biblical rains, and there on the platen was Gary's self-affirmation, immortalized in ink and rubber. Well done, Gary.

Gary Douglas is a
highly skilled professional

And speaking of affirmations (smooth, that transition), I'm fishing for feedback as I try once again to make some readable sense of my 2009 NaNoWriMo entry. This latest round of motivation came over a weekend dinner with friends, when one of them had the nerve -- the unmitigated nerve! -- to ask if I'd done any writing lately. After I finished mumbling "no" into my napkin and then trying to change the subject, I figured that, once again, I've been neglectful, and unprofessional, and I think a disappointment to even good ol' Gary there. I'm taking this a chapter at a time now, and am slowly posting what I have so far on the Longer Pursuits page. As of this writing, I have all of three pages up, but believe me, it was a rough three. Good Openings, as all advice says, are Really Rather Difficult. Maybe not to Gary, but they are to me, especially when the original and revised openings read like a backstory-dump, which, essentially, they are.

I've made a clean break, and if you have a few minutes, I'd appreciate all feedback. Three pages. That's all. I'm no Gary.

Old Type Forged Anew

2011-03-22T14:02:00.000-07:00

(typos left in for true fake-typecast authenticity)

Eagle-eyed viewers of the Typosphere page may note that the header is now done with one of Richard's fonts (Byron Mark II)

I'd be thrilled to contribute what few typefaces I have to a project like this: I don't know how much trouble it is to convert a scan into a face, but I have some faces -- even mundane ones -- that I'm fond of, like the rounded Roman letters of my SM-9, and the face on my Smith-Corona Sterling that has little half-serifs on its lowercase "n" And of course, I think the letters of the script Lettera are worth preserving... and aligning, which is easy on the digital side.

Richard... Georg... are you up for some scanning?

Scribomechanical

2011-03-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

Typed on a Sperry-Rand Remington Premier

The Amazing Floating Olympia

2011-03-14T14:01:00.000-07:00

Typed on Morticia, the Olympia SM-3

Take A Letter

2011-03-09T15:12:00.000-08:00

Written on a Smith-Corona Silent Super

A New Blog With Which To Waste Your Time

2011-03-07T12:12:00.000-08:00

Hello all, just a brief word of shameless self-promotion. After picking up the name and then ignoring it, I'm finally getting off my duff and trying to start dumping a little content into a new blog:

http://typosphere.blogspot.com

I have no Grand Plans yet, but first order of business is to try and put together a map of where all the fine typecasting folks are located. I think the typosphere community has really boomed as of late, and I'd like to see this evolve into some kind of community blog, for general notes-of-interest -- type-in announcements, for instance, when I forget just which of the many Washington-based bloggers is hosting one, and when and where. As the community grows even bigger, I'm imagining some kind of virtual kiosk that we can all contribute to, beyond our own personal blogs. This is just a silly little side-project, and should in no way be construed as a power-grab, or some kind of mandatory administrative thing with Committees and Dues and Rules.

In other words, one of these:

by Jeffrey Beall

not one of these:

by Frozen Grapes

Thanks everyone.

A Study in Stripes

2011-03-01T15:11:00.000-08:00

Typed on the pica Smith-Corona Silent Super:

...which looked like this when we first met. (Just to be clear, this is not the new rescue machine, which will have photos later.)

Stamps and Seals and Art

2011-02-26T19:43:00.000-08:00

First, I'm discovering a few new-to-me names on the Twitter, using the #typosphere hashtag. Now I'm following a new blog as a result of it, and wandering through another member's flickr stream, and seeing the mail art (some put together by fellow 'sphere dwellers) and then feeling really, really bad at the inadequate level of cool that my own letters pull off. I mean, seriously, have you seen what these people are doing with their envelopes? And here I get excited when I attempt a little typewriter doodle. Shameful.

You might remember my own foray into stamping, and I've been slowly committing other retro-witticisms to rubber, when one pops into my head and I have the time to dig through all the letters. I believe I'm up to three whole slogans now. Be amazed! Well, until you look at this guy's blog.

I've been sitting here thinking about where one could come by classy stamps (and by extension, wax seals, which I'm also obsessed with from way back), and how I could lay hands upon them, and ratchet up the cool. A little more reading through the blog at "eraser stamps" and then thinking back to Strikethru's own lino-art experiments... Well hey, it wouldn't be Clickthing if I didn't get all excited about another project, would it?

UPDATE #1: Can I just announce here and now that I love my wife?

She just came home with this, snagged from the remains of an estate sale in a "Free!" pile by the curb. Oh, this is awesomeness.

UPDATE #2: Can anyone deny that these are awesome when the kids sat down and churned out some art?

Kept 'em quiet for at least half an hour.

Typecaster reminder: "Anablogger Archives"

2011-02-24T08:45:00.000-08:00

The typosphere has gotten pretty big this year, so it might be time to throw out this reminder/offer again. If you (like me) use flickr to host the images for your blog, and if you (like me) are not currently paying for their "pro" service, you will notice that only the most recent 200 photos of your stream are available for casual browsing, among other service limitations. If you dump your images into a group, however, it's possible to go to that group's page and search for items submitted by you, no matter how far back in your stream they are.

I set up a dedicated members-only group specifically for typecasters, pencasters, typewriter nuts, etc. to use as a repository for their blogging goodness. It is:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/anablogger_archives/

The rules are simple: while logged in to flickr, send my account a flickr-mail with the URL of your blog. I'll check it out, and if it looks like "our kind of thing" I'll add you as a group member. Ask to join without a URL, and I'll ignore you. I'm trying to keep the group closed to folks who just sign up for as many as they can as a means of self-promotion. Flickr appears to not have any limitations on the total size of your account, but again, free accounts are limited to the total size of uploads per month -- the counter resets at the start of each month. You're also able to set rights for your images (I use Creative Commons) if you're so inclined. However, if you're hosting on Blogger of Photobucket, there is a total space allotment. It's something to consider.

The Ups and Downs of ITAM

2011-02-17T13:24:00.000-08:00

Typed on unnamed Lettera 32, though I'm contemplating the name "Threepio" ... for I am a nerd

Flat Stanley Redux: We Are Go For Launch

2011-02-15T09:28:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all the folks who indicated they'd be willing to take in my daughter's "Flat Stanley." I checked with her teacher, and it's perfectly fine that Typosphere Stanley spends a little more time on the road than is typical (I guess they're normally sent to one place and then returned.)

Based on the many responses, it looks like Stanley will be able to circumnavigate the globe. The tentative route is: California -> Hawaii -> Australia -> Switzerland -> Maine, and then a westward trek across the U.S. to be determined. (Any readers in Japan or central Asia out there?) I'm planning on turning this into a mini-geography lesson for my daughter: we'll dig out an atlas and trace out his route, and cross our fingers that he doesn't get lost on the way!

I'm guessing that Stanley is just a small paper cutout meant to be fit into a regular envelope. I'm planning to include a typed note "from" him to my daughter which you're all encouraged to add to. Crafty people: if you have a typewriter rubber stamp, I'd love a scanned copy that we can print out and color in and send with Stanley. No jet-setting world traveler should be without his writing machine.

Again, thanks to everyone who offered to take him in and pass him along; I'll let you know when Stanley gets ready to go.

Typosphere: Stanley Needs You!

2011-02-11T07:10:00.000-08:00

Attention Typosphere...

My daughter's class is doing a "Flat Stanley" project and could use your help. If you're not familiar, Flat Stanley is a children's book wherein the main character (Stanley) is flattened, and has a series of adventures since he's flat enough to slip under doors or be put into an envelope and mailed. (Somehow this seemed less gruesome to me when I read the books as a child.)

Wikipedia has the skinny (sorry) on Stanley and this project...

This morning over breakfast, my daughter asked if I knew anyone "far away" who would be willing to receive her Stanley in the mail, and get a picture with him visiting exotic locales. Keep in mind that for eight-year-olds, going to the movies is an "exotic locale." I'm not sure how much time Stanley should be on the road, but all the letter exchanges we've been doing got me thinking...

I've been planning to send off letters to some of the more far-flung typospherians, and now wonder if you would mind if Stanley happened to come along for the ride? (Adwoa, Rino: I'm especially looking at you.) I'll try to talk to the teacher today and find out if Stanley is up to making a domestic and international jaunt, with typewritten letters along for the ride to boot. And if any of you have children in your lives doing a similar project, I'll be happy to return the favor.

Post a reply if you're willing: Stanley might just be coming to your town.

Unscripted

2011-02-09T13:54:00.000-08:00

Typed on a Lettera 32

Other script machines: "Babs" (sample output) and "Alice" (sample output)

Single-Minded

2011-02-06T12:59:00.000-08:00

Typed on "Kermit", a 1958 Royalite

Appreciated

2011-02-01T12:46:00.000-08:00

Typed on "Etta," the 1953 Royal Quiet DeLuxe

ITAM: Deek's modest proposal

For Those About to Read...

2011-01-30T13:54:00.000-08:00

All right, all right. Deek of Type Clack has been shamelessly flogging my 2009 NaNo draft, without any sort of encouragement from me (private to Deek: your check is in the mail.) I did finally -- finally! -- finish reading through and cleaning up my initial transcription, and posted it online as a Google doc. It's tucked away here, on a page that might become home to similar such things, if I'm so inclined. Deek has been generous with the praise, as has Duffy, who saw an earlier, less cleaned-up draft. I'm still waiting on that other shoe.

There are still a number of problems, mostly of the odd or duplicate word: most of this work was undoing the erratic "fixes" imposed by the automatic spell checker. I have not re-read it all the way through again, but I'll update it in place when I get a chance.

I'm happily accepting any and all comments, suggestions, improvements, and (of course) faint praise. If you need me, I'll be over here in the corner, curled up all fetal and humming to myself.

EDIT: I'm also learning how to use Google documents, so if I suddenly break the link, be patient. I may be putting an update in place. Or erasing all my hard work. You know, either way.

Ambassadors of the Golden Bell

2011-01-24T14:14:00.000-08:00

Typed on "Etta," the 1953 Royal Quiet DeLuxe

This also gives me a chance to prove the point that you need to adjust your technique and touch to the particular machine, if you plan to rotate them through. Consistent with my other Royals, Etta requires a more even typing technique than I use on my computer keyboard or that I can get away with on Olympias, speed-demons that they are. You'll note the bunched up letters here and there in the typecast, resulting from me getting to the next letter before the escapement advanced to the next position. Also, Etta is outfitted with a knob used to adjust the tension of the mainspring, so on its loosest setting, the carriage almost flies to the end when you move it. I had to add some tension after the first two lines, which revealed that other problem that sometimes plagues Royals: the infamous "soft left margin," where it will return not quite to the leftmost stop. I see this on my model "O" Royal even more. Grievances aside, the QDL is a fine machine, and it really is very quiet, something I'd forgotten. Searching this blog shows that I've only used her twice, both times for a color-cast. I'm rather embarrassed that I have not used this machine more, in truth. It's no wonder I'm still getting used to it.

More Cow Tales

2011-01-21T13:42:00.000-08:00

Please do not confuse these with Cow Tales, a candy they sold at the pool where we would swim away our summers. And say, that reminds me of another story...

Typed on a 1943 Hermes Baby

Listening to the Zone

2011-01-18T12:55:00.000-08:00

Typed on a 1943 Hermes Baby

Word Power

2011-01-10T14:16:00.000-08:00

Sent from Morticia, the SM-3

Resolution

2011-01-03T17:32:00.000-08:00

Twain on the Plane

2010-12-29T11:12:00.000-08:00

This is one of those blog titles that seemed really brilliant at the time, somewhere in the Las Vegas airspace (note to Speegles: I waved.) It was inspired by reading a copy of Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi that I've had since I was around eleven. I think this is the first time I've read it all the way through, and I'd forgotten how genuinely funny he was. This is hardly news, but it really has been a long time since I've read him -- too long, obviously -- and now I'm eager to read his autobiography. Based on what I've read, Life on the Mississippi sounds like a warm-up for the main event.

No doubt the perceived cleverness of this post's title was enhanced by the fact that I had been awake for something on the order of twelve hours when I thought it up, with another seven or so ahead before I could fulfill the sweet promise of head-on-my-own-pillow. Somewhere between hours one and nineteen, I'd gone from a freezing sleety sideways rain of the Niagara Falls/Buffalo airport, to the flashing, throbbing, chirping sounds of slot machines in the Las Vegas concourses, to the green rain-soaked hills of the Oakland/San Francisco area. My brain and body are still adjusting to the three-hour time shift, and the thirty-degree temperature shift, and as I'm unpacking my actual luggage, I'll leave you with a little mental luggage unpacking as well, in lieu of a real, well-formed blog post. Here goes:

In answer to your first question, no, I did not suffer any of the snowpocalypse that buried the midwest and socked in the east coast. By design or accident, the Buffalo area was only graced with "unseasonably cold" temperatures for this time of year, which meant the thermometer stayed sub-freezing for the duration, but did not get Crazy Cold. We saw some snow, but it was mild, and my kids -- native Californians all -- ate it up. Literally, in some cases. You can always tell the ones not brought up in cold weather: they're the kids running around with bare heads and pulling off their mittens to form snowballs. We have sledding-disaster stories in abundance.
I thought that my home area was pretty special for having an operable drive-in movie theater, but from the air over Phoenix, I spotted a lovely four-screen example, with each screen positioned at the corner of a clear square of ground, and the snack stand squat in the middle. I was humbled, and impressed.
I was also humbled by the usual range of stuff available in the SkyMall catalog. I had plans to liberate one from the seatback pocket in front of me and do an analysis of the products, breaking them down into categories like "hair restoration gadgets" (several), "weight-loss devices" (also several), and "urine-related technologies" (disturbingly many.) In the end, I think this was too scatological, even for me, and let the idea lie.
Speaking of in-flight entertainment, if you travel with small children, I cannot recommend a portable DVD player highly enough. I'm not sure my youngest (age three) made a single peep the entire time we were in the air. It's worth it.
Also, I'm pleased that my older ones actually looked forward to playing pencil-and-paper games on the plane, especially hangman. When All Electronic Devices had to be stowed, that pad of paper and pen kept us all entertained.

Looking forward to catching up with you folks in the waning of the year, and limbering up the fingers for a type-filled 2011.

Dreaming of a Write Christmas

2010-12-15T11:15:00.001-08:00

Time to pack up the blog for the year and take it easy for a bit. The kids are getting excited about the growing present pile under the tree, but I'm starting to get excited about the unmarked box on my bedside table, the one holding my 2010 novel draft. Maybe it's not as awful as it seemed a few weeks ago...

Hope everyone has a good season, with whatever form your celebrations take! I'll see you all again in 2011 or thereabouts.

2010: A Year in the Sphere

2010-12-08T10:09:00.000-08:00

Another year is winding down, so I thought I'd round it out with the lazy blogger's equivalent of the clip show: the year in review (from a slanted perspective.) Though there was nothing to equal the auction of Cormac McCarthy's battered beloved Lettera -- and you have to admit that the idea got us all looking a little more closely at our collections -- there were still some notable high points in the past year, arranged in no particular order:

The loss of the typewriter repair man. You'd think that this isn't exactly news, and yet it seems like a story that keeps popping up this year, usually alternating places with stories about how "the younger generation" is embracing the tactile world of the typewriter. Like all of you, I'm rooting for the latter and fearing the former. There have been some rumblings that Progress is happening despite hipsters pecking out streetcorner poetry, and that our supplies of spools and ribbons won't last forever. There is no better time to experiment with ribbon re-inking and laying in carbon paper supplies. The type-pocalypse is coming! The crazy old guy on the corner with the sandwich board said so.
Gadget compatibility. It may not be coming all that soon, though, thanks to the creation of the USB Typewriter and the subsequent online coverage, which goes to show that the best way to preserve a dying technology is to give it the full Irony treatment. I don't know about the wisdom of using a typewriter and all its swinging metal hammers as a prop for your $500 web browser, but it's a damn sight more useful than keychopping. I'm still waiting for the clever egg to make an electric typewriter/USB hybrid that also acts as a charging base. Now that I would buy. (Not really.)
The growth of the typosphere. Some notable names joined the blogging ranks this year: Richard Polt and the Davis brothers got their blog on this year, as did the Cambridge Typewriter Company. All three sites leave me feeling smarter, and not a little bit envious at the same time. So many shinies. And around the Big Names, there's been plenty of ordinary folk embracing the power of the typer. I'd do a poor job of trying to name you all, so I'll defer as always to the big blogroll on Strikethru for your link-building pleasure.
Silent Type II: Electric Boogaloo. What more can be said? It's awesome. You should download a copy now. Heck, download two. And that poem on page 11? Genius.
Fame, with a dash of civil unrest. Typer-lovers did make some news this year, beyond the bomb-squad-found-a-typewriter-case-and-didn't-recognize it variety. The ouster of artist/writer Skye Ferrante raised enough ire in our circles to send sternly-worded typewritten letters to The Writers [sic] Room, and wag our ink-stained fingers in Stern Disapproval at their sudden dissolution of their typewriter-friendly policies. And just maybe that was the motivation for the upcoming Type-In in Philadelphia? Local friends of the 'sphere: represent! We need photos from this, and audio recordings, too. (And please note the links at the bottom of that page for some familiar blogs.)
Meets and greets. Seems like everyone was off at a regional typewriter meeting this summer, including one literally just up the road from my old hometown (sniff.) Thanks to those who documented them, and posted videos on the Tube of You for us far-flung relations to ooh and aah over.
Another month with the lunatics. The NaNoWriMo Typewriter Brigade was loud and proud again this year, with even more members, more winners, and more pointless posts that forced us into a second topic even earlier than in 2009. Big kudos all around! I especially like how the Brigade is self-perpetuating, as winners drift in to the topic near the end of the month and post variations on ZOMG! I totally love typewriters! I'm doing this next year! On the follow-through front, I see that Duffy (founder of the Brigade, for you whippersnappers) is trying to drum up some support for the idea of a virtual writing group. I personally think this is fine idea, since I'm all for having people read my stuff as long as I don't have to, you know, see them do it. Please comment, and congratulate Mr. Moon for taking on this noble task (see how I did that, Duffy? That's called management.) Seriously, though: consider.
Lucky finds. Those of us collector/users who acquire machines outside of the major online auction site that-rhymes-with-Flea-Day know that finding a typer locally is mostly hit and miss, with emphasis on the "miss." But every now and then you get lucky: a tell-tale case, stuck on a shelf or in a corner, with a criminally low price stuck on it. And then the days or weeks or months of fruitless looking melt away and this is your New Favorite Place. Unless you're Richard Polt, and live in a place where typewriters appear like mushrooms after rain. I had a couple of "hits" this year, but by far my best find was Morticia, the curbside SM3 from this summer. Even though it's a "double" (I have another SM3), and even though it was hopelessly gunked and frozen up, time and cleaning and vigorous swearing loosened up the works where it now types like a dream. It's surely my best find of the year.

Your turn: post your own recollections and reminisces of the year past. Any high or low points for you this year? What was your lucky find?

Reboot, Reset, Recharge

2010-12-02T13:00:00.000-08:00

Typed on Morticia, the Olympia SM-3

Mysterious gaps due to me cutting out strikeouts with Gimp before uploading

* The "Out of Town" mail slot is a holdover from my rural upbringing. My hometown's post office had (and likely still has) a slot dedicated solely to local mail, though I was never clear on what that actually meant, as the definition of "town" was pretty fluid. I'm afraid that I don't know the specific reason why this warranted its own drop point and bin, though I suspect once upon a time, residents could supply far simpler addresses and the mail would get there just fine: "Aunt June Doe, Main Street." Only the fancy out-of-town stuff would require high-falutin' zip codes and full street addresses. That's my theory, anyhow.

It's been decades since I lived anywhere that had such a setup, but it's so ingrained that I check every single time I walk in to drop off mail, for fear of dropping it into the wrong opening, and inconveniencing a mail clerk. As if sixty Christmas cards in one dump wasn't an inconvenience on its own.

And That's a Wrap

2010-11-19T14:40:00.000-08:00

Typed on Morticia, the Olympia SM-3

The Hook

2010-11-13T08:39:00.000-08:00

(from U.S. Patent #2486473, "TYPEWRITER RIBBON AND SPOOL" by H. J. Hart (1946)

On my Royal's ribbon spools, there is a small hook that drops down: the ribbon holds it in place when it's wrapped around the core, but when you reach the end, the hook lowers and trips the reverse mechanism, and what was now the end of the ribbon becomes the beginning. (This is a snip from the patent drawing, above.)

We're ending week two of NaNoWriMo, and maybe you're feeling a little at-the-end too? Like you've typed all you can and have run out of ideas? Time to invoke the Hook: make a change, kill a character, summon those monkey ninjas from the ninth dimension. Do something dramatic and you'll have a whole fresh story all laid out before you.

All the way to 50K, people. You can do it.

Smug

2010-11-10T18:57:00.000-08:00

Today was a difficult day: my lunch was interrupted by a minor crisis, and while fixing that, was interrupted by another more major crisis, the two of which conspired to keep me away from my afternoon NaNoWriMo session. I'd been especially looking forward to this one, as I'd literally been on my feet all day -- I'm using a new standing desk, and am in the adjustment period where my back is happy but my feet are protesting. Sitting in a padded chair for forty-five minutes in the middle of the day sounded pretty damn good. But instead what I got was a gulped-down lunch and two hours mired in the depths of financial software. By the time the fog lifted, it was too late to skulk away with the Skyriter under the arm.

This made me bitter.

And then the lights went out.

For the second time in a month, we lost power to our building, and after the wails of despair died down ("I didn't save!") and casual conversation broke out in the hall, I realized that life had turned my lemony day into novel-ade. Out came the typing pad and the Skyriter, and for the next forty-five minutes or so, I typed by the fading daylight, boosting up the word count. Someone even stopped by and jokingly suggested that I hand out spare machines to anyone needing to finish up their work. I said, "I am doing work!"

This made me smug.

I took the sudden work stoppage as a sign that Dramatic Action was called for in the novel, too. I've been languishing a bit, wallowing in the flabby and ill-defined section in the middle of my outline. When the lights went out in the office, though, the lights came on in my brain, and whether it was the unexpected opportunity of a writing session, or the endorphin rush from finally sitting down, I think I've got a title for the story, and even a decent synopsis I can put up on the site.

Very smug indeed.

The Magic

2010-11-06T07:29:00.000-07:00

Well, it happened this morning. The first morning when I hit the alarm button a couple of times, and actually resented getting up at some ludicrous hour to write terrible fiction.

This was taken at the end of the session, just before my kids woke up. I started at 5:30, and I've been starting at 5:00 since Monday. Needless to say, I'm very much looking forward to the time change this weekend. It's far too dark to warrant getting out of bed, much less getting up to attempt to string together a contiguous storyline. But it's also one of the few times of day when I'm truly left alone -- since all sane people are still abed -- and so I take advantage of the quiet and solitude to work. (Since starting this post, for example, I have made two breakfasts, fed and let out the dog, defused a tantrum, and watched a parade of plastic dinosaurs and cows.)

Reluctance is part of the NaNo game, of course, and much as I try to suppress the Inner Editor, he is known to perch on my shoulder and make murky comments in my ear while I'm trying to work.

"This is crap."

"Why didn't you figure out the character names in advance? My God, this is lame."

"You got us up for this?"

Sadly for the Inner E, I don't hear so well at 5:00 AM, so most of these complaints go unheeded. And during my lunchtime writing sessions at work, the coffee-cart guy has Fox news turned up too loud on his TV, which I've found to be an effective drone to dispel all rational thought. NaNoWriMo thrives in pockets of irrationality, and in the very heart of those pockets lies magic.

Around the same time that the Inner E wants to start smacking "snooze", the Muse also starts kicking in. For me, writing is best tackled at regular times: I think it fools my brain into being creative, because, hey, we're sitting at that damn typewriter again and we're not getting up, might as well write. And it's in those oh-what-the-hell-just-move-those-fingers moments that the unexpected starts to creep in. The characters start talking to each other and reveal Big Personal Secrets. Scenes I had not anticipated appear, and the story is better for them. User "munk" on the Typewriter Brigade topic compared the feeling to a silvery thread connecting the subconscious to the typewriter. Yeah, I totally get that. It's the magic.

There was an anti-NaNo article on Salon lately, and then an anti-anti-NaNo article in the LA Times blog. You can search them down if you like, but it's the same arguments and defenses that have been trotted out every year, and I feel like it boils down to a slobs versus snobs distinction. I don't listen to the argument much, though I do savor some of the more nasty comments from both sides. I know the self-imposed suffering of writing regimen will end in three weeks, and I know that what I'm writing is not High Art. But gives me a chance get in touch with the magic, and that feeling makes it worthwhile.

But even more when we turn the clocks back.

Your Arsenal

2010-11-03T13:43:00.000-07:00

For Twitterites, there's a #DailyArsenal hashtag and a corresponding flickr group, highlighting what's in your writing/creating space for the day. Although it's not limited to NaNoWriMo, you can still use it as a way to do a little shameless self-promotion. I arranged my afternoon-writing setup and took a quick photo before heading down to the building lobby to type.

At the risk of sounding like a hokey credit card commercial, what's in your arsenal?