The Horizon from 46,425*

I can't see it yet, but I can feel it... the end of the NaNoWriMo sprint. The end of the story, and the end of the early-morning wake up call. Characters have changed, plots have shuffled around, details have filled themselves in. I'm just channeling the muse, trying to keep the plane level and the course as straight as possible.

Honing in on the horizon. That's me.

* Wordcount estimate puts me with about 3,500 words to go. OCR counting says I crossed the line a day and a half ago. I'm going with the estimates, because I know how many typos are keeping the Rhino aloft right now.

Off the Rails

Just like clockwork, the Rhino has laid waste to my carefully-laid plans. He's claiming no responsibility for it, of course.



As I've said countless times, the reasons I devote all the prep time to NaNoWriMo are because:

1. Control freak
2. I tend to go blank at the keys, especially during my main writing session first thing in the morning

So, I plot and I plan and I make index cards and stack and sort them. Everything's all laid out, nice and neat, all I have to do is write the day's notes.

Every year at this time, though, the Rhino and my Muse conspire against me, and have me tossing out -- OK, setting aside -- my notes right when I need them the most, here in the clutch.

It's Week Two. That's right: it's Suck Week.



I always like to think that my outline will insulate me from the suckage that follows so closely after the giddy start, but it doesn't, not by a long shot. My characters are now running around, not following The Almighty Plan, uncovering interesting details and asides that I knew nothing about. They're throwing parties, and scheming, and lying, and telling fables, and all sorts of things that were totally unanticipated, and dammit, they will not be denied. And this in a sequel, too. You'd think they would have learned how to behave the first time around.

So, me and the Muse are at something of a creative stalemate right now, thanks to the Rhino prodding the old girl. Obviously, the Plan I've so assiduously laid out isn't happening, or at least not in the order I expected. I'm wheel-spinning to keep to make my self-imposed word goal of 65-70K. At the same time I'm gazing at the plot horizon, looking for a way to get back on track, even if that means ending the journey somewhere other than where I started.

Curse you, Rhino! Curse your derailing ways!

First Flight

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.

On Skye Ferrante, the Writers Room, Noise, and Advocacy

Obviously, we typewriter people are an excitable bunch. The news of the banishment of Mr. Skye Ferrante's typewriter from the Writers Room in Greenwich Village has rocketed around the narrow confines of the typosphere community, myself guilty of shoveling coals and dousing it in gas by posting to the Portable Typewriters group and encouraging type-ins, letters of protest, and sending industrial-sized packets of earplugs to the W.R. patrons who are clearly suffering from some sort of technology-induced anger management issues. In my head, I have drafted countless Nasty Letters to the W.R. staff, their membership, and their pets, shaming them for their close-minded stance on one paying member's choice of writing machine. It was his grandmother's, for chrissakes! Why not kick a few puppies while we're at it!

Luckily, I've slept on it.

First, it is perfectly within the rights of the Writers Room (say that five times fast) to dictate what equipment can be used within their space. It would be childish for me to point out that they still offer storage for typewriters, while simultaneously advertising themselves as a "a quiet, affordable place in which to work." (The "quiet" designation seems to have been added after their last site redesign. It was merely "tranquil" before.) Short of a thermal-paper-based typewriter, I know of none that are truly silent, as some kind of impact is taking place, either from a typeslug, daisy wheel and hammer, or pins on a print head. And it would be equally childish to point out that they have "a separate room for typing with four desks" which is different from the "[l]arge loft with 42 partitioned desks" that non-Luddites are forced to use. Maybe that dedicated typing room doesn't have a door?

Second, Mr. Ferrante is well within his rights to drop his membership -- as the article claims he will be doing -- in favor of finding a less-hostile work space. It's not clear to me whether the pressure to leave is coming from the W.R. staff, fellow members, or both. At around $100 per month membership, I'm sure he'll be able to find ample places where he can type undisturbed. I've been to New York City a few times: I do not remember it as a quiet place. He could easily apportion some of his savings into earplugs for himself, set up shop in a friendlier place -- say, anywhere -- and get work done. Our own experiences with writing show that: a quiet (or tranquil) place is nice, but for many of us, it's also a dream. NaNoWriMo has shown me that I can write "in the cracks" and still turn out a volume of words, even in my cramped behind-the-sofa writing space shown at the top of this post. It's not where you write, after all, it's that you write.

Finally, some thinking about my hostile letter to the puppy-kickers. I don't know Mr. Ferrante or his motivations for using a typewriter, though his comment about preferring it to a computer ring true to me. It's perfectly possible that he's an elitist hipster snob, looking for attention and raising a small degree of polite Hell. But even if he is, I applaud him for it. Dedication to a creative tool is nothing to be ashamed about, and in a truly public space, nothing to be apologetic for either. By the account in the paper, he was using the space set aside for typists, though I'm sure a larger number of screened-in desks can be wedged in there now for the laptop crowd, thus turning a quirky, creative space into something as exciting as the reference book section of the public library. (Free, by the way.) He's probably doing himself and his work a service by getting out of that place.

In the last line of the article, he's quoted as saying:

I just wish that there were some typists out there that would back me up, but I don't know any.

Rather than write my hostile, righteous, scathing, brilliantly-crafted and ultimately pointless letter to the Writing Room staff, I'm going to send a letter to Mr. Ferrante, before his June 30 expulsion, maybe invite him in to our noisy, weird, world-wide circle of retro-nuts. The world has enough negativity and exclusion and outrage already without me contributing more.

I'll be sending it to him c/o The Writers Room, of course.

The Writers Room
740 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

Rhodia, Record-Setting, and Rubbing Alcohol

Real Life is keeping me from stringing together more than a few sentences at a time these days, but just to prove that I'm still breathing, a Little Flower Petals-inspired Update Just to Update...

• I'm not big on shilling stuff, but if you use fountain pens -- and if you use your hands to write with, you owe it to them to get one -- you should without delay lay those selfsame hands upon a Rhodia pad of some kind. You might remember that I carry one of these around for random NaNoWriMo scribblings. As my everyday-use pen went inexplicably missing for about six weeks, I had to switch over to another in my collection, a Parker something-or-other that redefines the phrase wet writer. To compare it to a fire hose of ink would be disingenuous to fire hoses. It bleeds through just about everything, necessitating writing with the nib upside down, to get a finer line and slow the tidal wave of Quink. Except on the Rhodia paper. There's a bit of drying time as the ink sits there on top, trying its damnedest to feather or bleed or soak through... and it simply cannot. I'm not sure what crazy French faerie magic was involved in making this stuff, but it's astounding. I've seen them in the U.S. at both Borders book stores and at larger Target stores, and of course, online is always an option. Their (oddly-named IMHO) "web notebook" looks like a serious contender for the Moleskine throne, without the notorious Moleskine paper-quality issues. Pricey yes, but considering that you can write on both sides of the generous amount of pages, likely less than you would pay in equivalent Moleskines. Once I work through my backlog of other notebooks, I may go solely over to the orange and black for portable paper happiness.
  
• Speaking obliquely of NaNoWriMo, my transcribing has fallen by the wayside thanks to the Olympics, or so goes my excuse. I regret not being able to get the Canadian coverage of the games, as they tend to be 100% complete with 100% less inane chatter. Although I'm thrilled to hear the announcers point out when athletes set personal records in the games: I don't remember that from years past. As parents of a couple of sport-engaged kids, we're always telling them how important setting a PR is vs. placing first, or scoring the highest, or whatever. It's an unexpected burst of civility amongst the televised flag-waving, and I appreciate it. (Though I'm still skipping over the longer cross-country skiing events. Zzzzz.)
• My issues with the vintage camera have changed. I'm trying to flush out all the old gunk that's floating around the mechanisms with regular alcohol baths. (For the shutter, not for me, though it's tempting.) Camera shutters were designed to run "dry," that is, without any lubricants in the way, much like the segment of a typewriter (look! hobby confluence!) After having to break out the solvents to remove the front lens, though, some of the stuff sloshed around and is now gumming up the works. Sigh. This is a common problem, and one typically resolved by taking apart the shutter, cleaning all the bits, and reassembling. Ha. I'm sticking with my soak-and-dump-and-wipe technique. It runs great when it's soaked, so I know this is just a gunk issue -- once the solvent evaporates, it leaves a fine layer of yuck behind, and that's what's jamming it all up. I'm accepting all donations of patience.
  
• Also: advice to potential restorers: rubbing alcohol is not good to use. It contains oils and other additives that will make things worse in the end. I'm using 90% alcohol from the pharmacy, the other 10% is water, which I force out by leaving the assembly in a sealed plastic bag with a couple of those dessicant pouches you seem to get in all electronics purchases these days. A dry, clean shutter is a happy, snappy shutter.
• One more bit of camera thrills: run, don't walk and check out this hand-built SLR (single-lens reflex) camera body. I'm still picking up my jaw from the floor. Also, my own foray into bellows restoration has proceeded just as far as it was nearly two years ago. That is: I've written about it, and then left things sitting on the shelf in my "good intentions, hard execution" pile. I've since found an easier way to work out the bellows-making, though I'm now considering following the examples from our home-brew camera maker and the folks in this flickr topic and rolling my own out of the shutter and lens from the big Autographic (seen here with the bellows removed.) I may raid the boy's Lego collection a la M. Moon to make the support infrastructure, and using a little black foam-core for all the dark bits. Check back in two years to see if I've made any progress, won't you? Joe V, I'm always looking to you to raise the photographic bar. I expect a full report on how you've done this exact thing forthwith.
  
• Hey, #typosphere, have you signed up for a pen pal yet? What about working on your submission for Silent Type 2: Electric Boogaloo? Consider this your nag. The pen pal project aspires to be something more successful that my own disaster-fraught attempt (Traveling Type, anyone?) The mere fact that someone has sent a letter and someone else has received it already puts its success rate well above my own. And what about your poems? I've even got my wife to play along, so now you simply have no excuse. (Note: not because she's isn't creative or brilliant or lovely -- she's all three, in great number -- but because she looks upon the t-sphere with mild amusement and head-shaking futility. Her poem reflects that.)
• And finally, I think my work PC desperately needs a set of these.
  

More Mingo

Two weeks until NaNo lift off everyone... are you ready for some Hard Work?

A little music should help those fingers fly: just remember the admonition not to oil the segment of your typewriter, or this might happen...



The rings... the suit... and now the shoes! This man is my typing-fashion hero (sorry Olivander.)

NaNoWriWk

One hundred sixty words a minute? That's 50K words in 5.2 hours. He could start on Monday at lunchtime and be done by Saturday night... if he took it easy.



Loving the bright orange machine, too. A Royal?

Typewriters in the Modern Age

Fellow flickrite Zaynay sent me an email posing this question:

"I was wondering if you would mind sparing any thoughts on the typewriter in today's modern age of digitalization?"

Why yes, I think I can oblige... I'll try hard not to rehash, but instead I'll give a "state of the typewriter union" type post. All you type-minded people please chime in here.

Looking over at this boxy pile in the corner, I'm first tempted to say that typewriters are ballast. Except for the collector or the extremist, there's very little to love about these machines. They're heavy, bulky, messy, oily, typically dusty and rusty, noisy, and often ugly -- how many shades of beige and gray were created just to make these machines as inoffensive as possible in an office setting? The typewriter was invented to impose uniformity and precision to the messy act of reading someone else's hand-writing, and to speed up the act of putting words and numbers on paper. At their worst, they could be seen as a dehumanizing piece of equipment, removing the personal touch from written documents in the name of accuracy. Nobody ever won a prize for being able to churn out longhand in words per minute, but typewriter makers regularly held contests to encourage exactly that, likely for promotional purposes (Mrs. D___ of Des Moines can type 75 wpm on the latest Underwood!) as well as the hope of seeding the typing pools of tomorrow with nimble-fingered young ladies. Why all the fetishism these metal beasts, especially now, in this miraculous time of Internet-connected touch-screen telephony?

Well, there's always the opinion that typewriters are art, of a sort. And I don't mean "crafter" art like keychoppers, or even works by Jeremy Mayer and the like. For a lot of collectors, the typewriter is the ultimate kinetic sculpture. The passage of time has worn away some of the edge from their designs -- well, maybe not the 1970s versions -- and otherwise normal, highly-connected modern folks appreciate the many levers, wheels, gears, and dials as a whole. We may cherish all the machines, but I personally cherish the working ones just a little bit more. And at least for me, the mechanical, manual machines have a true art "essence" or soul. An electric or electronic typewriter just doesn't have that same degree of magic to it, and I certainly don't appreciate it as much. Perhaps it's their dependence on the electrical umbilical that keeps them safely tethered to our desks and walls. Electrics and electronics have secrets that they do not want to share, and they live too close to the "a typewriter is made for work, and work alone" mentality. Electrics were invented to overcome the relative difficultly of using a manual machine, of striking the keys evenly and regularly, of throwing the carriage and advancing the paper. Efficient, but not artistic.

My own floor (and the closet, and the space under the bed) is proof enough that typewriters are artifacts. I will indulge in repeating myself here, but it's completely reasonable to say that you can go out now and pick up a decades-old typewriter for $25 or less, drop a new ribbon in it, and get working right away. I defy you to find a piece of office equipment made today that will last that long, or even ten years. A typewriter was a meant as a companion device, and chances are you could afford exactly one in your lifetime. A typewriter in the modern age is a reminder that life was not always measured in model years and software versions. I don't believe in the "good old days" mentality -- times have always been, and will always be challenging for those that live in them -- but I think a typewriter speaks of a time when manufactures took more pride and care in their products, and customers did the same with their purchases. A modern collector of vintage typewriters is not a good example of someone being frugal with their money or their space, but that collector can certainly appreciate a fine piece of machinery, made to last.

I'll also say that typewriters are still practical. My interest in manual typewriters was triggered by my memories of having my grandmother's old Underwood in my room growing up, which were sparked by reading some posts on the NaNoWriMo forums about the Typewriter Brigade. As a first-time "winner" of the contest, I had to wonder: could a manual typewriter really help? The answer was a resounding yes. Thanks to a professional lifetime frittered away in front of a computer, I've become a passable (if inconsistent) typist, and putting myself into mental lock-down on a machine capable of only one thing -- writing -- was the secret. And I'm not the only one, though I'm probably one of the most vocal/annoying Brigadiers. We're interconnected with one another with a completeness and speed that were unimaginable fifteen years ago. Our poor evolved monkey-brains and -bodies haven't quite mastered how to cope with all of this, though. Despite its original connotations as all-work-and-no play, overwhelmed types like yours truly can sit down at the typewriter and appreciate that it's not sitting there being smarter than me, or waiting impatiently for me to do something. It's just there, a tool totally dependent on my brain and hands and nothing else. Once you've mastered the arcane secrets of "loading the paper" and "setting the margins," a typewriter is instantly useable, and pretty obvious to anyone who has ever spotted a QWERTY in the wild. (Might need to add "using the carriage return" for the txt'ers.) Computers have long taken over the burden of typesetting, and memos, and fussing about manifold copies. Wite-Out and Tipp-Ex bottles have been mercifully allowed to dry out. Perfection is no longer required, and the typewriters can relax and release the poets and novelists within.

--

I'm going to be on a blog-hiatus for a little while, I'll be sure to catch up with all you folks afterwards. Get outside and take some pictures! Or better yet, get outside and take some pictures of your typewriters, then label them with a fountain pen. A retro-trifecta.

Touchstone, albatross, or punchline?

Wow, sorry about that sudden bleakness at the end. I've a birthday coming up, and I think that I'm beginning to feel it, despite my protests that I'm not. Here's that first typecast, by the way. My speed and accuracy have improved, although I still rush this old machine more than it wants to be rushed.

What's black and white and foggy all over?

It's the winter slump time with foggy cool mornings making it hard to get up out of bed, and harder to face the day. I can't even see out the window this morning, but this was the view yesterday.

Passed along the Classic 12 to another one of my son's friends after my wife and I discussed the curse of Perfectionism that seems to settle in over boys of this age, dense and impenetrable like our morning fog. I suppose it's just another taste of the upcoming teenage years: suddenly we're dealing with peer pressure, and fretting about hair and clothes and shoes and the "right" way to carry backpacks to school (dragging them nonchalantly behind on the way to class, apparently.) Like my own son, the Classic's new owner struggles with writing assignments, grappling with the idea that he's allowed to write what he wants, and not to try to write what he thinks his teacher wants. It's a hard lesson, when the world is very black-and-white and wrapped in fog. I hope the Classic helps him out. Manual typewriters are perfectly non-judgemental, they don't beep or blip or underline when you've made a gaffe, they're just happy to serve you and wait on you, as long as you keep them well-fed with paper and ribbons. The perfect companion! The new owner was well-pleased with the Classic's paper "ears", its Power Spacer key, and the magic of the typebar unjammer. I don't know if it will help him out of the fog, but I hope it'll be a good companion as he works his way through it.

Couldn't be prouder, or, my son vs. the Pod People

My novel ideas are starting to shape up: for the first time, I did a very sketchy outline of the story in order, to see what holes I have to fill in. Last night, I pulled out Gomez and engaged in a little hole-filling. Thanks to a active topic on the Portable Typewriters group Gomez now sports four new rubber spacers/bushings/whatever, which lift his innards ever-so-slightly from the case. With a 99-cent package of sink washers and about ten minutes with a screwdriver, Gomez's return lever no longer drags into his ribbon cover, and the carriage slides smoothly and near-silently, where before it was dragging a bit on the tab stops. I'm deeply indebted to the collective genius of that list.

Anyhow, Gomez and I were working our way through some index cards, when my son walked by and asked how the story was going. I explained the details of NaNo -- start November 1st, quantity over quality -- and out of the blue, he asked for his typewriter back. After the brief flurry of interest, it was getting buried underneath the detritus of a pre-teen's life, so I had put it back up on the shelf for safekeeping. Now he wanted it back, he had a story in mind, and he wanted to write it down.

I'm not sure if any of you are exposed to pre-teen boys on a regular basis, but let me clue you in on two key observations about their behavior:

1) They do not like to write. In fact, merely suggesting that they spend ten minutes doing their English homework will usually result in thirty minutes of complaining, sighing, and severe my-parents-are-such-dorks eye-rolling.

2) They do not like failure. Especially making typos that cannot be obliterated easily, before anyone sees it.

Without acting too much like a kid at Christmas, I brought down his machine, set him up on a TV tray with my new typing pad, fed in the paper, and said the Typewriter Brigade mantra: "Typos don't count, mistakes don't count, it's the first draft, and no one will read it but you."

That was apparently the magic spell. Gomez and I sat down on the floor while he was working, providing a little aural and moral support, my wife moving off to the kitchen with the laptop so as not to disturb the resident authors. Neither of us wanted to break the moment: our son, writing... willingly! Forty-five minutes later, we had to tear him away to get ready for bed. He let his mom and I read the beginning of his story: four lines agonizingly crafted, but actually quite good. This morning before school he spent time feeding the paper back in, queuing up the machine to the same point in the page so "I can start right after school."

I couldn't be prouder. And I'm going to check his room for pods from outer space... just in case.