Analog FTW

Ignore that I typed this on a Chromebook. Just go with it for now.

This video about Saturday Night Live's cue cards is lovely in every way but especially because the show runs on about a thousand analog cards a week, filled with block letters in big old magic marker, and edited using white tape. How great is that? They don't use teleprompters because those break and the show is live. Analog cards are forever — until they use them as drop cloths for set painting. Go figure.

On my desk is a Smith Corona Sterling manual typewriter manufactured in 1938 here in my hometown of Syracuse, NY (from which many good things come). I've inserted a ribbon with blue ink and the print is as gorgeous as the machine itself. Later, I'll type toward a project I'm struggling with on the computer. Blue ink on yellow copy paper rolled through an analog machine. Think how long that machine has been in service. Come on, do the math. Alright, since you can't find the calculator app on your phone, it's about eighty one years. Eighty one freaking years. My laptop won't make it eight years.

I had the typewriter serviced shortly after I bought it to replace the rubber roller (platen), align the keys, and fix a couple things. I asked the repair guy when he thought I'd be back. He made a snorting noise in the back of his throat and shook his head. "My only repeat customers are ones who buy more than one typewriter. This thing will go on forever." I'll bring him my other typewriter just because I want it perfect and guys like that deserve medals or at least some more business.

Look, there's my paper planner, its cover papered with post-its. I just filled the page for this week with notes and ideas and they'll be there forever. At the dentist I flipped it open to schedule a cleaning in July. On my phone, I put in the wrong times (PM instead of AM) and once scheduled a seventy-two-hour therapy appointment. I'm not saying I wouldn't benefit from such a thing, but there's only so much my therapist can endure. The planner limits us to an hour every other week and has never crashed, cracked, or run out of battery. Crazy.

And there's my Lamy 2000 fountain pen which I refilled this morning from a three-ounce bottle of blue Noodler's ink and which writes like a dream. Designed in 1966, it is sumptuous enough to be on display in art and design museums. There's a rumor that it is part of MoMA's permanent collection — and it damn well should be — but though that rumor was on the internet (quoted, I think, on Abraham Lincoln's blog) it turns out not to be the true. Still, as Ferris Bueller said (about a Ferrari instead of something as important as a fountain pen), "if you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up."

A couple other things:

• I'm reading Dani Shapiro's Devotion in hardback with real pages and ink. It feels right in my hands and before my eyes. People ask me about books I carry. They spark conversations.

• Sufjan Stevens' album Carrie & Lowell is on my U-Turn Audio Orbit turntable, its signal amplified by the Kenwood KA-5500 that has worked since the 1977 and will go on probably through 2077. That's all wired to Boston Acoustics A70 speakers I bought at Gordon Electronics on Erie Boulevard in 1982. Come on over. I'll pour whiskey and we'll put on your favorite record. It will be great.

• Today I carried and read the January issue of The Sun Magazine which includes Debbie Urbanski's story "You" which is so exquisite I've read it three times, the feel of the page between my fingers like a character in the story.

I have more to say about analog things — maybe a book's worth — but I'm okay with having written this on a computer. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

The Real Power of Post-Its

Quick thoughts:

• Keep a pad of post-it notes on the bedside table
• Stick some inside the paper planner
• Have a pad of them on the desk
• Get used to scribbling, jotting, and writing ideas on them

It's not just that I'm trying to hold onto an idea, though that's part of it. I'm more forgetful at fifty than I was at twenty and I was already forgetting too many things then. Remembering the one idea I have is good. I can't write every idea passing through my mind but quickly scribbled post-its save ideas for when I can write my way into them. All this is important but not the most important reason to have those post-its available to my whim.

Writing the idea down, capturing it in the confines of that yellow square, allows me to find the two other ideas to which writing the first one down leads. Writing generates new writing because thinking generates new ideas and writing just might be the most eleveated form of thinking. (That's the sort of thought that on paper/screen makes sense but runs circles if left inside my head.)

I can stand to lose the one idea, but those other two that come to being only as a result of writing the first, I can't stand to lose them or the process that brings them about. Ideas written down beget more ideas.

Which has me thinking of a new idea. Let me grab a post-it and jot it down.

Books On Writing

I'm of two minds when it comes to writing books: I love them but they kind of keep me from writing. Weird, eh?

I've read William Zinsser, Strunk & White, Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard, Ken Macrorie, Peter Elbow, Stephen King, Natalie Goldberg, Austin Kleon, and more.

I went to college to learn how to be a writing teacher, taking a bunch of English classes mostly about how to read. Then I did graduate school in English which almost killed my ability and desire to write. Crazy how that works.

Now, looking to move on from public school teaching toward being more of a writer, it felt time to read Welcome To The Writer's Life and it was. Paulette Perhach has give me more to think about concerning the career of writing than I expected from the book. Her advice is good, practical, and well written. I even did many of the exercises in the book (I usually skip over such things) and at least one of them felt not just useful but transformational. If you're looking to become a writer, one who makes at least some of a living through writing words, then read it.

All that said, I'm glad to be done with it. The only thing that stops me from writing more than depression is a book about writing (or, God help me, graduate school). I get many of my ideas and motivation from the things I read — memoirs and essays especially — but when I read a book on writing, I go too slowly and can't focus on anything else. The book makes my head spin and hurt a little because I think of what I might be doing, what I should be doing, what I haven't done yet. All that thinking crowds out most of what leads me to writing. I should be able to control it, but I haven't mastered that yet. I can read a book like this once in a while but then need to go in other directions so I can return to writing.

The tough thing is there's another book about writing on my shelf: Jane Friedman's The Business Of Being A Writer. It will have to wait. I've got Dani Shapiro's Devotion in the batter's box and the umpire is motioning the pitcher to go ahead and throw. Then there's Jaron Lanier's Dawn Of The New Everything, Morris Gleitzman's Now, Philip Glass's Words Without Music: A Memoir, and — well you get the idea.

I'd ask is there anything than reading?, but I know the answer. The race is pretty damn close, but writing, man, that's everything.

Book Project In The School

At school I'm asking kids to think of the book they would write. I sketched out the project in four parts:

• Chapter Titles (6, 8, or 10)
• Chapter Descriptions (1, 2, 3, or more sentences)
• A Blurb (1, 2, 3, or more paragraphs)
• 3rd Person Author Bio (2, 5, 10, or more sentences)

"Yo, I ain't writing no whole book," one kid said in the first class. Another, her arms crossed and head shaking back and forth so her braids whacked against the chair, asked, "Mister, is you saying we gots to write a book?" They figured I would say yes but I described how books usually take years to write and we don't want to be together that long. (Stephen King writes more than two books a year, an alarming pace, but only because he's Stephen Freaking King.) I told the kids, "we're just writing about the books we would write if we were to write a book. We're making a plan to get an idea of what it might look like to be a writer and to see what we can do." There was a forty-sixty mix of relief and suspicion. That's better than my usual batting average.

"That said," I told them, "if you decide to write a chapter after we're done, no problem. I'll move onto the next project but you might blow me off to write your chapter."

This appeals to them, the idea of blowing me off and doing what they want to do. Only one or two will choose to take the thing as far as a chapter. Some won't even make it through the outlining project described above. Most will finish the project to some degree or another and move on with me to whatever comes next. (I should really think about that and figure something out.) I accept that this is how it works at this school and I get better results with acceptance than with vinegar. Or something like that.

This project appeals to me because I would love to blow off school and write a book. Best case scenario I would keep getting paid and have healthcare but write the whole day through. It's a lovely dream, one that grows more and more attractive as I become more and more burned out and feeling like I just can't face the classroom anymore. The other day a kid spat on a teacher. Another kid threatened another teacher. They'll both likely be back to school next week. Anything goes.

I could write a book about that... Instead I typed this as my students watched the television to which I had hooked my Chromebook:

I try to be a student in the class and as much as I can. I'm composing this paragraph in class while some students watch. These students don't know how to begin, don't know what to do with the blank page. They're good people (who are reading these words as I type them so I kind of have to say that) but they can't see the point of writing or maybe have had such bad experiences with writing in school that they are blocked. (Shit, yeah, one just said.) I say, "begin with whatever is happening." One said, "nothing's happening." I said, "well, there's this book idea thing. Let's start there and see where it goes."

Just writing like I'm doing might not help us with the book outline (or maybe it might) but it will get us writing. The first key to writing is to write, not to think. All the thinking and worrying and planning can come later. We need to get words on the page. It doesn't matter much what those words are (though if you could refrain from swearing or threatening I might be able to get a good night's sleep for once). We just need to feel the rhythm of writing and let it carry us.

It has carried me here, to the place in which I most want to be. The book outline I'm doing for our project is about how to be a writer in the schools and make more students into writers. Who knows, maybe it might turn into a real book proposal and from there maybe into a book. I've still got teaching to do and a paycheck to earn. I'll find the time to write early mornings before school, brief bursts in class, over lunch, and in the afternoons and evenings at home. That might not be enough to write a book but it might be. I might as well find out.

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Fun fact about the pictured assignment atop this entry: Notice the copyright symbol? Management passed a rule that anything teachers produce at school belongs to the school. They own my ass for 7-1/4 hours over 183 days a year for the time being, but that's all they get. My ideas remain my own. But you should feel free to use it as you like.