Let the Planning Begin

I've taken the NaNoWriMo challenge annually since 2007. I have "won" in every attempt, but only once did I ever actually continue the novel to the end after crossing the 50k word mark. Even that novel has had to undergo significant restructuring and rewriting, and remains stuck on the operating table, its organs splayed out and shriveling while I figure out what needs transplanting and how to go about it.

Usually, even if I put a fair amount of planning into a concept, I end up completing the challenge as a "pantser," one who writes by the seat of his/her pants. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. In the past, it has allowed me to take a relatively thin concept and flesh it out as I go along, sometimes with remarkable transformation. I might have thought I was setting out to make a cookie, but ended up with some kind of souffle. That is a good thing, but usually leads to significant rewrites to make the whole piece consistent from beginning to end.

The last few attempts at "pantsing" have been less fruitful for me. I got a few characters and concepts I can tease out and use, but more importantly, I never found myself "on fire" for the projects. There wasn't enough backbone to engage me, or to center me when I would drift off the path. I ended up getting in all 50k words each time, but even in all that prose, I never got a clear path to where I was going, or even if I knew how I wanted things to end, how in the world I was supposed to get there.

This year, I don't want to spend a month wandering in the woods. I don't want to get lost. I need a novel GPS to keep me on course. I need to...

Outline. There. I said it. (Shuddering, cringing, and smacking my mouth to get used to the taste.)

It's not that I don't like outlines. I think outlines are fabulous. I just think I'm slightly allergic to them.

Most of my outline attempts end up being just enough catalyst to send me off writing page after page of narrative idea building that never actually turns into the road map an outline is supposed to be. I get ideas for who a character is, what might have happened in the past to bring them to this point, the history of the town, the neighbor's goldfish's name, how much money is in the main character's first cousin's savings account, and what "might" happen. I even write it like that: "...then she might end up going to his house and checking to see if he has properly insulated his water pipes for winter, as that would let her know he was responsible and ripe for picking from the husband-tree."

All of that writing can be useful--it actually is quite useful in determining motivation, making characters three-dimensional, and helping me get unstuck when I am not sure what a character would do in a situation. What it doesn't do is keep me tight to a plot or tell me how to navigate transitions.

Transitions are the worst. (Any writer who tells you otherwise is not to be trusted. Unless they're willing to tell you how to breeze easily through perfect, tight transitions, in which case you listen to them and come right back here to tell ME.)

This year, I will probably do some of my usual narrative outlining, but I'm trying to be more disciplined with it. I am going to do an actual plot outline first, from beginning to end, before I let myself wander off the trail to find shiny objects in the weeds.

Every year I start a brand new notebook for my NaNoWriMo idea, and I'm about to crack open my birthday Moleskine to see what I can come up with. Right now, I don't have the first idea which idea I want to tackle, but between now and November 1, I intend to know where to start, where to end, and every twist and turn in between.

Unless the effort of outlining actually kills me.

It might.

Tools of the Trade: Ink Review - Callifolio Yalumba

As much a writing enthusiast as I am, I had not heard much about Callifolio inks until recently. They're manufactured by L'artisan Pastellier, a French ink and calligraphy tool producer, and have had a good reputation amongst the lucky few who were able to try them over the last several years. They've been notoriously hard to source in the U.S, but not anymore.

Vanness Pens is carving a niche sourcing hard-to-get international inks and making them available to the American market. Callifolio is the latest to crawl ashore and pick up citizenship on their vast ink shelf. Vanness graciously provided me this ink in exchange for an honest review. Since I don't know how to do them any other way, I was happy to oblige.

The first thing I noticed about the ink was that it is in the exact same bottle as the Diamine 150th Anniversary inks. I opened up the bottle of Yalumba and saw instantly a similarity to Diamine Terracotta, a standout from the Diamine 150th Anniversary set. I wondered if maybe it was a rebottled Diamine ink, since Diamine has been known to allow retailers to relabel their inks. I checked them out side by side and saw that while they're part of a similar color family, they're definitely not the same ink. From what I've been able to glean about L'artisan Pastellier, they take pride in formulating their own inks, which they state are Ph neutral and ideal for fountain pens.

I would say right away that I would not fear putting this ink in an expensive pen. It is not highly saturated, and doesn't cling to plastic or metal. It knows what it is there to do, and does so with little fuss. I do like that in an ink (though sometimes the fussy ones are worth it).

I started out writing with my Sailor 1911s with H-MF nib. The Sailor has a very rigid, fine nib with a small sweet-spot that can seem to be scratchy at first if you're not accustomed to it. Even with my overwhelmingly positive relationship with this pen and the miles of paper we've covered together, I couldn't shake the scratchy feeling. The ink is very thin and doesn't give much cushion to ride on. I am not blaming the pen--I imagine any fine nib you use will have similar results. The ink itself appeared to be rather light and unsaturated, but I was pleased to see that it went down legibly even in such a fine nib.

I switched to my Lamy Al-Star with medium nib. This is an exceptionally smooth, cooperative German medium nib, which is significantly broader than the Japanese medium-fine I had been using on the Sailor. Right away, I experienced a much cushier ride. The broader nib also gave the ink a chance to show off its superpower: shading.

I really enjoy the color of this ink, which is somewhere between a brown and an amber, but part of the fun of a lighter color is the shading that can be developed to add character to your writing. This ink has character in spades, and I'm looking forward to trying it out in a flex nib. I have a feeling it will be stunning (though my unskilled flex lettering will leave much to be desired).

Check out my handwritten review of this cool boutique ink, and if you like what you see, you can find many more like it at Vanness Pens.

Click to Read

Tools of the Trade: Ink Review - Diamine Apple Glory

It has been FOREVER since I've posted a Tools of the Trade review, and I have missed them! I love everything about writing, from picking apart pieces of my day in search of nuggets of inspiration and motivation for content and productivity, all the way to poring over the meta-writing experience to examine the act of writing itself, whether it be reviewing inks or obsessively changing the default font on my word processor so it is just right. I so enjoy doing reviews that may help others find more joy in their writing. More joy, more writing, more better.

So there.

I've been going through a dry spell in my own writing life, not so much because of writer's block, but more because of a severe lack of time and energy. These seasons of life come and go, and what is important is to always keep your goals in mind and to try to carve out little slivers of time for things you enjoy. Sometimes for me, that is as simple as finding an ink to write with that is in a better mood than I am. Very often, that ink is Diamine Apple Glory.

As I mentioned in my Noodler's Firefly review, I collect the Lamy Safari limited edition fountain pens, so every year I get a nice, bright new color of pen and I always go searching out an ink to match. In 2012, it was the Apple Green Safari, which I paired with one of the only green inks I had on hand at the time, Private Reserve Sherwood Green (which is a lovely ink, but no real match for the pen at all). I didn't think much about it again until Vanness Pens ran a discount for the 30ml bottles of Diamine inks at the Arkansas Pen show. I pawed through their stash and snagged a bottle of Diamine Apple Glory, thinking it would be a good "sometimes ink."

I paired it up with my Apple Green Safari and settled in to write a few lines in an ink I figured would be too bright for everyday use, but might be fun for art or occasional writing.

I was wrong. The ink was such a perfect match for the pen, with a subtle hint of blue mixed in with the yellow-green, which gives it a sort of "heft" on the page. It is not only legible, it makes words look as if they're floating above the page itself. Very cool.

This is a pretty straightforward ink, and I haven't noticed any particular behavioral concerns. I haven't had any staining, it behaves well on most papers (maybe some slight feathering on cheaper papers, but nothing out of the ordinary), and it flows well. The only real caveat is that it is very susceptible to water, so though it may beckon you to do so, I wouldn't sit and write about the beauty of a gentle summer rain while actually in a gentle summer rain.

I'm sorry for the quality of the scan--it's actually a photo because my scanner doesn't handle these light and bright colors too well. Even though the white balance is off (the paper is actually very bright white), the general character of the color is present. Honestly, it is so much nicer in person, you should really just stop reading this review and go get a bottle of this ink.

Go ahead. I'll wait.

If you're still not convinced, feast your apple-loving eyes on my handwritten review. I guarantee this happy green ink is in a better mood than you are. 

Tools of the Trade: Ink Review - Noodler's Firefly

There are a lot of reasons to pick up a pen. Most of them involve writing something down (and some of them involve poking at the space behind your desk to scoot out that quarter you dropped). Once the writing is done, there's usually cause to read it back. To study it, maybe to edit it. For me, that's where Noodler's Firefly comes in.

I used to get along fine with a handful of felt-tip highlighters for most of my studying and editing. (By the way, have you ever noticed how highlighters tend to just multiply in drawers? I do NOT remember buying so many, but I have lots. Maybe I need to sit them closer to my spare change jar so they can teach it some tricks.)

There is nothing wrong with a good felt-tip highlighter. They get the job done, they're cheap, they're easy to obtain. They're simple tools. They're just not as much fun as they could be.

I got this ink because Lamy decided to release this pen as it's 2013 Limited Edition Safari:

Neon Yellow Lamy Safari. It's more neon than it looks.

When I saw that pen, I saw instant potential for an excuse to a) get a cool new pen and b) find a way to replace yet another common writing tool with a fountain pen.

I ordered my Neon Yellow Safari with a 1.9mm italic nib. An italic nib is one with no ball of tipping material on the end of the nib, usually cut straight across (or sometimes at an angle, called an oblique) and used to provide essential line variation for calligraphic writing. Or, in this case highlighting.

1.9mm is a wide nib, too wide for most casual writing, even if you're accomplished in penmanship. For my purposes, it was perfect.

I went in search of the highlighter ink that would most match my fluorescent yellow pen, and Noodler's Firefly was top of the line. Noodler's and a few other manufacturers make other highlighter inks in various colors, but as soon as I loaded Firefly in my Safari, I knew I had chosen well. It is such a perfect match for that bright, eye-searing yellow I am so well-trained to spot when scanning documents, and it showed up flawlessly on all the text I tried it with.

I was hoping that the fountain pen highlighting method would produce less smearing and ink-transfer when highlighting over handwritten (or ink-jet printed) words than felt-tip highlighters. Sadly, it was not to be. Highlighting over fountain pen ink is especially bad about this, but I noticed it happening with commercial ballpoints and rollerballs as well. Even though this is just as common with standard highlighters, this is a fountain pen which uses capillary action to produce ink-flow, and which can also suck up ink small amounts of pooled ink as it writes. That left the pen writing with a lingering black muddy quality for longer than it would take to de-smudge a felt-tip with a few scribbles.

Another concern is the water resistance. Be warned: if you are using this ink on an important document, keep it away from water! This is one of the most water-soluble inks I have ever used. It literally ceases to exist when it comes in contact with H2O. It is entirely erasable, and that's not a good thing in this case. 

The other issue I experienced was with the pen, not the ink. The 1.9mm nib I received had very tight tines and required some tweaking to get it to flow well. Even once that was done, I noticed that I had trouble keeping the nib flat on the paper, sometimes losing contact and producing a skip. The ink is thin and not very viscous, so it didn't help me out with maintaining flow like some thicker inks will. I also found it to be kind of scratchy and not as pleasant to use as I'd hoped. Part of the problem is with me--I am a left-handed underwriter, and while it doesn't affect my ability to use most pens, I have always struggled with italic nibs of all sizes. I do much better with an oblique that follows the natural contour of my grip and enables me to keep the nib connected to the paper in a more natural way.

This set-up took some getting used to, but I am very happy with the ink. It works great on laser printed and commercially printed pages. I may purchase a Platinum Preppy Highlighter pen in the near future. All Platinum Preppies are easily convertible to eyedropper fillers, meaning you can seal the threads and fill the whole barrel with ink. That would give me a felt-tip alternative to use with this ink, and I guarantee it will be more economical in the long run than going through piles of standard highlighters.

As with some other bright inks, this one proved difficult to scan. My scanner is designed to AVOID picking up highlighted sections, so I had to take a photo instead. It doesn't capture the fluorescence very well, but it is there, just as bright and useful as the drawerful of Sharpie highlighters apparently everyone has.

Of course, if you get a bottle of this ink and it doesn't fit your needs, you could always do what I suggested in the review: smear it all over your hands and go outside at dusk to strike fear in the heart of every firefly for miles.

The comparison is a Sharpie highlighter. When a highlighter is doing its job, it isn't supposed to be legible, right?

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

I read an article in The Wall Street Journal a few years ago* by novelist Paul Theroux in which he described his creative process. He mentioned that writing by hand is a crucial part of his writing process (and he always uses a Lamy pen on good-quality Docket Diamond paper). In that article, he quoted Hamish Hamilton who would often praise writers' handwriting, stating, "He has a good fist." Mr. Theroux went on to state that he was once approached by a budding novelist who asked his advice on how to improve her work. He quickly told her that she needed to go back and copy the first fifty pages of her novel by hand. She asked, "Can I do it on the computer?" Mr. Theroux did not chuck her into the sea, but explained no, she needed to write her words by hand so she could study them, and that typing is vastly different than actual writing. In the end, the woman did not take his advice. Mr. Theroux said he knew it would have helped because he "would have been able to see her 'fist' in it."

We already know I'm on board with putting my "fist" in my work. Like Mr. Theroux, handwriting is a crucial part of my process. I can't think at all unless I have a pen in my hand--it is where I store my brain. Handwriting is not optional; I need to do it or I cannot write well. At least, I cannot write like me. (Also like Mr. Theroux, I do enjoy a nice Lamy pen.)

I've read other articles that suggest taking Mr. Theroux's advice another step further. If handwriting can light up our creative neural pathways and open doors into our own writing, then it naturally follows that a positive practice effect can be achieved by handwriting copies of works we admire. Basically, if I want to learn to turn a phrase like Steinbeck or draw a setting like Hemingway, I can learn how it feels to do so by copying the places they did those things well. It is a way to marinate our brains in someone else's good words so that eventually, when we are writing our own work, we will recognize the cadence, the look on the page, and the feel in the hand. Then we will know when our own words are good, too.

I learned of this technique a good while ago. I thought it was a good idea, and I meant to try it. I have written miles of pages since then, much of it morning grumbles about how I always want another cup of coffee, but I had never taken up my pen to try it out. I guess I am so hardwired against plagiarism that copying someone else's work seemed out-of-bounds, even for practice.

Since I have been sick and operating on half a brain, I figured it was as good a time as any to give it a try.

Like with most good advice, it turns out it was effective, and actually a good bit of fun.

I started with a handful of nearby books I have read and admired for one thing or another. After I did the handwriting sample, I did a little slab of analysis on what I learned.

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

I have long loved Philip K. Dick. I appreciate his work for his madness as much as his imagination, his sensitivity as much as his bravado. A Scanner Darkly is unique among the PKD novels and stories I've read, and I was glad to get my finger on what makes it tick. The first thing I noticed was that his sentences are actually straightforward and simple, unfolding one idea straight to the next like a set of Russian nesting dolls. He's not big on commas, either for connection or pause. He uses them appropriately, but not for fun. It adds to the straightforward style and voice. This works well, given the way PKD's works tangle themselves up in complexity and confusion as they go along. If his writing got in his way, it would be hopeless to follow.



Watership Down by Richard Adams

Watership Down has long been heralded a classic, not just for its story, but for the creative, sensitive handling of writing from the perspective of a rabbit. Richard Adams gives his readers an experience they couldn't have any other way, and he does it in three dimensions. In the sample I copied, Adams takes his time drawing the setting and ambiance. I could feel it in the words themselves and the long, languid sentences. There was such an emphasis on all the trees and grasses, I almost sneezed just writing it. It gets the job done setting the world at a rabbit's eye view, and his lush writing mirrors the lushness he is trying his best to get his readers to see with him.




The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Old Man and the Sea was considered by Hemingway to be his greatest work. It has certainly endured as such, and is a fine example of Hemingway's signature style. The writing is sparse and unadorned, and often his sentences run on and on, nailed together with a string of conjunctions. He says a lot with a little, and does so without a comma in sight. The stark style works for the type of tale he's building, and the sentences come across as being brave and secure, unapologetic even. There are no nervous adjectives to add insurance to his descriptions. They just are what they are. Only at the end of his paragraphs does the hammer fall, and Hemingway hits us with a pitch-perfect metaphor summing up all we really need to know.



The Giver by Lois Lowry

The Giver is a deceptive book. It sits camouflaged in the children's section of bookstores and libraries, pretending to be simple. It is not. There is nothing simple about it, and any lesser writing would never be able to pull together the slow-build of complex and increasingly conflicting ideals that gives the book its payoff. In copying this sample, I was stuck by how many words I saw dedicated to mood-setting. Lowry crafts a scene in which a relatively non-threatening event is described with palpable, growing anxiety. It is almost subliminal how she does it, sneaking in emotional cue words. Hardly even allowing us to notice, she builds a history of fear in half a paragraph, all while developing the setting of a community which has supposedly banished that very emotion to extinction.


Clearly, there is a lot to be learned by studying the works of writers who matter to us. I can milk a lot out of a reading experience if I put my mind to it, but there really is something to writing down their words. It's like trying on someone else's shoes. They probably don't quite fit, but you can still see how they look on your own feet.

This is an ongoing process, and I have a lot more to learn and discover. If nothing else, it is giving me a mighty fine excuse to use my favorite pens and paper, and to wave hello to a few books that have become old friends.

*Paul Theroux, "Paul Theroux on the Powers that Flow From a Pen," Wall Street Journal online, retrieved May 21, 2012