If you know me, or have read this blog for any time, you know about my obsession with Levenger. In the fantasy house that I furnish in my mind, there are Levenger book shelves, reading lamps, club chairs, stacks of Ledgerdomain journals waiting to be filled, and perhaps an Aeron or two.
It’s not all fantasy. I have spent many an actual dollar at Levenger. In fact I have recently performed an intervention on myself and vowed not to buy anything but necessary ink refills and notepads/journals for the next little while. Like a year or so. There was one last hurrah/binge before cutting myself off, during which I finally bought the long-coveted Editor’s Desk. See below. It holds your reading material or notes up there on the little ledge, then puts your journal (or, as I’ve found, your laptop) at just the right angle for writing or typing.
When I sit at it, I feel like such…I don’t know…a writer.
But then, I’ve always suspected that my love for the tools of the writing trade preceded my love for the craft itself. It feels a little blasphemous to say that I loved typewriters before I loved books. I think it’s true, though, that at least 50% of my desire to write books was borne out of my desire to sit at the typewriter and see words appear on a previously blank sheet of paper.
Here I am at my dad’s typewriter. I used to watch him type correspondence, and of course wanted to imitate.
I have a very distinct memory of being ten or eleven years old and visiting my Aunt Betty Lou on her farm in North Carolina. She is a writer herself, and a typewriter and stack of paper out on her desk, and I stared at both a long time. Then I went outside and sat on the swingset in that humid air that always seemed like such a foreign, magical thing to me, and thought about what I could write if I put a piece of that paper in and started typing. I know I went in and typed something—I don’t remember what. Probably something like:
I just came in from the swingset. It is humid. Aunt Betty Lou is in the kitchen.
Now, I still get excited by tools and different tools make me want to do different work. Buying a fountain pen and some Clairefontaine notebooks has led to dabbling in some different forms and voices than I tend to do on the computer. I’ve written 100 pages of something else on one of the vintage typewriters I bought during last year’s obsession, pages that await re-reading to see if it’s anything, because while typing I didn’t stop to look.
As the world goes more and more virtual, I like these heavy chunks of machinery, and the different tactile experiences I get from fingers on keyboard vs. nib scratching on paper vs. satisfying clacking and the ding that tells you to hit return. And, frankly, sometimes I have to trick and reward myself and find ways to make writing feel new when I’m in a funk or a rut or in childish resistance mode. I don’t have many vices left. An addiction to office equipment and supplies seems pretty harmless.
13 comments for this post
I am totally in agreement. I always do longhand or typewriter when I’m stuck, and I love typewriters because they give you that double whammy of creating writing, while at the same time creating a lovely object. Besides, manual typewriters are ingeniously designed…a tiny letterpress right there on the desk!
Thank you for your great blog and great books!
[Reply]
Sara Reply:
September 3rd, 2009 at 2:06 pm
@Rachel Greer, I have to say I’ve never been tough enough to hack it with a manual. My vintage babies are all electric, but still a totally satisfying *smack*
Glad you like the blog (and the books)!
[Reply]
I am so with you Sara. Levenger and Clairefontaine notebooks. Plus I had a “toy” typewriter as a little girl (it worked) AND a printing press with a hand crank that moved a plate with rubber letters down onto the inked pad and then up just in time for the paper to move into place. Now that I see the writer’s desk here on your desk it’s going to be harder for me to resist that temptation.
[Reply]
Sara Reply:
September 6th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
@Nancy Nordenson, My sister and I used to do a neighborhood newsletter with the leftover rub-off letters from my mom’s job. LEftovers are somewhat limiting, but we managed a couple of decent issues!
[Reply]
I am totally with you.
I am actually writing the first draft of my new novel by hand first and then putting it in the computer. Because I want it to be a different voice. But then I might just do it on the computer.
Point is. You are right. Different methods or writing = different voices emerging. I love that.
[Reply]
Sara Reply:
September 6th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
@cecil, Yeah, in some ways it feels totally impractical and a little bit scary (what if the pages burn up in a fire or get stolen or lost??) but even in the process of transferring from writing to computer a lot of excellent revision would happen.
[Reply]
Being 16 and all, I’ve never really come in contact with a typewriter before, but I agree with you all the same. All my stories written in pallpiont always seem to have more of an indie flare than the ones I write on my laptop. If that makes any sense.
[Reply]
Sara Reply:
September 6th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
@C, It does! Handwriting is just different.
[Reply]
I love seeing that old picture on your site! How familiar I am, too, with the “tricking” and “rewarding” oneself out of resistance. Doing it all the time.
[Reply]
Sara Reply:
September 6th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
@Mom, So I won’t grow out of it?
[Reply]
Oooh. We just got a new high school in my town, and in the technology wing there’s a display – sort of a through-the-ages thing and they have AN UNDERWOOD TYPEWRITER! My kids thought (again) that I’m a nerd for all the drooling.
[Reply]
Sara Reply:
September 6th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
@Becca, That is very cool – esp as 16 year-old commenter above mentioned having never come in contact with typewriter (which seems a shame).
[Reply]
I’m completely jealous of your editor’s desk. I’ve wanted one for years, even started drawing up plans for a knock-off so a cabinet-maker friend of mine could build me one.
As for typewriters, for years I dragged around not one but two old Royal typewriters–yes the cast iron beauts–until it became nearly impossible to get ribbons for them. Sigh. I miss the “ding”.
[Reply]
Add your comment