Good morning!
If you live in California, FOR GOD’S SAKE, YOU MUST VOTE TODAY. If you don’t vote, Arnold will be governor, and it will be YOUR fault. If you’re my friend and don’t vote, I will hold you personally responsible for this. You don’t want to make me sad, do you? Get out there and vote, I ain’t kidding. Check out brooke’s findings on what Arnold’s thugs have been doing to protesters. It’s frightening.
VOTE!
Okay. That said, here’s Christy’s hat that sister Bethany made! Can you stand it? Her first colorwork, her first design, I love it. More pics on her site.
Wowee! to those comments yesterday! I loved ‘em all. I love the idea of Noro defeating the uniform (hee!) and the different ideas on writing and music (gonna try it, but for Fun, not For Real) and the obvious love we share of Tricks of the Trade. My favorite was Missa’s friend who writes novels BACKWARDS, in mirror writing.
Can you imagine?
I think it’s a great idea (although until I can type backwards, I ain’t gonna try it), for a couple of reasons. One, you can write on the airplane without the chump next to you reading over your shoulder (although why you’re not knitting on the plane, I just don’t understand). Two, it really does shake things up in your brain, much like writing with the left hand. I can’t write left-handed, although I’ve tried, but I CAN write backwards in script. And I don’t even have to try, it’s like flipping a switch, it just works. It’s a great party trick. And it stirs up thoughts in a slightly different way. Try it. (Ooh! And Missa’s mom offered Bethy a driveway, big shout out to her!)
And Anne wrote a couple of her own personal tricks and I remembered (again) how much I love reading about others writing, so here’s my routine, for you. If you care. If you don’t, go see Beth’s hat. It rocks.
I have an old rocking chair, kind of an upholstered chair on a big huge spring that moves in alarming and unexpected directions. Wait, this is it. It’s also Digit’s favorite chair.
I get up, flip the laptop on, make coffee (in an Italian caffetierra) and toast with peanut-butter and honey. Every day. This doesn’t vary. I sit cross-legged and slouched in the chair, pull the computer into my lap and check email while eating. After breakfast, I open a morning pages document (the private one, the sloppy, no-brainer one where I just ramble and wake up) and write about a page. Then I open this page and write a blog entry. Hi! Then I get up and make a cup of green tea and wash my dishes. I’ve already opened the novel and it’s open on the desktop so when I sit down again it’s ready and waiting for little ole me to show up. Then I write, without thinking or groaning about my plight in life. If the phone rings, I answer it. If the cat throws up, I clean. If the awful neighbors take out the trash, however, I don’t help. They’re so terrible, they can take the trash out every once in a while by themselves. I write for five hundred words, and I don’t care how good or bad they are. Just so they are. (Then later at work on my break, I go to a quiet spot, have another cuppa and write the other five hundred – that seems to come easier, usually, perhaps because I’ve been so linear for hours that it’s a relief to play on the page). That’s my routine, or at least what I like it to be, on the mornings when it works.
I used to write my morning pages with a gift from a Great Love, an antique Waterman 1927 Lady Patrician fountain pen (pic here) that I dipped in purple Pelican ink, while reclining on my divan. I don’t anymore, and I owe that to Brenda Ueland, who said she could type almost as fast as she thought, so she felt more natural on a typewriter. I agree with a lot that Julia Cameron says about the benefits of writing long-hand – it’s the difference between walking and driving to the store: even though it takes longer, you notice a lot more on the walk. But I love to type. So there. I do miss the excuse to use the fountain pens (and I have a little collection, a Mont Blanc and a Namiki, to name-drop a couple), so I make up reasons. I make my grocery lists sometimes with a two inch fountain pen I bought in Venice in March….
Enough. What’s your routine?
Green tea, toast w/ almond butter and either pumpkin butter or cinnamon and honey. Sometimes I’ll have oatmeal instead (the real Irish kind. I’m picky bout my oats). Then morning pages, longhand, in a notebook with no lines that I had bound at Kinkos because I can’t write on lined paper. It upsets me for no good reason. Then blog reading. Then dog petting. Then writing for as long as I can keep it going, work deadlines allowing. Fascinating, hunh? 😉
Hey, I can do mirror-writing too. It always freaks out my friends, particularly when we’re drunk. I always figgered it was easy for me because I’m left-handed.
oh god. I just wrote a post about, like, so what’s YOUR creative process? I come here and get the sheeebeee-geebeeees cuz, well hey,
maybe we’ve got enough brain cells between us for like a WHOLE brain or something. Not that either of our brains remembers stuff…so we’ll need more team players.
Seriously, that’s my routine. I start thinking out loud and let me fingers type it.
The morning pages I do longhand, with whatever pen I am currently smitten with. Fountain pens, dippers, nibs, roller balls, glitter gels, I just LOVE pens. paper maters not so much, just that I have some. I REQUIRE myself to do THREE FULL PAGES> usually it starts out as some whiny oh I am so mad about the terminator turning politician rant and sorta like yoga I unkink myself and relax and somedays if I’m LUCKY and fairly awake, an idea pops up and says HEY, write about MEEEEE.
Then the reality which is my LIFE intrudes.
Pass the (shared) brain, please. Ok. First of all, I just had a big laugh because I thought I read ‘chimp’ on the plane.
It’s so funny to hear you talk pen/keyboard talk because I’ve been monkeying around (a nod to the chimp in the plane) trying to figure out if I have a preference or whether trying to find a preference is another one of my spiffy delay tactics.
Tell me you back up your hard drive files please. Regularly. As part of your routine. 🙂
Note to Wendy’s note: The Lamb is lefthanded and writes backwards and in reverse. She also goes forward when the rest go backward in dance class, and left for right and so forth. It’s hard not to laugh sometimes.
A compromise I gave myself for writing morning pages on the computer was to turn off the monitor, a trick I used when teaching students the concept of freewriting. I have yet to determine what waking hour will set me ahead of the wee one and give me back that writing time. Then there’s the search for exercise time. But I wouldn’t trade these challenges! (Writing a birthday card now with my Waterman . . .)
Fountain pen makes a nice gift for a savvy person 🙂
I purchased two Uni-Ball Signo 207 Pens from my College Bookstore. After a quick test of the pens on my notebook I thought it would be a good pen. The next day during class it came time to put the pens to the test and see how well they perform. The results speak for themselves. They are literally the Worst Pens I have ever purchased. I could not complete a sentence without having the pen skip. It got to the point that I had to switch to a basic Bic Ball Point Pen.
Bottom line if you don’t mind having to go over your writing to correct any letters and add letter’s to complete words due to the skipping then you might find this pen ok.
If your like me and don’t have time to be messing around with a pen. Then Stay away from the Uni-Ball 207.