The WMF Archives: Guest Blogger: Leon Sterling

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Guest Blogger: Leon Sterling

6:00 AM

The winner of Decembers contest has graciously accepted the offer to be a WM Freelance Connection guest blogger. Enjoy this great piece he wrote, followed by a brief bio of who he is.

SOMETIMES, YOU JUST NEED A FOUNTAIN PEN.

By Leon Sterling

It’s still possible to say that not every author out there uses a computer. Cormac McCarthy, for example, has typed on the same, portable Olivetti manual typewriter for around 50 years and has produced what he estimates to be more than five million words on that old machine. (That became known recently when he donated that Olivetti for an auction to benefit the Santa Fe Institute where he works.) He has won some of the most prestigious writer’s awards on that diminutive portable – the Pulitzer, the Pen/Saul Bellow award, as well as the National Book Award. He’s one of the finest authors writing today. And he’s still working on a portable Olivetti manual typewriter – an identical one to his, purchased used, of course, for under twenty dollars.

Most of us, though, use computers now or we wouldn’t be seeing each other’s writing on this blog. So it’s likely safe to say that most of us also do our writing on computers. Although I do, in recent years I’ve also been experimenting. And I’ve found that what I use to write can alter how I write … and even what I write. The most dramatic difference I’ve found is writing with fountain pens.

My history with the written word spans a good many years before a PC ("personal computer") came into existence. Office system word processors were introduced around the 1970s, but IBM, Wang and the others didn’t foresee the home market. IBM PCs first became available around 1984 (hmmm … that’s interesting). I bought among the first ever available for home use, around 1986, and it changed how I – and I assume most others – write, forever.

Sidebar: Joan Didion and her husband John Dunne came into my New York City apartment in 1987 and, instead of looking at the apartment that I was trying to rent out, became engrossed with my PC (the green-screen monster). They asked what I did with it. When I said, "I’m a writer," they became transfixed, staring at the screen as if it would do something magical. Mr. Dunne asked the young man standing shyly in the background, "doesn’t it give you migraines to stare at that thing all the time?" I said no, but that I took frequent breaks. They never did rent the apartment, but I always wondered if Joan Didion – who was among the most prodigious producers of writing – had switched to a computer at some time.

Can what you use to write affect how you write?
When I was in grade school – where I began working on a permanent callus on the middle finger of my right hand by squeezing ball-point pens with a death grip – my parents bought me a used Royal portable manual typewriter to do school reports. It was enclosed in a sturdy, wooden case with clasps and a carry handle, had a two-colored ribbon (black and red) on little spools, and I thought it was ancient. But I grew to love it. I took it along when I moved out on my own, and wrote many of my earliest stories on it.

It had taken me quite a while back then to feel comfortable switching from ballpoints and pencils to that manual typewriter. I not only got used to it, we developed a relationship based on mutual understanding. (If I typed too quickly, its keys would jam.) Then years later I switched to an electric. And finally to my first computer. Typewriters were an acquired taste and also seemed magical. Watching the words appear, letter by letter, in crisp, black ink on a bright, white piece of paper was fascinating. You could watch the process of writing, letter by letter, word by word. Yes, it’s similar with a computer. But the sounds and sensations are entirely different.

Typing was also so much cleaner than the uneven ballpoint scribbling I’d leave on a page after a burst of ideas. (Somehow, my writing always angled downwards, so a full page of it looked like a ship listing to starboard.) But it was also challenging – the page was so white, so clean. It seemed to insist that every word placed on it be perfect. When I was able to let go of that, and simply write, the sound of the typewriter became familiar, friendly, satisfying. The small carriage return bell rewarded my progress, letting me know how far and how fast I’d gone.

When computers appeared, we had to become accustomed to disembodied letters and words appearing on a screen that was so distant from the keyboard and the printed page. It was nothing like the typewriter, which was all about that piece of paper, held in place on the roller, until it reached the bottom, when it would be crisply pulled out and added to a pile of papers.

A typewriter is a mechanical device, a tool with which you interact. Computers are more machines, like blenders. They can do lots of things – more every day – along with the one thing you need done at any given time. I used one at my ad agency jobs starting in the late 1980s, but it took a while, a long while, for me to become accustomed to allowing the machine to be the intermediary for the thoughts that were collected in my personal writing. For that, I still miss my old typewriter.

During my first ad agency jobs (in the late 1970s), I discovered IBM Selectrics. They were astounding. A little ball of letters that could strike the paper as fast as you could hit the keys. You couldn’t possibly outpace it or jam it. I lusted after them and always sought them out. Until computers were available.

As soon as I began using a computer, my writing changed. I began writing even faster, and, eventually, with reckless abandon since it was so easy to edit, delete and reorder what was written. It was a big change. A significant change for a writer. With a speedy Selectric, you’d still have to retype what you wanted to change, which meant inserting a fresh sheet of blank, white, intimidating paper. So you were somewhat cautious, even hesitant in your typing, since you didn’t really want to have to retype everything. With a computer, you could heedlessly bang away since it was so easy to cut and paste by hitting a few keys (pre-mouse, by the way).

My 20-year-old son’s typing is awful. He has to work hard at producing a clean paper for his college classes since he grew up texting, "im-ing" and messaging. Flying fingers and barely intelligible shorthand typically mattered more to him (and I’d assume others his age) than well-ordered thoughts. He’s no dummy, though. Quite the opposite. He’s merely a product of his age. He was born in 1989. He has never known a time without a keyboard … or a cell-phone.

Before computers were available, the choices were primarily typewriter or ball-point pens. They’re called ball-point, by the way, because they work via a tiny, bb-like ball imprisoned at the bottom of a shaft. It is not ink alone that makes them work, but a blend of ink and grease (why it can be hard to get ball-point stains out of clothing). You literally have to roll the ball to get the ink/grease mixture to flow, so they require some amount of pressure to work. In my case, I became over-zealous in the application of that pressure, using them with my patented death grip. (Likely one of the reasons I have god-awful hand-writing.)

My attraction to fountain pens changed things, quite a bit. I thought they'd improve my hand-writing since you can't use the death grip on them. (Try that and the nib will snap, and the pen will be ruined.) My attraction actually began with wanting to learn calligraphy. Calligraphic pens are chisel-tipped fountain pens (no nib). It was a simple transition to nibbed fountain pens. Calligraphic pens are actually more demanding – you have to hold them at exactly the right angle the entire time you’re writing. Fountain pens are far more forgiving.

How the writing instrument changes the writing process.

Fountain pens require one to use a lighter hand, a gentler grip, than any other writing instrument. Now, whenever I write in a journal or make notes, I use fountain pens. Whenever I take writing workshops, I use fountain pens. It was a joy to learn that the flow of ink is also improved tremendously by the quality of the paper (less tooth, smoother ink flow and better progress across the page). That opened up an entirely new obsession – the world of fine writing papers.

Writing with a fountain pen is an absolute antidote to a keyboard, along with a ball-point. It forces one to slow down quite a bit and connect more directly with one’s thoughts. It also forces one to write carefully in order not to end up with blobs of ink all over the page. I distinctly prefer them to pencils and can hardly stand ball-points anymore.

Most of all, fountain pens help the writing. They force you to relax my grip when you write, and that helps thoughts flow more easily, along with the ink. You don’t worry about hitting the right keys or saving electronic files … or checking e-mail. You just move your wrist and write. And the writing says who you are, with each stroke, each word. It’s like coming home.

Computers can pull you away from yourself, tugging on your mind all the time with suggestions of what else you could be doing with that keyboard… reading newspapers online, checking eBay, seeing what’s new on blogs…

Fountain pens cut through that very large pile of mental clutter. You’re connected to your thoughts and the act of writing, because it’s all about the flow. Fountain pens are strictly about the writing. Period. And somehow the ink flow keeps the thoughts coming. Instead of pushing the words out with a ballpoint, or pounding them out on a keyboard, they flow from the ink. It’s almost as if you’re merely guiding the pen. That’s how a fountain pen offers a very satisfying discipline.

I now have several pens. Some are collector’s pieces, and some are absurdly inexpensive (you can buy Pentel disposable fountain pens for $5-10 at stationery or art supply stores – no muss, no fuss). You don’t need to mess with ink bottles these days since cartridge pens are readily available. However, if you do become entranced with refillable fountain pens, an incredible world of colors awaits you. There are small-scale ink manufacturers in business (along with the long-lived giants) who produce an astounding array of custom inks that truly fire the imagination.

So can you change how you write by changing what you use to write? In my case, I can see it clearly. I recommend trying it. If this interests you, don’t cheat with a felt-tip or bamboo-tip pen – it’s not the same. The tactile difference is significant. You need to play with the angle of a fountain pen until you get the flow just right. And that flow is precisely what writers are after: the flow that both frees thoughts and connects you so directly to the paper that everything else is blocked out. Then, you really are what you write.

A Bit about Leon Sterling
Leon Sterling is a professional writer and author who is currently completing a novel, Leaving Home, which focuses on the modern tendency to break away from family.

Passionate writer, avid reader, motorcycle rider as often as possible.
Grew up on the left coast, lived and worked on the right coast for 25 years. Happily moved to New Mexico in 2004.
Husband to Judith, father to Marc and Michael.

Labels: guest blogger, Leon Sterling, monthly contest, the writing life

4 comments:

Pam Houghton said...: Though I've adapted to revising on the computer, I almost always start with pen and paper. It's like you say here - I think you more connected to your thoughts that way. There's a more natural flow to the writing.; December 29, 2009 8:05 AM
Todd R. Vick said...: I used to jot ideas down on whatever I could find: napkin, scratch paper, even my palms. What began to happen was that my ideas would get washed in the laundry, etc. A friend gave me a moleskine journal for Christmas one year and I take it with me wherever I go. Now my thoughts and rough ideas are in a safe place. Unless there's a fire...; December 29, 2009 1:24 PM
Laya Bajpai said...: Very interesting observations. My school bought computers in 1985 at the behest of the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi. They had black and white screens and it was kept in one dark room where nobody was allowed. It was during the 1990's that the trend of computers caught on.; December 29, 2009 2:51 PM
Angela Atkinson said...: Leon, this is a beautiful piece. I wrote in notebooks until around 2000 when I became exclusively a PC writer. I should really break them out again. There is definitely something to be said for the smoothness of a pen gliding over a fresh page. Thanks for the reminder, and thanks for this amazing post. Love the history you've included--especially the bit about Joan Didion and John Dunne. Thanks again!; December 29, 2009 7:22 PM

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