Playing: The World Ends With You (Nintendo DS)
Redraft: Chapter 4 of 32
Reread: On Writing, Stephen King
It's been more than a month since I posted pictures, and as I recently received what (hopefully) will be the last fountain pen I'll buy for quite some time, I thought it'd be a good time to check up on how much things have changed since then.
First, here's what the desk looks like now:
As you can see, I've doubled up on a few things, namely keyboards and monitors. After getting on rather well for a few weeks with the new Filco keyboard, my fingers were longing for the Kinesis Contoured again. The solution? I reattached the keyboard drawer from my previous desk and placed the Filco and trackball mouse on it. The Kinesis is the big black device situated in front of the monitors.
Because my main computer is a laptop, it can't by itself support the symmetrical dual screens that I've always wanted. The next best thing is to spread my desktop across the external monitor and the onboard laptop monitor. The two screens make strange bedfellows: the external is a 15-inch Samsung SyncMaster 151v, 1024x768 resolution, roughly six years old and a hand-me-down from my dad after I convinced him to upgrade to a new, more vibrant 19-incher. The Vaio's screen is an 11.1-inch LED-lit LCD, a whopping 1366x768 resolution crammed into that small real estate. That means that the dots-per-inch between the two monitors are noticeably dissimilar, so that text that looks just right on the external will seem microscopic on the other. I might try to replace the aging external with a larger and more lucid screen, but that's some time away, I think.
*
I realized earlier in the month that I needed to cut back on the FPs, so I decided to draw the line on the FP I've been eyeing since the beginning: the Lamy 2000.
Along with the Pilot/Namiki Capless, the 2000 has won over most of the FP aficionados as far as non-traditional designs go. Originally designed in 1966 (the same year that a certain future-themed TV show began to boldly go) as the FP of the future, the design has changed very little in the forty-plus years this pen has been in production.
The pen uses an integrated piston filing system, so there's no mucking about with converters. The body is composed of Makrolon plastic with a wood finish, and the seam between the main body and the piston mechanism is invisible once the chamber is filled.
The tip is partially hooded by the metallic grip.
The nib is platinum-plated 14-karat gold, but has less flex to it than the Decimo. I decided to fill it with Noodler's Eel Blue. I realize I never gave a side-by-side writing comparison for the previous FPs, and I received a Pilot Prera (an intermediate FP roughly equal to the Lamy Vista in price and quality) since the last pen post, so here's a comparison of my four FPs:
From top to bottom: Lamy 2000 (Noodler's Eel Blue), Lamy Vista (Noodler's Baystate Blue), Pilot/Namiki Prera (Noodler's Eel Blue), and Pilot/Namiki Capless Decimo (Noodler's Bulletproof Black).*
I am addicted to cooking shows, though the current Food Network lineup (sans Good Eats and the cooking competitions) doesn't do it for me anymore. As a result, I've been watching shows from the BBC like Jamie at Home and Gordon Ramsay's The F-Word.
The F-Word is Ramsay's current flagship program in the UK, featuring a smorgasbord of competition (groups of amateur chefs trying to win a chance to work for / run Ramsay's restaurant for a single service), random food issues (from the production of foie gras to the reasons why people shouldn't throw used cooking oil down the drain), and the season-long ordeal of Ramsay and family picking, raising, and then slaughtering and cooking a group of turkeys (season 1), pigs (season 2), and lambs (season 3). It's strange how much one can pick up from just watching culinary professionals do what they do, though it's always sobering to remember that as much as the mind may pick up from watching, one's cooking skills only improve with actual cooking time. (Though a bit of book knowledge often goes a long way.)
The F-Word is Ramsay's current flagship program in the UK, featuring a smorgasbord of competition (groups of amateur chefs trying to win a chance to work for / run Ramsay's restaurant for a single service), random food issues (from the production of foie gras to the reasons why people shouldn't throw used cooking oil down the drain), and the season-long ordeal of Ramsay and family picking, raising, and then slaughtering and cooking a group of turkeys (season 1), pigs (season 2), and lambs (season 3). It's strange how much one can pick up from just watching culinary professionals do what they do, though it's always sobering to remember that as much as the mind may pick up from watching, one's cooking skills only improve with actual cooking time. (Though a bit of book knowledge often goes a long way.)
*
The first "Re-" is for Redraft. As you can see, I'm still on Chapter 4 this week (though, truth be told, I was just barely finishing Chapter 3 when I posted last week). I'm beginning to hit the wall in that I've begun to write into the point where I'm going to have to drastically revamp the plot, so I'm repeating the painful process of writing a section for the first time. I wholeheartedly subscribe to Ernest Hemingway's time-honored adage, at least as far as my own writing is concerned: "The first draft of anything is crap." (OK--Hemingway said "shit," but I never liked the word apart from its use as an exclamation ("Oh, shit!"), and I think "crap" sounds better to boot.) I think I might need to resort to working out a new outline for chapters 4 through 10 in order to get back on track.
The second "Re-" is Reread. I recently reread Stephen King's On Writing, or at least the portions about writing. I think the best books stand up well to multiple readings, and King's is no exception. I've decided to reread some of the best books that I've read in the past few years--The Name of the Wind, The Thirteenth Tale, Old School, The Princess and the Hound--this time not as a reader, but as a writer, picking each apart to see what writerly skills I can divine from each. Essentially, I want to figure out exactly what it was that fascinated me in the first place. I'll report on each one as I complete them, starting with On Writing.
On Writing should really join other classic fiction writing books like Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing. It does two things equally well at alternating times: pass on the gems King gleaned from telling stories and unveil King's own life story. In a way, the two are inextricably bound; where does one separate the writer from the man? (I'm certainly the person least ideally poised to answer that question. I'm not even sure it can be done.)
One of the greatest lessons that King has taught me is to write the first draft with the door closed, and the second with the door open. That piece of advice contemplates Hemingway's--you write the first draft purely for yourself, to experience the story firsthand. The last thing you should be worrying about at that fledgling stage is what others might think if their eyes happened upon the paragraph you've just finished penning or typing. As I've learned through personal experience, that's one of the surest paths toward writer's block. You write with the door closed to symbolically cordon the world out--when you're still pathfinding your tale, you're the only audience that matters.
Writing the second draft with the door opens means that you should redraft with your readers in mind--in particular, what King calls the "Ideal Reader." For King, that reader is a real person, or at least his mental version of her: Tabitha King, his wife. But I think it needn't be. Essentially, the Ideal Reader is simply the reader you envision to be the one you'd want to enjoy your tale.
*
The second "Re-" is Reread. I recently reread Stephen King's On Writing, or at least the portions about writing. I think the best books stand up well to multiple readings, and King's is no exception. I've decided to reread some of the best books that I've read in the past few years--The Name of the Wind, The Thirteenth Tale, Old School, The Princess and the Hound--this time not as a reader, but as a writer, picking each apart to see what writerly skills I can divine from each. Essentially, I want to figure out exactly what it was that fascinated me in the first place. I'll report on each one as I complete them, starting with On Writing.
On Writing should really join other classic fiction writing books like Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing. It does two things equally well at alternating times: pass on the gems King gleaned from telling stories and unveil King's own life story. In a way, the two are inextricably bound; where does one separate the writer from the man? (I'm certainly the person least ideally poised to answer that question. I'm not even sure it can be done.)
One of the greatest lessons that King has taught me is to write the first draft with the door closed, and the second with the door open. That piece of advice contemplates Hemingway's--you write the first draft purely for yourself, to experience the story firsthand. The last thing you should be worrying about at that fledgling stage is what others might think if their eyes happened upon the paragraph you've just finished penning or typing. As I've learned through personal experience, that's one of the surest paths toward writer's block. You write with the door closed to symbolically cordon the world out--when you're still pathfinding your tale, you're the only audience that matters.
Writing the second draft with the door opens means that you should redraft with your readers in mind--in particular, what King calls the "Ideal Reader." For King, that reader is a real person, or at least his mental version of her: Tabitha King, his wife. But I think it needn't be. Essentially, the Ideal Reader is simply the reader you envision to be the one you'd want to enjoy your tale.
*
The third and final "Re-" is Research. As in I've just been assigned to pull every federal district court case featuring the National Parks Service as a plaintiff or defendant from the last eight years. That, as a rough estimate, could amount to more than 400 cases, each of which I'll have to summarize and organize in a memo for my Prof by next week. Fortunately, I won't be printing the cases out, as the Prof said that a collection of the cases in electronic form would be good enough (and it ought to be--I'd rather not contemplate the irony of the Environmental Law Program killing reams of trees to print out 400 cases featuring the National Parks Service. If every scholar did that, the Service would be out of business--there'd be no parks to serve, because there'd be no trees to put in them!).
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