The Blunted Pencil, or How I Waste My Time

Having watched the first three Harry Potter films for the first time ever this week, I decided that should I become as unutterably wealthy from my work as Ms Rowling, I would employ an artist to craft miniature ice sculptures for my evening tipple.

"Bring me a whisky," I'd growl, "and put a swan in it."

***

I have wasted a great many hours over the last few days browsing the internet, refreshing Tw*tter, and generally looking out of the window and despairing at how many dandelions there are in the garden, and how quickly they grow back despite my best and repeated efforts to dig up as much of the roots as possible with a bent trowel from the £1 shop.

I have come to accept my laziness as a natural part of the human spirit, though perhaps others would see it as a needless vice.  Either way, I am not too old to change, surely.  It just requires tenacity, though I am not sure I like the sound of that for it implies work.

Aside from banishing dandelions and beheading the seedpods of rogue Welsh Poppies, I am happy to admit, slyly, that I have also been able to reduce my backlog of stories in need of editing to merely two.  This is a good thing.  For too long I have been starting things and not finishing them, and it's about time I got on top of all that.  I have a vast heap of spontaneous beginnings, disassociated middles and even a couple of endings - it's the tying together of this multitude of elements that is the hardest part.

As I began last time, ideas come easily.  This is good.  The trick to writing, as in life, is to focus on a path, while being aware of the plenitude of alternatives.  The process begins when we are young, and are asked to choose only one of three gobsmackingly amazing toys, or later at school when we are asked at too young an age, an age at which we are still rolling in the beginnings of ourselves, to choose subjects of academic study, while being threatened that bad choices now will ruin us forever.

This is bad.  Pressure does not always help us decide.  It may help us pick, at whim and with the nagging fear of impending regret that will no doubt assail us when we inevitably fail to prove ourselves as worthy contenders, and instead reveal ourselves to be the bums we are - it may help forge us, and perhaps being on a path is better than being lost away from one.  Still, I cannot help but think we are trained from childhood to rush into life as a dog that is thrown a stick will rush into oncoming traffic.

What has this got to do with anything?  Well, I was almost ready to miss this week's entry and go back to some random detritus floating on the surface of the internet - cats involved in amusing circumstances, likely.  Now I have a blog entry instead and I can say I've kept up to it.  Minor achievements do add up.


This week I have been shortlisted in a competition over at 5 Minute Fiction, and would be grateful of any votes for my piece "Love Story".  Naturally, you may vote for whichever you like.

Also, I have signed up to Burrst, which is very new and seems to be a kind of space for collaborative feedback.  I am not certain I require feedback, but for those who are interested, it may be worth taking a look as it develops.


Finally:

On my comment last week that to be a writer, one must write - it seems Epictetus is with me.

Be productive.

On the Writing Process

Ideas are easy to come by.  Any writer worth the name will have more ideas than they can ever hope to reasonably include in their work without shoe-horning them in at awkward angles, making the work ugly and difficult to pick up.  Writing short-form fiction is a very good way to hone a minimum or optimum quantity of ideas into a single, coherent and hopefully beautifiul object, which , regardless of the nature of those ideas, suggests something greater than itself without needing specific reference to it.

Throughout, it seems to me, the key elements of the process are a kind of naive intuition, and hard-nosed technical focus.  Perhaps a combination of the two seems odd to those who do not write, but I suspect those involved in other creative disciplines would recognise it.

Naivety and intuition are essential I think in generating material of interest.  Writing without passion, oddity or surprise is only going to leave readers cold; but no amount of passion can make a successful piece if it is badly shaped.  Technical strength is necessary, and that requires balancing the objective and subjective sides of one's reading of one's own work - an arm's length kind of proximity to both the guts and the mind of the piece.  Reading one's own work with the mindset of a reader, rather than a writer, is not easy, and takes patience and practice.  Often the first steps feel clumsy, as when one learns a new musical instrument - but over time those awkward gestures become second nature, and can be enjoyed rather than struggled against.

Having taught Creative Writing classes for several years, I have tried a number of ways of helping beginners begin and more advanced, practised writers to finish: in-class exercises like writing from a picture, stream-of-consciousness blasts, idea-pooling, field trips and freedom, all accompanied by analysis of published, sometimes well-known, text - and, of course, feedback between peers and myself as a group leader.

My own initial ideas and abandoned drafts are plenty.  Often I return to them years after they were started and make something new of them.  Often it takes me a year or two to really finish a piece of short fiction - I hesitate to use the word 'story' as the word almost predetermines expectations - but the purpose of writing is not to be quick.  It is to be right, to make something that, however long it takes and whatever form it takes, is the right thing in and for itself.

That sense of rightness uses some of the initial intuition I talk of above - and only comes from the relentless application of a technical understanding of the machinery of words and ideas.

Achieving these is the result of a good many years of reading creatively as well as writing; it is the result of letting your work out into the world when you fear it is unready, and being prepared for both the best and the worst news of its progress.  Feedback from trusted peers is essential - that is, those who you would want to sit with and discuss what it is you do.  They need not be writers, but should be readers.  Perhaps they should be your audience.

There is no magic in writing - just bravery, playfulness, a willingness to dive from things into places you would rather not, and a duty to the results that preculdes giving up or being satisfied for very long, if at all.

Writing is hard work.  I would not recommend it to those considering it as either a hobby or a career.

Still interested?

Then write.


(There are too many links of interest to add here, but for those in the early days or mid-life doldrums might like to look at The BBC's Writersroom, National Novel Writing Month, and Writers & Artists for advice, support, inspiration and other handy nuggets)

In Praise of Simplicity

I'm typing this on a small, light, thin device that is approximately the size and weight of a picture book - maybe, for those who remember such things, a late 1970s Dr. Who annual or Asterix hardback.

[Rolf Harris voice] D'you know what it is yet?

It has good battery life, turns on quickly and shuts down instantly.  It can be hooked up to a desktop computer so I can work on my files in a more in-depth way more easily on a larger screen.

Rolf again.  Any ideas?

Spoiler: it's not an iPad.

I'm typing this on an AlphaSmart Neo2.  For those who have never heard of these devices, take a look at the photos below.  It's targeted mainly at education these days, but is a supremely handy bit of kit for anybody who wants to write on the move with the minimum of fuss, wants a reasonable keyboard, doesn't care for distraction and isn't interested in a fancy finish.

The Neo2 is the most recent in a line of AlphaSmarts.  The original devices were launched in 1993 by ex-Apple employees, and the design and feature-set have remained pretty similar ever since.  Though the keyboard is about the size of those found on many laptops, the screen is monochrome and more of a letterbox than we're used to now.  It is, however, adequate for most simple typing duties, and at the moment mine is set to display six lines of text.  There's no backlight but the display is easily readable in light you'd consider fine for reading a book.

The Neo2 boots straight into a file - whichever was last open.  Files are easily opened and there are eight ready-access buttons for working on multiple documents (more can be stored on the internal memory).  Files can be transferred to or from a desktop machine via USB.  If you want, there's a wireless (IR) feature but I've never found the need to go there so can't comment.  It can also be directly connected to a USB printer.

Drafting is the real strength of the AlphaSmart. Keyboard shortcuts are plentiful, and cover common functions like copy, paste, and find.  Document statistics can be viewed, basic file management can be carried out, and there are a couple of "applets" such as a calculator and a few educational tools (typing and maths tutorials, for example) that really just belong in the classroom - again I can't comment on those as I've not used them.

There are two ways to transfer files to a computer using a standard USB cable: regurgitate a single file straight into a desktop document, or port several files at once.  The second method is slightly fiddly depending on your setup and involves some arcane kind of drag and drop that I never got the hang of, but the first is beyond simple - open your word processor of choice, and hit Send.  The AlphaSmart transmits the file as ASCII and effectively retypes it very quickly - your file appears line by line till the transfer is complete.  This can take a minute depending how much text you're transferring.  The method seems quaint and outmoded, but works.

[EDIT: it's apparent there's a newer version of the Neo Manager software than the one I was using, and that seems to have cured some of the difficulties.  Updates can be downloaded from the link below]

No drivers, third party software or special setup is needed (unless you opt for the IR transmitter), operation is mostly very simple indeed and the whole process of drafting a document is about as painless at it can be using technology.  It's certainly less painful than dragging about a laptop with a dying battery, power supply, and awkward software that runs on a grumpy OS.

Nobody is going to randomly give you flowers in the street for using an AlphaSmart.  It's not very stylish, doesn't do much and Joe Public has never heard of it.  None of that matters.  The bottom line is that it's a very handy tool for quick, simple drafting and is light (around 1kg in a slip-case and loaded with batteries), portable and easy to use.  It's also cheaper than alternative devices such as laptops and tablets - currently around £139 (ex. VAT) in the UK.  It runs on three AA batteries that give running time of around 700 hours (that's not a typo).

The fact it cannot be used to browse the web, buy things, tweet things, laugh at cats, or otherwise waste time are, for me, a boon.  If you need an all-in-one tool for these things as well as writing, perhaps this is not the device for you.  It is also little-suited to editing and re-writing, as there is no version tracking, drag and drop, pagination, or anything beyond the most basic cut & paste at hand.  Whether that is a deal-breaker depends on your own requirements.

TL;DR: I like my AlphaSmart.  Sometimes simple wins.

The AlphaSmart Neo2 and various accessories can be purchased from Renaissance Learning; a list of resellers is also available on their site.

There's also a user group over at flickr, which can be a useful source of information from experienced users.

Hello World!

Indeed.

Welcome to Wittgenstein's Automatic Pencil.  The one in the photo is mine, not Wittgenstein's.  I doubt he had an automatic pencil.

I'm a writer.  I've been a writer for many years, have taught creative writing classes for some of those years, and experienced minor success at being published.  Over time you'll find extracts, maybe a few complete short stories, photos, and links to events and publications.

Writing includes reading.  I'll post about books and other writers too.

I'll also blog sporadically about other items of interest.  These include technology and music, and in particular the technology of music.  Those who know me may have seen my collection of vintage synthesizers.  I'll not be blogging about that here with any depth or regularity, but I may link to relevant items.

The technology of writing, however, I will blog about, possibly at length.

This will not include automatic pencils.


In short: Wittgenstein's Automatic Pencil is a blog about writing, stuff and things.  Stick around.  There are no prizes, but you might enjoy some of it.



You can follow me on Tw*tter too if you like, @njramsden.


n.