Yea verily, even in the doldrums of the present rhinocerosness, the American literary short story lives on. I must thank Richard Polt, author of The Typewriter Revolution, for the prompt that inspired me to write my latest typewriter short story, “Julius Knows,” which, I am honored to report, appears in the gorgeous new Fall 2021 issue of Catamaran.
I’ll post “Julius Knows” here on the blog, as soon as I get around to typing it up on my Hermes 3000. Meanwhile, you can read my previous typewritten short story about a typewriter, “What Happened to the Dog,” which originally appeared in the anthology edited by Richard Polt, et al., Escapements: Typewritten Tales from Post-Digital Worlds.
I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.
Back in 2009 I wrote this introduction to an article for the online edition of Foreword Magazine:
With several books published, including a big fat historical novel forthcoming this May, it might seem that I just karate-chop my way through any writer’s block. In fact, for me as well as for many more prolific writers, it’s a daily struggle. Writer’s block can have a multitude of sources, but one that is almost universal is disorganization. It’s difficult to start on chapter 15 when you can’t find your notes— or when you’re facing such a Himalaya of notes that, well, to say the same thing, you’d have to spend an eon sorting it all out before you could sit down to write. I don’t think we need Dr. Freud to analyze this one. It’s a pedestrian problem with pedestrian solutions. Here are mine.
I’d link to that article but it’s gone dark and, in the many years of the meantime, I’ve modified and improved my list of tools. Right now I’m working on a nonfiction book which necessitates a working library and extensive filing system; in this post however I’m spotlighting the subset of tools I also find useful—and recommend— for writing a novel. (And, in case you were wondering, yes, I will be working on another novel soon enough.)
1. The logbook
This is my witness, my “shoulder-to-cry-on,” my champion, and if nothing else, once I’ve finished, an illuminating record.
2. The Kanban
The basic idea of the Kanban is here. My system is very simple. I tape together two file folders so that, when opened, they fold out to one ridiculously large rectangle with three sections. I use Scotch tape to tape it to the window behind my desk. The three sections are: 1— tasks I need to do; 2—tasks I am working on now (2 tasks at most); 3—tasks I have accomplished
Each task has its own Post-It. I move the individual Post-Its from one section of the Kanban to the next in accord with my progress.
3.A small notebook and / or 1/4″ stack of blank index cards
These I always carry with me to jot down ideas, words, overheard dialogue, and sometimes even drafts of paragraphs or outlines of plots. By writing things down, I don’t lose them and also— this is subtle, but crucial— by keeping pen and paper with me at all times, I signal to my “artist self” that I am ready to write.
Yes, one can use a smartphone to capture things when out and about, but think about it for, like, a nanosecond. When you are trying to write a book, should you be picking up your smartphone / aka portal to the world wide web of hyper-palatable distractions? For many well-considered reasons I purposely and rigorously minimize my smartphone use.
4. Plenty of Post-Its
I buy the canary-yellow 1 / 12″ x 2 ” blocks in bulk. I use them for the same purpose as the notebook and blank cards (and I sometimes carry these in my purse as well). Post-Its have the added advantage that I can stick them on drafts, other notes, and inside the covers of the books I’m reading, to note any vocabulary or syntax I’d like to use in my own writing. They also work beautifully for Kanbans.
It’s important to keep these organized and at-hand. I keep mine gathered together on a tray— having them all together makes it easier to find them and easier move.
6.Pens, Colored Pens, and Big Fat Yellow Highlighters
These require their own a special mug.
7. Index Cards Filesaka Recipe Card Holders
This is where the index cards go. Organization ongoing…
8.A Filing Cabinet (or 10)and Hanging Files
The more filing cabinets the better, but if you don’t have the room, filing tubs (plastic boxes with handles) and “banker’s boxes,” inexpensive cardboard boxes for files, work well. It really is astonishing how much paperwork flies around a book. There is the book research itself, but also all that goes into its physical production and marketing. That would be another post. Trust me, make sure you have the filing space, otherwise piles of unfiled papers will bottleneck whatever it is you’re aiming to do.
9.A Labeler Typewriter
The benefits of using tabbed hanging folders I understood, but a labeler? What was wrong with neatly hand lettering a label, for heaven’s sake? But when I finally took David Allen’s advice in Getting Things Done and started using a labeler — mine is a Brother PT-18R— I realized what I had was— I’m not kidding— a mental health tool. Chapter 4? Labeled. Notes on Minor Characters? Labeled. Very Zen.
UPDATE 2021: Forget the labeler, which requires cartridge refills, a battery and/or electricity. A few years ago I bought myself a restored Hermes 3000 typewriter and I use that for making labels. (It’s also handy for typing up letters and manuscripts, among other things, and especially when I want to do so definitively away from the Internet.)
For any files that get too fat and filled with too many Post-Its and index cards. When I’m ready to sort through it all, there it is. Meanwhile, the envelope gets labeled.
11. Some Way to Physically Grok the Whole—or at Least Sizable Chunks of the whole
Originally I had recommended cork boards and tacks. I still think that can be a good idea, however, my current office has no place to nail up cork boards. On the other hand, I have four large windows, so I can just tape up manuscript pages to those. I have also seen some writers string washline from one end of their office to the other, and pin up pages with clothespins. You could also array your pages flat on a dining room table. Whatever works.
12. Manuscript Box
Or were you planning to lose it in a pile? Felted with dust? Blown about in a breeze from the window? Eaten by the dog?
13. Limboland: A Place, Albeit Temporary, for Discarded Pages and Old Drafts
The wastepaper basket is not a good place to stuff your old drafts and cuts, because what if you change your mind? On the other hand, if you hold onto every precious word you’ve written, you’ll never feel confident making the surgical incisions, never mind the blood-spurting amputations that, well, you’ll probably have to make if you want your book to be any good. In other words, don’t toss those pages, don’t keep those pages, park them in Limboland, that is, out of sight, out of mind—but retrievable. I find it helps me as I am writing to know that it’s all still there. I find might dig around in there once, maybe twice. Once the book is published, if I don’t have space for these old drafts, then I make a fire to grill some smores.
Yes, you could leave digital versions on your computer. I don’t. Why? That would be another post, but suffice to say, there are immense benefits to seeing a draft printed out.
For my last book, Limboland was a series of cardboard bankers boxes. For my current work-in-progress, it’s the bottom shelf of a voluminous old cabinet down in the basement. What works for you? Watch out, though, if you stuff the pages under your bed your dreams might get squirrely.
My writing assistants Uliberto Quetzalpugtl and Washingtoniana Quetzalpugalotl snoofling at the mysteries.
For those interested in my publications, podcasts, and writing workshops, after a loooooong hiatus, I am resuming the newsletter, herewith commencing a new schedule of posting it on Madam Mayo blog every fifth Monday of the month (when there is a fifth Monday, that is to say, a few times a year).
I will also be sending out the newsletter to subscribers via email. If you would like to receive only the emailed newsletter, just zap me an email, I’ll be delighted to add you to my list. (If you’ve already signed up, stay tuned. I’ve had to switch my emailing service from Mailchimp to Mad Mimi, a bit of a process. Long story short, I give Mailchimp a black banana. Mashed in the noggin!)
If in addition or instead you’d like to sign up for the Madam Mayo blog post alerts every Monday via email, just hie on over to the sidebar (or, if you’re on an iphone, scroll down to the end of this post) for the signup. Welcome!
PODCASTS
“WORDS ON A WIRE”: Award-winning writer and Chair of the UTEP Creative Writing Department Daniel Chacón interviews me about my book Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual (which includes my translation of Madero’s 1911 book). This interview with Daniel Chacón was a special honor and delight for me because while my book is a work of scholarship, it is at the same time a work of creative nonfiction. It turned out to be a very fun interview, if I do say myself. >> Listen in anytime here.
Still in production, but allllllllmost ready: The MARFA MONDAYS Podcasting Project resumes with #21: a reading of my longform essay “Miss Charles Emily Wilson: Great Power in One.” Researching and writing this rearranged all the furniture in my mind about Texas, the US-Mexico border, Florida, the Indian Wars, and much more… Miss Charles is someone everyone should know about.
My gosh, it’s unsettling to read a story I wrote so long ago (maybe 1993 or 1994?). And “Majesty” is a strange story, and stranger still to be rereading in this age of the iPhone. It’s set in an Arizona luxury golf resort / spa in the late 1980s / early 1990s–another world, so to say, and on multiple levels. I recall the fun I had playing with the Alice in Wonderland imagery– I had recently been introduced by Douglas Glover to the German novel The Quest for Christa T. and the idea of the story as a net, an important influence on my fiction writing ever since.
Get your copy from all the usual suspects, including amazon.com
GIVAL PRESS POETRY AWARD CONTEST JUDGEDBY YOURS TRULY
Back in January, as the winner of the most recent Gival Press Poetry Award (for Meteor), I selected the winner for this year from an excellent batch of anonymous manuscripts. Here’s the press release from Gival Press:
February 6, 2020 For Immediate Release Contact: Robert L. Giron
(Arlington, VA) Gival Press is pleased to announce that Matthew Pennock has won the Gival Press Poetry Award for his collected titled The Miracle Machine. The collection was chosen by judge C.M. Mayo. The award has a cash prize of $1,000.00 and the collection will be published this fall.
“With a craftsman’s deftest precision and a thunder-powered imagination on DaVinci wings, the author recreates a lost world within a lost world that yet—when we look—shimmers with life within our world. Elegant, wondrously strange, The Miracle Machineis at once an elegy and a celebration, tick-tock of the tao.” —C.M. Mayo, author of Meteor
About the Author
Matthew Pennock is the author of Sudden Dog (Alice James Books, 2012), which won the Kinereth-Gensler Award. As per the terms of that award, he joined the board of Alice James Books in 2011, In 2014, he co-created AJB’s editorial board with executive editor Carey Salerno, and then became the board’s first chairperson, a position he held until 2020. He received his MFA from Columbia University and his PhD from the University of Cincinnati. His poems have been widely published in such journals as Gulf Coast, Denver Quarterly, Western Humanities Review, Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics, New York Quarterly, LIT, and elsewhere. He currently owns and operates a learning center outside of Washington, D.C.
I am working on a book so I have no workshops yet scheduled for 2020. For my students, and anyone else interested in creative writing, I will continue to post on some aspect of craft and/or creative process here at Madam Mayo blog on the second Monday of the month.
> View the archive of Madam Mayo workshop posts here.
Meanwhile, I’m putting together a new workshop on applying poetic techniques to fiction and creative nonfiction… More news about that in the next newsletter.
Clifford Garstang, who did a Q & A for this blog in 2019, has posted his annual Literary Magazine rankings. Dear writerly readers looking to publish, while of course his, mine, yours, or anyone’s rankings of literary magazines are subject to debate, take this as a valuable and free resource!
Speaking of publishing, that usually involves a heaping helping of rejections. Well, I say, micro freaking deal! Rev that sense of humor! Need some assistance in that department? Here’s what Jia Jiang learned from 100 days of rejection:
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There’s more to Mexico than beaches & pyramids & Frida chunches… (Chunches: That’s Mexican for tchotchkes. Not to be confused with Ughyur raisin-drying facilities.) For anyone interested in the rich cultural heritage of Mexico, check out Richard Perry’s long-ongoing blog, Arts of Colonial Mexico. Richard writes: “For the New Year, we plan to highlight monuments and art works in Oaxaca and Yucatan as well as in Guanajuato, Puebla and Tlaxcala.”
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An email from Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka, editor of Loch Raven Review:
Dear Fellow Translators,
I want to spread the word about Loch Raven Review’s role in showcasing poetry translated from a variety of languages, featuring as a rule one language per each issue’s bilingual section. Since 2011, when I accepted the responsibility of the Poetry Translations Editor, Loch Raven Review has featured 21 sections of poetry in translation. I’ve compiled a list of all the sections, starting with the Spanish language, followed by the expected and unexpected languages, such as Catalan, Mayan or Kurdish, at http://danutakk.wordpress.com/loch-raven-review/
I’ve made it a point to engage local area translators, starting with Yvette Neisser and Patricia Bejarano Fisher, then Nancy Naomi Carlson, Barbara Goldberg, Katherine E. Young, Nancy Arbuthnot, Zeina Azzam, and then Zackary Sholem Berger, Xuhua Lucia Liang, and Maritza Rivera in the most recent LRR Volume 15, No. 2, 2019.
Starting in 2018 we have nominated four translations for the Pushcart Award.
I feel proud and happy to be able to bring together poets who write in such a variety of languages, and the translators who make the poems available to the English language readers.
Wishing you all a peaceful, creative, and joyful 2020,
Danka
Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka
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Emma Lawton on “What Parkinson’s Taught Me”:
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There is nothing you cannot do! Says Tao Porchon-Lynch, the world’s oldest yoga teacher– who recently passed away at 101. She made 98 look like 18. Bless you, Tao.
Special Note: I ever and always invite comments at the end of each blog post but for this post in particular I would especially like to hear comments and any tips from those of you who have been wrestling with your own working libraries. (It strikes me that in all the many writers’ workshops and writers’ conferences I have attended over the years I have never seen this vital practical necessity addressed. And what I have seen in terms of advice from librarians and personal organizers is not quite apt for a working writer’s needs. Have I missed something?)
Selected titles at-hand as I was writing an essay about Black Seminole oral historian Miss Charles Emily Wilson. This essay is destined for an anthology and will also be the Marfa Mondays podcast # 21, apropos of my book-in-progress about Far West Texas– for which I have a scary-big working library. I call it the Texas Bibliothek. My writing assistant Washingtoniana Quetzalpugalotl says it’s been exhausting, all the thinking going on, and books of so many smells going hither, thither & zither. She would like to take a siesta.
The scene as I was revising my essay. No worries, I certainly would not shelve my books over a radiator! They were here only temporarily. Shortly thereafter, I used my supersonic reshelving method, described anon.
Still working on the same essay… on this day, my other writing assistant having appropriated the chair, I was using my StandStand.
Why a Working Library?
Why should you have a working library? Well, dear writerly reader, maybe you shouldn’t. It depends on what you are writing.
Poetry or, say, a novel of the imagination might require nothing more than a dictionary and thesaurus–– and of course, you could access those online. Perhaps, should you feel so moved, for inspiration you might keep a shelf or two of books by your favorite writers, and perhaps another shelf devoted to books on craft, on process, etc. Or not.
The need for a working library arises when you attempt to write historical fiction or in some genre of nonfiction, for example, a biography, history, or travel memoir. And the problem is–– if I can extrapolate from my own experience––which perhaps I cannot–– but I’ll betcha 1,000 books and three cheesecakes with a pound of cherries on top that I can––you are going to ginormously underestimate how fast and how very necessarily your working library expands, how much space it gobbles up, and how quickly any disorganization unravels into further disorganization, and to muddle the metaphor, makes a clogged up mega-mess of your writing process.
you are going to ginormously underestimate how fast and how very necessarily that working library expands, and how much space it gobbles up, and how quickly any disorganization unravels into further disorganization, and to muddle the metaphor, makes a clogged up mega-mess of your writing process.
In short, by underestimating the importance of first, acquiring, and second, adequately shelving, and third, maintaining the organization of this collection, writing your book will turn into a more frustrating and lengthy process than it otherwise would have been. (Trust me, it will be frustrating and take forever and ten centuries anyway.)
Yes, I know about www.archive.org–– I oftentimes consult books there–– and I have accumulated a collection of Kindles. I also make use of public and university libraries when possible. (There is also the question of keeping paper and digital files, which would merit a separate post.) Nonetheless, my experience has been that a working library of physical books at-hand remains by far, as in, from-here-to-Pluto-and-back, my most vital resource.
About My Working Libraries, In Brief
First understand: I am not a book hoarder! When I do not have a compelling reason and/or space to keep a book, off it goes– to another reader or to donation. (See my previous post “How to Declutter a Library.”) I don’t live in a house the size of an abandoned aircraft hanger; it would be impossible for me to keep every book I’ve read in my life and still find my way in and out of the front door. Aside from a handful (literally maybe 10) that I hold onto for sentimental reasons, the books I keep for the long term I have a precise reason to keep: to assist me as I write my books. And I maintain them scrupulously organized as working libraries.
No, I do not have OCD. Scrupulous organization is terrifically important! My motto: A book I cannot find is a book I do not have. Disorganization is a form of poverty.
A book I cannot find is a book I do not have. Disorganization is a form of poverty.
Over many years of writing several books, each with its own working library, and also teaching, and so gathering an ever-growing working library on craft and process, I have accumulated a daunting number of books, and to keep them all accessible I have had to tackle some eye-crossing challenges. (Add to that moving house a few times in mid-book and, boy howdy, did I get an education in organizing!)
My books for which I assembled and continue to maintain working libraries include:
The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire This working library is more substantial, as it should be for a novel based on the true story set during Mexico’s most complex, tumultuous, and thoroughly transnational episode. (So why did France invade Mexico and install the Austrian Archduke as emperor and then why did the latter make a contract with the family of Mexico’s previous emperor giving them the status of the Murat princes?!!! It took me several years to get my mind around it all…) Some very rare Maximiliana.
World Waiting for a Dream: A Turn in Far West Texas (in-progress) I call this one my “Texas Bibliothek.” This one is just… sorry for the cliché… GIANT. Texans are far more literarily industrious than most people imagine, and there is endless celebration of and controversy about their culture and history. Some of the works published just in the last decade are paradigm-smashers. I’ve had a heap of very necessary reading to keep up with… Plus understanding Far West Texas requires fathoming what surrounds it– New Mexico to the west, Coahuila and Chihuahua to the south, the heartland of Texas and Gulf to the east, the Llano Estacado to the north…and the larger geological, geopolitical, and cultural context. Oh, and all about oil!! This has been my most challenging book yet. Wish me luck.
Plus, as mentioned, I maintain a working library on the craft of writing and creative process which I consult for both my writing workshops and my own writing. Accumulated over some twenty years, this is a substantial working library, but it is the smallest. I haven’t counted but I’d say this has some 250 books.
(Did I mention, I’m not 25 years old? If I live to 100… uh oh…)
Why, pray tell, keep all of these books, and even add to the collections, year after year?
(1) I often reference works in one collection for another another book (for example, in writing my book on Far West Texas I have consulted works in all four collections), and I expect this will continue with the projects I am contemplating for the future.
(2) I plan to see more of my books published in translation and so will require consulting some of the original texts (many in Spanish, some in German, a few in French) from which I quoted. This may or may not be an issue for you. But if it is, take heed. It can be crazy difficult and expensive to track some of these things down later.
(3) I often receive email from researchers, both amateur and academic, and I am delighted to assist, when I can, in answering their questions and for this oftentimes I need to reference a book or three in my collections. And what goes around comes around.
(4) I do not live near a relevant library and even if I did, many of the works in my collections are nonetheless exceedingly difficult to find. Plus, even if a nearby library were to have each and every book I would want to consult when I want to consult it, it’s a bother and a time-mega-suck to have to go to a library and call up so many books.
Yes, my working libraries take up a lot of space. This cranks my noodle. But a painter needs an atelier, no? Um, you aren’t going to bake bread in your lipstick compact.
Tips for Your Working Library (Future Reminder to Take My Own Advice)
With all due respect for the operations of institutional libraries, earning a degree in Library Science is not on my schedule for this incarnation. But as a writer with my own absolutely necessary working libraries, none of them large enough in scale to require professional cataloging, yet each nonetheless larger than I was prepared to manage efficiently, alas….. painnnnnNNNfully…. I have learned a few things. What I offer here for you, dear writerly reader, is not the advice of a knowledgeable librarian but what I, a working writer having muddled through writing several books, would have told myself, had I been able to travel back in time… to the late 1990s.
(1) If you have good reason to think you’ll need it, don’t be pennywise and pound foolish, buy the book! To the degree possible, it is better to buy a first edition in fine condition; however, cheap used / ex-library copies are fine for a working library. Many ex-library books in good condition cost just pennies. (Or did you plan to write an sloppily researched, amateurish book?)
(2) Go head and mark up those ex-library books and mass-market paperbacks, but if you happen to have in your hands a hardcover first edition in fine condition, take care! Keep the dust jacket, protect it from any bumps and the sun, and if you must mark the pages, use only very light erasable pencil. Drink your coffee and eat your snacks at another time, in another room. (I shall spare you the super sad episodes…)
P.S. More tips on care and preservation of books here.
A first edition of a Very Important book! Grrrr, I marked it up and I mistreated the dust jacket!! And I already knew better!! I used a highlighter!!!!! WAHHHH
(3) You will need bodacious amounts of bookshelf space. And more after that, and even more after that…. If you do not have it, make it. If you cannot make space, then probably you should reconsider embarking on this type of writing project. I am not kidding.
(4) For keeping the books organized you will need a system that is at once flexible, easy-peasy, and supremely useful to you. It may not make sense to anyone else, but Anyone Else is not the name of the person writing your book.
It may not make sense to anyone else, but Anyone Else is not the name of the person writing your book.
For example, for my Texas Bibliothek, right now I have about 30 categories, each with from 10 to approximately 50 books in each. Each category I have defined to my liking, broad enough that it doesn’t occupy more than a brain cell or two to figure out, yet narrow enough that I don’t need to bother organizing the books alphabetically.
For my writing workshop working library however, I do have the craft and process books organized by author alphabetically. I have never been able to find a reasonable way–– reasonable for me––to break down the collection beyond books on “Craft” and on “Process.”
(5) Of course, some books could fall into more than one category, e.g., Jeff Guinn’s Our Land Before We Die: The Proud Story of the Seminole Negro could be in U.S. Military; African American/ Seminoles; Texas History; Regional History / Fort Clark; US-Mexico Borderlands. (I chose African American / Seminoles. But I might change my mind.) For such endless little categorization conundrums, well, say I, just apply deodorant and do what seems most sensible to you. You can always change your mind, and you probably will.
To make sure you do not overlook important works in your collection, as you work with your library, and as you dust it, make an effort to let your eyes rove over the whole of it.
(6) Dust regularly using an ostrich feather duster. Seriously, go for the ostrich.
(7) For the shelves use BIG, READ-ICU-LOUS-LY EASY-TO-READ LABELS. I print these out on my computer, cut and tape them to index cards, and tape them on the shelves.
This is what I mean by a READ-icu-lous-ly big label. Huh, I can read it.
Tom Lea was a most elegant artist and novelist, El Paso’s best. And, yay, I found a place for my super chido “Honk If You’ve Seen La Llorona” bumpersticker! Maybe one of these days I will put it on my car!
That portrait on the spine of that book to the left is not actually Cabeza de Vaca. Everyone seems to think it is. Which kind of annoys me.
(8) Key is to be able to not only find, but lickety-split, without a thought––look, Ma, no brain cells!–– reshelve any and all books in your working library. Institutional libraries have catalogs you can consult and usually affix a sticker with the catalog number on each book’s spine, but for you, with your writer’s working library, this is probably going to be too fussy a process. And anyway you don’t want to be sticking anything on a rare or first edition book unless it has a mylar cover, in which case, you could put the sticker on the mylar cover. Mylar covers are nice… buying more is on my “to do ” list… but….
What works splendidly well for supersonic reshelving is a labeled bookmark. Yep. It’s this simple.
(9) To label each bookmark, get a typewriter because, for all the many other good reasons to use a typewriter, you can quickly type up legible labels on your bookmarks.
(=You can stop laughing now=)
Trying to make labels for bookmarks using a wordprocessing program and printer will give you a dumptruck of a headache. I used to be a fan of labelers such as the Brother Labeler. No more. Batteries, replacement cartridges… fooey. Yes, using your own handwriting may be the easiest of the peasiest, but it will slow you down when you are trying to reshelve books because the eye groks machine-written words so much faster.
Get the typewriter! A workhorse if you can, such as a refurbished Swiss-made Hermes 3000 from the 1960s-1970s.
No battery, no click-bait, no wifi! No need for any Freedom app, either. (And ecological. Um, my little tree huggers, have you ever actually seen a server farm? Or where and how they mine the stuff to make batteries?)
(1o) To make the bookmarks, use paper strong enough for the bookmark to always stand straight. I cut up left over or ready-to recycle file-folders for this purpose.
(11) To identify each working library (should you have more than one) place a sticker or stamp on each bookmark.
The sticker reads “C.M. Mayo’s Texas Bibliotek.” Make your own at www.moo.com.
(12) Another advantage of these plain paper bookmarks is that you can easily change them. Just cut off the top and type in the new label! As you delve deeper into researching and writing your book, you will undoubtedly find it convenient to both add to and reconfigure the categories in your working library, and perhaps several times.
(13) Further consideration: While many book collectors write their name in the book or paste in a book plate, I stopped doing this several years ago because I found this made it more difficult for me to let go of books that, after all, I wanted to declutter. I might change my mind about this. A custom-made ex-libris has always seemed to me a lovely idea. It’s in my Filofax for my old age when, maybe, I live in a house the size of an aircraft hangar.
(14) Cataloging? Nah. Even with a wall or six or seven or ten filled from floor to ceiling with books you are still far from operating at the scale of an institutional library. A catalog, whether low-tech or high-tech, will take too much time to figure out and maintain (ugh, more glitch-ridden software updates). Ignore anyone who tries to sell you library cataloguing software. Seriously, trying to do it digitally in some-fangled DIY way may also end up proving more trouble for you than it’s worth. (… cough, cough… ) With adequate bookshelf space (see tip #3, above) and meaningful categories with BIG, RIDICULOUSLY EASY-TO-READ labels (see tip #7, above) you can grok your whole enchilada at a glance, or two.
However, it may make sense to catalog the books when you get to your long-term plan (see point 16 below).
(15) Ignore ignorant people who tut-tut that you should declutter your books. Have they ever tried to write a book? No, they have not. Smile sweetly as you shoot them eye-daggers.
(16) Make a long-term plan for your books because obviously, at some point, perhaps when you move into smaller digs for one reason or another, or you die, they have to go. If you are incapacitated or dead, these working libraries may prove a heavy burden for your family, literally, figuratively, and financially. Chances are your family members won’t have a clue what to do with them, nor the time, and possibly, alas, they may not even care. I aim to write more on this sticky wicket of a subject later; for now, I point you to a fantastic resource, the Brattlecast podcast #57 on “Shelf Preservation” from the Brattle Book Shop.
One of the special treasures in my Texas Bibliothek is Cloyd I. Brown’s Black Warrior Chiefs.
Tipped inside my copy of “Black Warrior Chiefs” I found this letter from the late author (I blocked the name of the recipient to protect his privacy). Hmm, he says he has several hundred unsold copies… Only a very few show up for sale online as of 2019.
What has been your experience with your working libraries? Do you have any tips to share?
Book reviews: I write them, for I consider reviewing certain books a vital exercise for finding clarity in my own thinking. However, I try not to read reviews of my own books because my book is already written, after all, and I wrote it the way I did because that’s what I wanted to do, that’s what I thought I should do, and I did it the best way I knew how (and who the hell is that schmo anyway?) If some random reviewer doesn’t like it, TFB (tough frisbees). But of course… it’s too tempting… Yeah, I read them. The pay-off for this foolishness is that once in while there is a review that makes my whole month, and not so much because it tickles my ego (although it does) but because the reviewer so profoundly understood and appreciated what I was trying to do. And this one review somehow, truly, makes writing a book, and bringing it into the world, feel… sigh. Maybe a little less quixotic. Dear poetically-inclined reader, I point you to Greg Walkin’s review of Meteor.
> A recent Writers’ League of Texas Q & A with me about Meteor & etc. is here.
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These days I am not writing much poetry because I am working on my memoir / portrait of Far West Texas and related podcasts and essays. But the Muse has her whims and wiggly ways. This is what happened last week when, weirdly, I was thinking of Federico García Lorca’s “Romance sonámbulo” as I read Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Archäischer Torso Apollos.” Typed on a 1967 Hermes 3000. It’s a macaronic.
UPDATE: Joseph Hutchison has posted his elegant translation of Rilke’s poem plus some fascinating links to read more about it here.
Of late I have become an enthusiast of typewriting— the machine I am working on these days is a refurbished Swiss-made 1967 Hermes 3000, and quite the workhorse it is! (Ribbons? Kein Problem.) Of course I do most of my writing on my computer using Microsoft Word; WordPress for this blog; not to mention multitudinous hours spent with ye olde email program. But for laser-level attentional focus–and percussive energy!– the typewriter is something special, and as time goes by, the more I use it, the more I appreciate it. In fact, I now use my typewriter for one thing or another (drafts, notes, letters, recipe cards) almost every day.
Though I have yet to meet him in person, my mentor in the Typosphere is none other than Richard Polt, professor of philosophy at Xavier University and the author of some heavy-weight tomes on Heidegger, and, to the point, a practical manual I often consult, and warmly recommend to anyone thinking of buying a typewriter, or, say, hauling Grandpa’s out of some cobwebbed corner of the garage: The Typewriter Revolution. As “Richard P.” Professor Polt also maintains a blog of the same name. And now he, Frederic S. Durbin, and Andrew V. McFeaters, have put together a pair of anthologies, both just published, the second of which, Escapements: Typewritten Tales from Post-Digital Worlds (Loose Dog Press, 2019), includes a story of mine: “What Happened to the Dog?”
Herewith, “What Happened to the Dog?” (Caveat: undoubtedly the photographs in the book itself are of better quality; these I just snapped with my smartphone, too quickly, I daresay, in a rush to make the PO with the originals.) May this entice you to buy the ridiculously low-priced anthology of a cornucopia of wildy-imagined stories by many other writers, now available at amazon.com— and better yet, have a go at typing your own pre-/post-digital fiction.
My writing assistant answers the title question: She was having a perfectly reasonable morning siesta when, suddenly, this book appeared on her back. She reports that this reminded her, mistily, of a previous life as a dimetrodon.
Those of you who follow this blog may be wondering, what perchance, and by jumpingjacks, does this short story about a typewriter have to do, and by the way what has happened with, the book in-progress on Far West Texas? The question of technology has turned out to be central to what I am writing about Far West Texas. (Darkly: there will be Heidegger quotes.)
Fingers crossed that I can finally get the next Marfa Mondays podcast up Monday after next.
Next Monday, the second of the month, I post here for the writing workshop. More anon.
Truly, I am not intending to collect typewriters. All shelf space is spoken for by books!! Last week I brought home a 1967 Hermes 3000 because (long story zipped) my 1961 Hermes 3000 is temporarily inaccessible, and it was bugging me that my 1963 Hermes Baby types unevenly and sometimes muddily (which could be a problem with the ribbon, but anyway), and I had a deadline to type my short story “What Happened to the Dog?” for the anthology COLD HARD TYPE (about which more anonread it here).
Well, obviously I had to buy another typewriter!
I dare not buy anything but a Swiss Hermes. The one I could find in my local office supply shop was a refurbished 1967 Hermes 3000 with a Swiss-German QWERTZ keyboard. I’ve had to get used to the transposed Y and Z keys; otherwise, kein Problem, and es freut mich sehr to have the umlaut.
A QWERTZ Swiss German keyboard (American keyboards are QWERTYs)
Of my three Hermes typewriters, this 1967 3000 is by far the smoothest, easiest to type on, and most consistent. I venture to use the word “buttery,” in fact.
Herewith, typed on the 1967 Hermes 3000, “Silence” and “Poem,” from my forthcoming collection, Meteor:
Typed today but originally published in Muse Apprentice Guild in, ayy, 2002. I think it was.
If you’re going to the Great American Writerly Hajj, I mean the Associated Writing Programs Conference, come on by my reading– it’s a free event– I’m on the lineup with Thaddeus Rutkowski, Cecilia Martinez-Gil, Tyler McMahon, Seth Brady Tucker, John Domini, Teri Cross Davis, Elaine Ray, William Orem, Jeff Walt, and Joan G. Gurfield for the Gival Press 20th Anniversary Celebration Reading on Friday March 29, 2019 @ 7 – 10 PM, Hotel Rose, 50 SW Morrison St, Portland OR.
The following day, Saturday March 30, 2019, @ 10-11:30 AM, I’ll be signing copies of Meteor at the Gival Press table (Table #8063) in the AWP Conference book fair.
You can also find a copy of Meteor on amazon.com. And read more poems and whatnots apropos of Meteor on the book’s webpage here.
Uh oh (I can begin to see how this gets out of hand!) I just brought home a second vintage Swiss-made typewriter, a 1963 Hermes Baby, which is a sight lighter at 3.6 kilos (just under 8 pounds) and more compact than my 1961 Hermes 3000. It is in excellent working order, klak, klak!
He has not expressed himself verbally on the matter, but it would seem that my writing assistant would prefer that I use the MacBook Pro. Also, geesh, it was ten minutes past suppertime.
From Meteor, my collection which will be out from Gival Press later this month:
>More about the Hermes Baby at the Australian blog ozTypewriter and at the Swiss Hermes Baby Page by Georg Sommeregger (in German, but Google translation available).
Meanwhile, whilst strolling about the Rio Grande outside of Albuquerque, my fellow COLD HARD TYPE contributor Joe Van Cleave ponders the Typosphere, its relation to digital media, and the ultimately analog origins of the digital:
Apropos of typing, I am honored to also announce that my short story “What Happened to the Dog?” has been accepted for Cold Hard Type: Typewriter Tales from Post-Digital Worlds, edited by novelist Frederic S. Durbin, writer and Professor of English Andrew McFeeters, and philosopher Richard Polt, the Dean of the Typoshere, and author of The Typewriter Revolution. My own vision of the post-digital world? A mashup of a Fortean echo of Aeschylus’ death, the Galapagos Islands, an Ivy League university quadrangle, and round-a-campfire singin’ with the Girl Scouts. (Like they say about the future, the imaginal can be a beyond-strange land.) What post-digital worlds did the other contributors come up with? I for one look forward to reading…
“There’s a small, international army of typewriter users and collectors on this planet called Earth. Many share some core beliefs: 1) The typewriter inspires creative, deliberate, and thoughtful writing through its singular purpose; 2) Typewriters have no distracting social media apps. Writing, after all, is a solitary act; 3) Typewriters do not require batteries; 4) New technology is not bad, but it is inferior to the mighty typewriter; 5) If you do not think typewriters are cool, then that leaves more typewriters for the rest of us. Still, don’t knock it until you try it; and 6) If you feel the clacking call of the typewriter beneath the full moon on a windy night, check out Richard Polt’s website”
P.S. Visit again next Monday for a fascinating Q & A with Ellen Cassedy, who has translated a brilliant, moving, and genuinely landmark book of short fiction.
Viva, Richard Polt! He says that if you send him your address he will send you this postcard.
One of the themes in my work-in-progress
on Far West Texas is the nature and pervasive influence of
technology, especially digital technology– but also other kinds of industrial
and military technology.
So what’s with the typewriter poem? The poem
pictured above, “The Typewriter Manifesto,” is by philosophy
professor Richard Polt. I’m a big fan of his blog and his book, The Typewriter
Revolution.
My 56 year-old Hermes 3000 works fine, no need to update the OX! (Yes, ribbons are easy to score on eBay).
Nope, I am not a Luddite, but yep, I use a typewriter on occasion. When needed, I also use a Zassenhaus kitchen timer, a 30 year-old finance-nerd calculator (I used to be a finance nerd), and a battery-operated alarm clock. Yes, I know there are apps for all of those, and yes, I actually have downloaded and previously used all those apps on my smartphone but, e-NUFFF with the digital! Too many hours of my day are already in thrall to my laptop, writing on WORD or blogging, emailing, podcasting, maintaining my website, surfing (other blogs, mainly, and newspapers, plus occasional podcasts and videos), and once in a purple moon, making videos. Most days my iPhone stays in its drawer, battery dead, and I like it that way.
But kiddos, this not a writer-from-an-older-generation-resisting-innovation thing. Back when I was avid to adopt new technology. I had a cell phone when they were the size and shape and weight of a brick. I started my website in 1999! I bought the first Kindle model, and the first iPad model. I was one of the first writers to make my own Kindle editions (check out my latest). I started podcasting in 2010. I even spent oodles more time than I should have figuring out the bell-and-whistles of iTunes’ iBook Author app… and so on and so forth.
From Charles Melville Scammon’s “California Grays Among the Ice” Whales! Magnificent outside! Digestive juices inside!
In short, with technology, especially anything
having to do with writing and publishing, I dove right into the deep end… and
I have seen the whale. And it was not, is not, and will not be on my schedule
to get swallowed whole.
(The original pretzel-brain inducing essay by
Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” with its handful of
profound points coccooned within copious noodathipious deustcher
Philosophieprofessor flooflemoofle, is here.)
And here is the Lilly interview with Jeffrey Mishlove, for “Thinking Allowed” (the one where Dr. Lilly wears his earrings and Davy Crockett hat). Um, you will not eat your popcorn during this one.
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Delighted to have surfed upon Tadeuz Patzek’s
blog, LifeItself. Patzek is a professor of petroleum engineering,
recently chair of the department at University Texas Austin. He
is co-author with Joseph A. Tainter of Drilling Down. I
read Drilling Down on Kindle this week, then bought the paperback to
read it again.
“Cryptocurrencies are a new
asset classthat enable decentralized
applications.“
In other words, “cryptocurrencies” are
not currencies as we know them. “Crypto” is too sexy a word for what
these actually are. So let’s call these puppies NACTEDAs. Rhymes with
“rutabagas.”
Ludwin’s most interesting quote? Buried deep in
the middle of his explanation of the nature of NACTEDAs is this colorful
explanation of how NACTEDAs are generated or “mined”:
“Now we need an actual contest… On your mark, get set: find a random number generated by the network! The number is really, really hard to find So hard that the only way to find it is to use tons of processing power and burn through electricity. It’s a computing version of what Veruca Salt made her dad and his poor factory workers do in Willy Wonka. A brute force search for a golden ticket (or in this case, a golden number).”
This is not a point Ludwin makes (he sails on,
with utter nonchalance): It is just a question of time– maybe a loooooooong
time, albeit perchance a seemingly out-of-nowhere-pile-on-Harvey-Weinstein
moment– until people recognize the environmental and social justice
implications of such extravagant electricity use for generating NACTEDAs.
Can you say, opportunity cost?
As it stands, most people don’t or don’t want to
grok where the magic invisible elixir that always seems to be there at the flip
of a switch actually comes from…. which is, uh, usually… and
overwhelmingly… coal. And neither do they grok that this flow of power is not
never-ending, but a utility that can be cut off. Ye olde winter storm can do it
for a day or so. More ominously, the grid itself can fail for lack of
maintenance, or any one of one a goodly number of events– it need not
necessarily be some cinematically apocalyptic cyberattack or epic solar flare.
Can you say Puerto Rico. Can you say Mexico City after the earthquake. Can you
say what happens when you don’t pay your bill. Or if the electrical company
makes a mistrake. Lalalalala.
In any event, I wouldn’t recommend a camping
vacation on some random mountaintop in West Virginia any time for… the rest
of your life.
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And
herewith, hat tip to Root Simple,
Lloyd Kahn demonstrates his low-tech dishwashing method. The duck part at the
end is charmingly weird.
