Unexpected Role Models

Today, I wasted my lunch period; rather than return the flayed flap of skin on the front of my face to the proverbial grindstone, I raced home to share the Great Eclipse(!!!) with my son.

That is pretty much the peak of totality where I was standing.

Wait a minute… by “wasted” I mean “utilized in the best possible manner,” because while eclipses happen regularly enough, they don’t happen here a great deal; the last one like this was in 1979.  But this is all digression, really, because it is writing I will eventually touch upon.

Today at The Regular Job has been very quite, so much so that I have tacit dispensation to do whatever I liked so long as I was handy to the telephone; thus, I have done a little tidying of the back room of my site, soon (I hope) to appear with a shiny HTTPS in its address and prevent Google from blacklisting me.  In the course of this, I found some backtracks from this very blog hiding among the apprehended spam, and entertained myself with a bit of reading– because, once upon a time, I actually produced content on this thing, some of which was vaguely amusing.

One of the items of past glory I examined was a slightly meta examination of my own writing style, which I’ll synopsize here so you don’t actually have to click that link.  I had found a place which claimed to analyse the style of any text pasted into it, and discovered that the writing of this screed as it existed then was like David Foster Wallace, H.P. Lovecraft, Mary Shelley, Cory Docotorow, and (shudder) Dan Brown.

All of which was somewhat interesting to the current version of me.  Then-Me was about a year away from getting nearly serious about fiction writing, and somewhat further away from getting as serious about it as I am now (which some might say is still “insufficiently so” but I work with what I’ve got).  What, Current-Me wondered, would be the effect of feeding some of my fiction into that purported analysis engine.  Indeed, did it still exist?

Why, yes, it did!  And here’s me with idle hands!

The results are… interesting to me.  Certainly satisfactory, although in a head-scratching way which I’ll explain presently.  As with the last attempt, I gave thing ten samples in an effort to see if there was any consistency in it.  Whole stories, too, not just snippets.  I was told with one of them that it was stylistically like the work of Arthur C. Clarke.  That story, the only one of the bunch that has yet been shown publicly, was aiming for more of an M.R. James flavour, but I will never decline to be likened to Clarke.  Two others came up with Anne Rice as the style-mirror for me, and seven of them produced Agatha Christie.

And here I became bemused.  I understand the presence of Clarke in these estimates.  Rice and Christie confuse me.  This is not a fragile male ego baulking at being compared to women, because really, honestly, that’s not the way I roll.  The source of the confusion lies in what I know about my own reading.  I have read loads of Clarke.  His influence creeping into my own work?  Sure.  However, my reading of Anne Rice is limited to Interview with The Vampire, once, in… I think 1990.  I have read Christie more recently, but rather less of her; a single story, about two years ago.  I have watched the entire run of Poirot Mysteries, but that’s hardly like reading the books upon which they are based.  The similarity of style is unlikely to be a result of emulation, however unconscious.

Bemused, then, but not exactly put out.  No reference to Dan Brown, which pleases me greatly, however commercial his work might be.  “Commercial” is a word one might apply to any of the three this recent sampling produced; not only are they all considered good writers in the literary art sense of the word (none without debate, of course– that’s art critics for you) but they have been widely published.  I am very content to be compared to people who got publication galore.

…of course, one also say “widely published” of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, for a particular period.  Ulp.

Today’s pen: Parker Senior Duofold
Today’s ink: Waterman blue (vintage)

Looking at Things Sideways

To mark the completion of the novel’s* first draft, how about an entry in the old style?  I started the week with a film, so I’ll end it with a ramble.

Last week, I was able to hang a new page up on the site, giving a very brief profile of the Jinhao X750; you may click on it, but the gist is, “It is a fountain pen of modern manufacture and low cost, which is slightly heavy.”  The reason I had this item in my hands is that a client who had sent some other pens to be looked at admitted a curiosity regarding the architect grind; this pen whose loss would not be a great cost to the world could travel with the others if I thought I could make the alteration.  Since I have also been nurturing a small curiosity regarding this grind, I agreed.

“What is this architect grind, then?”

Ah, right.  It is, in essence, an italic grind rotated ninety degrees.  Here’s an artist’s(?) conception of an italic point:

The image had other things in mind than the illustration of the style of point, of course.

An architect grind, then, has the slit running parallel to the tipping’s contact area rather than perpendicular, so the wide strokes are lateral and the narrow ones vertical– the opposite effect of an italic.  “Architect” gets its name from a preference of Frank Lloyd Wright, or so legend has it for this sort of variation.  This possible-legend also allows one to nicely avoid the earlier names for the shape, because some people object to “Hebrew nib,” others to “Arabic nib,” and still others to “Semetic nib.”  Humans can be a mysterious and complex bundle of prejudices and antipathies, eh?

This drawing I did for an entirely different reason shows the difference between a regular (top) tipping and an architect modification.  That different reason was “someone has done something to the point of this Lamy Studio which is why you’re having trouble with it.”

In any event, I have been contemplating the theory of this grind for some time, but never committed to it.  Because it requires a large vertical component, any point that’s going to be amended needs a pretty big dollop of tipping if there’s to be appreciable line variation, and I haven’t had a pen with the requisite blob that I was willing to commit to the transformation.  Yes, I’ve got a couple of Jinhaos of my own, but the curiosity to perform the operation was not quite strong enough to give me a shove.  When someone else offers a pen to me, though… well, that changes things.†  And what of the result?

Success, although it’s not one I’m tempted to follow up any time soon.  Among the theoretical ponderings which were borne out by this experience was a likely down-side; what I might call “scratchiness” although it’s really more of an enhanced harmonic feedback.  You see, with an italic pen moving on a wide downstroke, the sharp sides of the slit follow the movement of the pen.  On the narrow side-stroke, the presentation of the slit to paper is like a round-pointed pen’s– just a miniscule gap in the otherwise smooth face of the tipping.  This is enough to cause a lot of discomfort to the writer if the tines come out of alignment, which a lot of pen makers try to avoid through their flirting with the baby bottom problem.

The rotation of the slit relative to the long axis of the tipping turns the preceding on its head.  On the down-stoke, you still find the sharp edges of the tipping following the movement of the pen, and that’s as smooth as a knife being drawn across leather, but then on the cross-stroke, the length of the slit in contact with the surface of the paper just about the same as the width of the mark being made.  That’s a lot of chances for the relatively sharp edge of the slit to catch on irregularities of the paper.  It’s not flat-out scratching, but you are very aware of the pen passing over the paper.

I honestly don’t see a way around it, either, without losing the line variation.  In the example above, the downstroke is about 0.3mm wide, and the cross-stroke about 0.8mm.  The latter is limited by how much tipping there is to start with, while the former is a function of how close to a couple of tiny little razors I dare to make the tipping.  It was a little thinner during an intermediary step of the grinding, but it also would hardly move side to side.  There’s a similar math which goes on in the choice between italic and stub, adjusting the roundness of the contact surface for more writing comfort at the expense of some of the distinction between vertical and horizontal… but without the extra variable of the contact surface having a trench in it.

I can understand why some of the people who offer this grind state a preference for uncommonly chubby starting nibs– with a 3B you might get a broad enough cross-stroke that a 0.5mm vertical would be thin enough, and that might be round enough to see the slit over the ripples and proud fibres.  Starting with a Jinhao’s not-very-big medium point is not ideal.

The other issue with this grind, as far as I’m concerned, is that it makes a serious demand of consistency of the writer.  With most points, even italics, one has a range of pitch angles to touch the paper with…

The original caption of this image admits that it is a result of… well, basically obsessive thinking about a topic.

…while an architect grind, if you wobble around in your pitch, you lift the most of the tipping off the page and lose the variation.  Unlike an italic, you’d still get a mark, but it would be very thin because only one corner of the flat edge will be touching the paper.  This isn’t a huge problem, as most of us are pretty consistent in this aspect of writing, but if you’re pursuing an architect grind, you should know that it takes on extra importance.  You should also make sure whoever is amending your nib is aware of your preference– if you like to hold the pen well at the back and hit the paper at 30º but the grinder assumes everyone is comfortable at 60º, there’s apt to be unhappiness, hard words, and the expense of a new point for the pen.

Unless it’s a Jinhao.  Those things are cheap.

Today’s pen: Sheaffer Valiant TD
Today’s ink: Jentle blue-black

*A little something to add to the Freudian slip file; the initial typing of “novel’s” saw my fingers emit “marvel’s.”  I am not consciously aware of believing the novel to be any more than reasonably good… at least at this stage of its existence, but we have some evidence that I may be inwardly bloated with pride.

†An aside– because this was something I had never attempted, the amendment was done without charge; the pen was not dear, and we both knew that destruction was possible, so the most this would cost was the replacement of a pen you can have for $4.23 on one side and a quantity of wasted minutes on the other.  Success saw me convert theory into skill, which is payment enough, while the pen-owner had a desire satisfied (and, in an email since, sufficiently so to express contentment).  Consideration, in the legal sense, flows without any cash involved.

This Week’s Pens	Inks	How Much Novel Written
Whatever this Waterman is Pelikan M600 Parker Senior Duofold Hero 100	Herbin Vert Empire Skrip Black Waterman blue (vintage) Herbin Poussière de Lune	17 manuscript pages.

Say, that doesn’t seem like a very productive week, does it? Well… let me counter that impression with a couple of pictures.  The first is slightly misleading.

Why is this misleading?  Because it implies a mathematical precision exists in the growth of what is, really, an organic structure.  We don’t look at a basketball player and say, “That person is 114.3% tall,” right? So, on to the other, more completely accurate picture:

Yep. END.  The story has run its course, the protagonist slumping off to face the rest of his life in the wake of the harrowing events laid out on the preceding 802 pages†, and I get to have a beer to reinforce myself at the prospect of the second draft (which I was already dreading as part of an entry in May).  It may only be 97.9% of the projected length, but for someone who hasn’t a lot of novel-ing experience, and who a couple of times thought the plot was gurgling out of him much too briskly, I’m fairly proud to have landed that close to the target.

I’m trying to decide now whether I give myself a bit of a break and work on a short story or two, or if I should just get onto the smoothing of this roughly-gouged bit of word-granite into something that actually looks like a viable novel.  I believe that I’ll decide this at leisure, over the course of the weekend.  Under the influence of large beer and strong drink.  You know, like those writers you see in movies.

 

†You see the format of all those pages, of course.  If my estimates are near correct, that’s just shy of 300 pages of legible, typed material.  I ain’t no Stephen King, nor any George R.R. Martin (yet)‡.

 

‡This parenthetical barnacle may be considered a sign of raging hubris.  I’m sure I’ll get over it as the magnitude of the work ahead of me becomes apparent and notes from my helpful readers begin to appear.

A Brief Response to Current Events

This popped up a lot over the weekend.  It’s a little dated, and a little stilted perhaps, but it’s still worth a look, especially if you find yourself uncertain in your thinking on events in Charlottesville .

I try to not use language here, but I’m stealing a policy statement from another, much better known, blogger:

Fuck this fucking Nazi bullshit.

And to expand a little, because I like to think of myself as a tolerant guy, I’ll point you to an article which I agree with on the subject of tolerance.  Some behaviours which are inherently intolerable.

Today’s angry pen: A Waterman not quite old enough to remember the last world war
Today’s ink with a name which slightly distresses in the current context: Herbin Vert Empire

Non-pharmaceutical Psychotropics

I have a friend who starts a lot of conversations with “you know what’s weird?” We have come into gentle dispute on this topic, as I don’t find the failure of a cat to sleep through the night or the way sales tax applies to clothes really qualifies as weird.  I usually offer a counter example, like magnetic putty, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, or the US healthcare “system,” all of  which prompt her to suggest that the use of the word has shifted among Millennials (of which she is not one).

Be that as it may– this week’s film is weird.

Of course, this would be more amusing if world events had not taken their current turn, but let’s enjoy the mild dissociative state old cartoons induce, eh?

Today’s pen: Parker Senior Duofold
Today’s ink: Waterman blue (vintage)

This Week’s Pens	Inks	How Much Novel Written
Hero 100 Sheaffer Defender Whatever this Waterman is Pelikan M600	Herbin Poussière de Lune Diamine Majestic Blue Herbin Vert Empire Skrip Black	17 manuscript pages.

A short week, we having celebrated “OK You Can Have A Long Weekend In August” Day on Monday.  That last entry was actually run out at home, making it one of perhaps a half-dozen generated there.  I expect I’ll be doing some work on the novel tomorrow, rather than my usual lunch out, to satisfy my own sense of devotion to the work.  Here, have a look at how things stand:

I am, as it happens, right in the middle of the climax.  This is fantastic, from a standpoint of the climax landing just about exactly where I’d hoped it would, but it is also amazingly frustrating because I have all the words surging about in my head right now, and if I could actually convince the whole world to ignore my existence for… I’ll say a solid five hour block of time, I could get it all out in a single session rather than stuttering along for a few pages before Mr. Slate yanks the pteranodon’s tail to announce the end of lunch.  And I can’t just say to the family “I’m not actually here” in the evenings, because my wife has a role in a stage production of A Turn of the Screw and rehearsals are every damn  night this week– the son wants a companion and the wife can’t drive.  I got duties.

But enough lamenting.  The end is nigh!  Hoorah!

Basic Maintenance

I came to discover recently that I have been letting my site slide into squalor.  Of course, with a vast media empire such as mine, it’s not surprising that some elements suffer occasional neglect from the not only the owner, but even the managers and frontline staff.

…all of whom is me.

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from someone seeking a thoroughly incomplete but slightly helpful set of data which resides on my page for Swan pens.  Or rather, it should reside there.  The sender of the note had been disappointed to find instead a sullen note from Dropbox that they’d stopped letting all and sundry wander into the castle, tracking up the carpets and pointing in an ill-bred manner.

Oh, dear.

I thanked this confidential informant and set to work on fixing the problem.  Once I had it sorted on that page, it struck me that I was using Dropbox for several useful little tidbits, mainly scans of instruction booklets from ages past that I wanted to share with the world.  The problem had become a hydra.  Then, as I landed on another page that needed attention, I found a deeply unlovely image where there should have been a picture:

Do NOT go to that URL

On the older incarnation of my site, I had trouble uploading images, so I relied on… the service named above.  At the time, that service was fairly benign.  When I committed the overhaul of the site, the uploading of images was not longer a challenge and I had taken fresh pictures in which one could make out little details like “Which end is the front?”  What I forgot was that there were several images over on that service which I deemed at the time sufficiently adequate in illustrating a point to bring over.  Thus, as word that this service I decline to name (to keep from helping their search engine score) had ceased to be benign and was in fact a heaving mass of pop-up ads and annoyance filtered into my consciousness, it never occurred to me that I should react.  It is also likely that the lazy element in my subconscious glanced at the news, decided it would be too much work to do anything about, and concealed it from the more active parts of my make-up.

“As ye sow, so shall ye reap” is not quite apt here; the usual crop of laziness is loads of extra work, and I don’t see the equivalence.  In any event, when I realized what a dog’s breakfast some of my pages had become, I grasped the nettle and did what I could to put it right.  If you flip through the site, or indeed the back issues of this little enterprise, you will find no other reproductions of that nasty extortionist of an image, and so far as I can discover no disappointing billets doux from Dropbox.

However… I know that the real solution is to host my own images, and this I have not done.  My brother and I both have lamentably image-intensive sites, and neither of them brings in vast heaps of money (his more than mine), so I’m loath to suggest that we pay for more storage, and even more loath to suggest that I take over more of what’s there.  Thus, I’ve made a problem for another day by stuffing all these things on what are currently benign third party storage.

I just hope Google and WordPress don’t get all grabby about their monetization, the way… that other service… did.

Today’s pen: Hero 100
Today’s ink: Herbin Poussière de Lune

Lights Out, Everyone

That is the catch-phrase for an old radio programme, called Lights Out, which presented listeners with creepy stuff.  What stands in for this week’s film is not an episode of that; it is, however, a reading which I think you would do well to listen to in a dark room with no other distractions.

Isn’t that a corker?

Todays pen: Waterman Whatsit #0265 (no, that’s not really its name)
Today’s ink: Herbin Vert Empire

This Week’s Pens	Inks	How Much Novel Written
Sheaffer Defender Pelikan M600 Parker Senior Duofold Hero 100	Diamine Majestic Blue Skrip Black Waterman blue (vintage) Herbin Poussière de Lune	22 manuscript pages.

If you hear a slight humming noise, it may well be me in my excitement at being so close to finished the first draft. The climax is not quite underway, but the fuse on it is burning and about to enter the touch-hole.

A Dark Secret, Revealed

This week’s film comes with an insight into my hidden corners.  I suspect some will be shocked.

I sort of like hurdy gurdy music.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt when there’s a handsome young woman playing it.

Today’s pen: Pelikan M600
Today’s ink: Skrip Black