Uncategorized – Page 38 of 43 – Writing in the Stream

The Shank is Deadlier Than the Sword

My very first letter soaked. I used an old tomato sauce jar lid filled with water to rehydrate the dried out ink on my grandfather’s old nib, then overturned the lid and spilled the water all over my letter.

My friend Jeff had warned me that the nib is directional: you pull the nib across the paper. It’s like petting a dog so her hair lies flat instead of against the fur, making it stand up awkwardly. You hardly need to press at all. A gentle stroke will do.

After drying off my sodden, splotchy letter, I resumed writing, passionately pressing the nib into the finally dry page, utterly disobeying Jeff’s advice. Impressive, Poe-esque gobbets of ink sprayed across the paper, delighting me. Je suis artist! However, I was less than delighted when I accidentally shanked the letter and fouled the tip by gouging the nib end full of paper, the fibers sticking out like a micro-hairball.

Delightful or not, it turns out “shank” is actually the name of the body of the nib. A shank points not only to the difficulty and danger but also the powerful appeal of this deadly instrument. “The pen is mightier than the sword,” they say. Certainly, the shank adds a new tangibility to that old expression about the pen and the sword.

Don’t believe me? Nib’s sharp!

If I hadn’t learned my lesson by shanking the paper, I would have learned it bloody well had I written with the same pressure on my hand. I was pressing far too hard!

But back to the power of the shank: Just picture a writer filled with a passion combined with a gentle yet deadly attention to detail, wielding an inked nib. Whoa!

Have you ever used a traditional quill made of a cut feather plunged into hot sand? What about one of these metal shanks?

If you’re looking for a way to write which finely picks up any direction or misdirection from your hands, I absolutely recommend the quill and ink. Quill-and-ink’s an honest tool/medium… as far as story making instruments go. You might say those who live by the shank die by the shank, in both crime and literary criticism.

In any case, the shank may also save your life. Diplomacy saves lives. So can the right story at the right time. And, there’s always the added benefit of cross-over in anything requiring manual dexterity. In that regard, I’d wager writing with a quill is good training for scalpel-wielding medical students, too.

So, if you haven’t tried it yet, I recommend writing a letter with one of these metal shanks. Or you could go the even more old school route with a quill made of a cut feather tempered by plunging it into a jar of hot sand.

How did writing with an old-school pen go for you? Do you like the nib, or do you prefer the trusty old ball-point? If you do use a ball-point, you do realize you’re writing with an oxymoron, right? Remember: the shank is sharper, more direct, cooler than an oxymoron, and mightier than the sword.

Writing vs. Living

How can you improve your quality of life through writing?

There are several misconceptions about writing I developed early on. The one I wish to address in this post came from someone at a poetry conference in Chicago. I had volunteered to help out before the event in exchange for a free ticket to hear the speakers and eat a fancy dinner with other people who ostensibly loved poetry. Across the table from me was a woman dressed like she came out of Madmen. She looked at me as a lynx would look at another passing snow hare after already having made a kill, and said,

“Don’t waste your life on writing while you’re young. You should live. You can write later.”

For one year, I let this torment me. When I sat down to write, I would often think of her words:

“You should be living, not writing.” I felt whenever I sat down that I should be using that time to be running outside, or going to a museum, or reading, or socializing, or watching a movie.

Luckily, a professor saved me. I expressed my concern and he said, “You are still alive when you write, aren’t you?”

Although running around and doing things is wonderful and gives meaning to my life, so does writing. Writing is an odd form of meditation. A meditation which records the thoughts passing through your head, so you can return to them and deepen them and polish them. And writing helps you ready and strengthen yourself for the inevitable changes in life: it develops your mental flexibility.

What if I said, “You should be living, not meditating”? What would you say? You’d probably know that meditation helps calm the mind, and focus your attention and even rests you in a very special way. After meditation, you feel more at peace and more able to direct your energy to a task. Meditation helps you better decide which task to focus on as well.

Don’t you think that perhaps writing is like meditation? That writing helps you live more at the ready and be more fully aware?

Producing What You Imagine

T-Bone writes:

Writing words and writing music are not all that different, I find. Music, at least, comes down to

1. taking the time to actually sit down and write something,

2. absurd amounts of revision,

3. trusting your gut and your ear,

and most importantly,
4. being honest and saying things that you’re afraid to say.

T-Bone, you could write this blog. He goes on to write:

It is also very useful to know when you have to throw things away, even things that you love and care about. All the steps are difficult to do for various reasons. For step 1, do you ever find that you fall into a pattern that you want to break out of?

For example, when I pick up a guitar, my hands automatically go to familiar and comfortable chords. Anything I write with this inevitably ends up boring and dishonest.

It’s difficult to get over, but sometimes it helps to switch instruments, or even switch roles of instruments – like singing a cello part or playing a vocal part – to start thinking about it differently. I assume there’s a writing equivalent of falling into cliche, but I’m interested to know: what do you do to snap out of it? Just power through? Or are there tricks?

Sometimes I use a pen and paper, other times I write on the computer. And, some of my best journaling, in retrospect, at least as a window into what I was thinking, was via audio recording — just speaking into a recorder late at night while taking a walk or right as I’m about to fall asleep.

We decided that this is often what makes the best writing or composition: creating a clear window into what you were thinking. Even if those thoughts were abstract, they’re linked to something here. And even if it’s impossible to assign reason to every aspect, there’s often an alternate logic to the irrational. You can still see the scene inside your head, and you represent it as honestly as you can.

Don’t be afraid to give yourself memory triggers, little notes you jot down so you don’t forget the scene. Just remember that a memory trigger is highly personal, it probably won’t work for someone else unless you provide the context. But once you get to step 1, and continue on through step 4, you’ll be well on your way to real writing, writing which also offers something of value to your readers.

Do you agree that writing needs to be honest, at least at some fundamental level? What does honesty mean to you within the context of your writing?