Published on: 8/10/2015
Tools

Manual typewriters, when everyone used them. Then electrics.
Then computers, early, starting
with dot-matrix printers --
three novels (one published), many bad stories
and some not so bad. A newspaper column.

An advisor: "Write a journal by hand." Overboard,
of course. Dip pen and inkwell, and handmade Tibetan
notebook (leather cover, soft paper, ink feathering beautifully
and illegibly).

I learned. I got Mont Blancs, Parkers, cheap
beautiful Chinese fountain pens. Notebooks with fine,
smooth paper. New materials, new processes,
revised my writing. A notebook sits easy
in a pocket with a pen, a portable word processor.
Always ready, tempting and expecting use.
I can amuse myself with ink colors, crowd the page
with evolving revisions, write in lines,
not paragraphs. Each word hand-crafted.
Sometimes the tools shape the worker.