Pennington-on-the-paper

Moving on from a stationery fetish?

2010-12-05T09:44:00.002Z

It seems the more I write, the less interest I have in the implements I do it with. I am still reasonably fastidious in my Moleskine obsession, but given their ubiquity, this barely counts any more. I'm not even so fixated with fountain pens, though I do prefer them - more often I'm stealing Alan's beloved Pilot V5s because I've forgotten one of my own. Hence, less blogging; I've been writing ABOUT things less, because I am DOING them more. I realise that if I was a dedicated blogger type this would be disastrous; however (see below) I'm not dedicated to much other than my own way of doing things. As tedious as this may be, and hard to compartmentalise in the world of how-to creativity, it's the way I feel best rolling.

I am becoming increasingly comfortable in not doing things by any known system. I've spent so many months, years, trying to develop 'daily practice' before I realised that I don't like doing ANYTHING every day. I'm not a routine person. I'm not a structure person. And I don't need structure to write well and happily. I'm not trying to aim for the utmost efficiency, I'm trying to aim for the utmost health in me as a person. And while 9 times out of ten, JC's Morning Pages seem like a great idea, if they don't one day, and I don't do them, I've decided it's not a big problem. I have more faith in myself than in the benefits of someone else's system, as well thought out and useful to many as they may be. I'm writing for me, after all. As long as I'm staying tuned in overall, and getting something down more often than I don't, then I'm not especially bothered by the extraneous ideas of others.
So I've not let this blog fizzle out, but its purpose is being slowly reconsidered. I'd rather write poems and maybe stories, than write about the pen I use. Cutting back the intellectual overgrowth, I think. The tool is your servant, and as long as it works .... it doesn't really MATTER.

A last minute defection.

2010-11-02T14:09:00.000Z

Well, I defected in spirit about two weeks ago, lying in bed, writhing in extraordinary stabbing pain. Yes, the glories of an inner ear infection which has dragged on for over three weeks. I'm not NaNoing this year, despite winning last year. I would have been ill-prepared, due to being so ill; and moreover, I'm not feeling the itch to write for the sake of it. Yes, when you spend inordinate periods of time being quite seriously ill, you end up thinking about what you'd really rather do.

I have two main writing strategies afoot; one, strengthen my poetry skills. I've neglected it and it's always been a first love of mine. I'm finding I am more productive writing poetry than prose right now and it's a nice feeling to follow the creative current.

Two, go back to Julia Cameron's exercise, the Narrative Timeline. Basically, it's a structured autobiography which allows you to own your life material a little closer. And yes, it'll probably end up the same length as a NaNo novel anyway.

Any writing which is worthwhile, I'm sure, will come out of an environment where I've learnt to reflect more closely on my experience.

One thing I was able to do while feeling dire and awful these last few weeks, though, was take the cover photo for my partner Alan Driscoll's latest album, Purity Test, which is available to download for free. He's been getting airplay in Spain, Norway, Maine and Venezuela, and it's very exciting to follow his journey. I'm rather proud of this photo.

More words to follow soon.

Review: The JOTTRR A5 Notebook

2010-09-15T15:36:00.003+01:00

I decided to handwrite and photograph my review a little more than I have previous notebooks - it just felt right to show how much fun the JOTTRR is to play with. So if you can't read my handwriting, here's the summary...

JOTTRR A5 Notebook in Charcoal (available in Yellow and Pink)
£8.95 from The Paperie
Interleaved plain and lined pages - one each to an opening
Graph sheets at the end, detachable
Lined pages are numbered. 160 pgs total.
Thick elastic, reasonably flat opening, soft touch cover that marks reasonably easily (doesn't bother me)
Overall: very well thought through design with lots of individual touches. Lots of character and fun, great value!
Especially good for journals that need a bit of structure to help organise lots of ideas - for combining drawing and writing, for planning things out. Probably not best for torrents of free-associative writing, though tht might just be a challenge!
Soft cover keeps whole journal flexible.
Thanks SO much to Angela and the people of the great web store The Paperie for letting me review this notebook for them!

Review: The Large Japanese Moleskine

2010-08-24T14:56:00.000+01:00

I had initially thought that this item didn't need a review for the following reasons:

1. It's a Moleskine, for chrissakes.
2. We already have the pocket Japanese album. So, this is just a bigger one, right?

However, the Japanese albums are an acquired taste which tend to confuse people. When I offered my boyfriend a blank Moleskine from my stash and showed him the large Japanese album, he couldn't think of why it would be useful for writers. And indeed, I had initially bought them with thoughts of using them for epic wall-length collages. But then, I ran out of plain large notebooks one day, and they were just sitting there, waiting for me to use them...

And they really, really work for writers. Really.

Apart from the annoying fact that the paper is the same waxy stuff used in the sketchbooks - switching to Noodler inks solved the problem - these are a perfect tool for following the growth of ideas. While being as portable as a large notebook, there is the option of expanding out, of opening multiple pages to sit alongside each other for reference or re-reading - the very layout stops you seeing pages as discrete entities and instead, a book as a continuum of ideas. In my opinion, perfect for writing, and, in my case, for rewriting; I've exhumed my NaNoWriMo novel after some kind encouragement, and I can't think of a better, more flexible and expansive canvas to rework my scenes.

The pocket Japanese album couldn't really handle this sort of thing... it'd take a strange, dedicated sort of a kind I am not to use those for redrafting novels. Too small a size, the length of paper too long. Here, the proportions are just right. The notebook itself is thinner than the usual large Moleskines, but for the better - there is just the right length of concertina'd paper to not get unwieldy. The only problem I can foresee is that sometimes using one on your lap will cause the bulk of the paper to cascade out to the floor; I find this charming though, and can be easily averted by using the elastic to hold it in place.

Besides, there's nothing better than feeling like Kerouac by writing your own endless scroll.

Books of Shadows

2010-08-18T10:28:00.000+01:00

I seem to be switching allegiance again. For the last two years I've been favouring the extra large size Moleskines, feeling that they allow me to be a bit more expansive, to explore and sprawl more. Before that I loved the large plain-page editions, so easy to carry with you and discreet enough that nobody can read over your shoulder into them unless you choose.

Now I seem to have accidentally gone back to the large size. The real sign for me that a notebook isn't working for me is when I can't seem to fill them; when I carry them around hopefully like deadweight but no amount of guilt leads me to add to their content. This has been happening a lot lately with the extra large cahiers, normally a total breeze to fill. At the same time, fate (and generous friends) keep throwing large Moles into my lap.

My reading binge on the concept of the divine feminine, much like one of my previous reading binges on tarot, led me to the Wiccan concept of the Book of Shadows, the journal and manual that individuals and covens keep and develop to further their spiritual growth in the craft. One of the main principles that keeps the Book of Shadows distinct from a mere journal of spiritual growth is that you are also meant to copy down rituals or learning from other sources, and to treat it as a reference manual of sorts.
(Wiccans, correct me if I am wrong, however I'm relying on the fact that your faith can be eclectic and hoping that my interpretation slots in somewhere!)
I seem to have dedicated a few large Moleskines to just this process, somewhere between a personalised self-help book, a swathe of study notes and my workaday journal.
It started with Women who Run with the Wolves, a book I mentioned the other day. To *just* read it seemed too much for me, as each page seemed to spark too many ideas, remind me of too many experiences and other books, for me to be able to focus on the flow of one word after another. I managed this by copying out particularly resonant sections into a red large Moleskine. On the right facing page would go the quote and page number, with space left for my own work and reflections. It was like rewriting the book with my own impressions embedded in it. For some reason, an italic 1.1 Lamy Safari in blue seemed the right tool.

This process has grown and grown into a far more adult form of the notes I took at university. Instead of screeves of notes taken to serve an essay, these are little books full of my impressions, and an indexed form of the wisdom that inspired them. I have books on Jung, Starhawk's The Spiral Dance, and Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom by Caitlin Matthews. And I'm sure more are to come. The filled notebooks look charming on my bookshelf and are immensely satisfying tokens of the at-times mind-bending study I am undertaking for no other purpose but satisfying my whims. They help synthesise the thoughts that would otherwise just circle and stagnate in my head, and give me a rather charming visual reference point to boot.

A question to leave you with... my notebook collection has exploded exponentially lately, and it's pretty much all Moleskines. Want to guess how many I'm using at the moment? Keep in mind that I left boxes and boxes of them behind when I emigrated 18 months ago... and this is just the number I am currently working with right now. PS. It's more than 5.

The Divine Feminine and Creativity: A Review Explosion!

2010-08-15T06:40:00.001+01:00

The Divine Feminine and Creativity: A Review Explosion!

I've been delving deeply into Jung, archetypal psychology, and the philosophy of mysticism lately, both for self-improvement purposes and for intellectual growth. On the one hand, I would like to study this further whenever the Goddess of Money grants me enough to do so; on the other, I find that exploring these ideas improves my meditation, enriches my worldview and generally renders me calmer, more peaceful and more fulfilled.

At Glastonbury this year, I had the eternal pleasure of visiting not one, but the TWO stalls of the Speaking Tree which had set up in the Avalon field. Not only a wonderful tent to duck into to avoid the oppressive heat. The idea of a specialist discount bookstore is so exciting and novel, yet so simple, that I really wonder why this hasn't taken over other genres of books. They focus on remaindered books on spirituality, creativity, fiction, the occult, ecology, esoterica, and so on. The low prices are bait that I inevitably swallow; unemployed and dirt poor such as I am, there are some times when I can justify 3 quid on a book even if it means going without.

One treasure I drew away from the stalls this year was 'At the Root of this Longing: Reconciling Feminism with a Spiritual Thirst'. I had never heard of this book, or the author, Carol Flinders, before, but the title alone made it fairly obvious that this was a book I needed to read, and the pricetag was amenable. It was also fairly impossible to put down.

Carol Flinders has trained in a spirituality which is about the pursuit of mystic experience outside of any one religious tradition. Hinduism, Zen, Catholic mystics, Sufism, and shamanism, all are explored for their pursuit of the divine experience unmediated by revealed knowledge. Meditative experience, no matter on what arbitrarily named creator force, is something she has trained extensively in over 30 years.

She cites Gerda Lerner, a feminist historian, who describes the way that the shift from Neolithic hunter-gatherer societies devalued the role of women as primary food-bringers and inherent creative forces through childbirth. Moving to agricultural methods of gathering food rendered women's knowledge of land and wild food useless, as people were tied to one location, a handful of crops. It instead relied on the notion of private ownership of land, which needed to be defended, and to be worked. It needs to be protected through bloodlines and by force, to be expandedforcefully through war. Status became tied to land ownership instead of hunting prowess, and so evolved monetary systems which begat yet more subtle measurements of status. The ruler is no longer the great hunter or earthly high priestess, but the great warrior who subsumes the lands of others for their own use and the use of their people, such that they might till it and grow prosperous. Wars brought captives who became slaves, and it was discovered that the most efficient wars would involve the rape of women, or their capture and use as slaves, in order to demonstrate mastery and emasculation of the enemy. Religions evolved to reflect this order, celebrating masculine forces and deriding the feminine. So, with women's domain tied to the home, their value tied to childbearing, and their knowledge of the cycles of the seasons and the landscape rendered useless by agriculture, their use as pawns in wargames and their denigration in religion, absolute knowledge began to eclipse earth-based spirituality which had celebrated flow. Now linear progress which emphasised mastery would reign.

As such, there is a cosmic imbalance enshrined in the new system, and one which remained unchallenged. Flinders finds that mystic experience, any transcendent experience which relied on experiencing the divine first-hand, remained a way in which the feminine forces of the universe could be experienced in complement to the masculine.

By celebrating those elements of subjectivity, internal creativity and essential flow, by perverting notions of linearity and seeing the eternal creative force as fundamentally Mother-like, there has been a fierce undercurrent running through hierarchical male culture which has been just orthodox enough to be permitted. 'Sophia - Goddess of Wisdom' by Caitlin Matthews follows the history of Wisdom depicted as a woman, tracing it through Judaism, Christianity and beyond, finding fruitful shadows which have enriched masculinist hierarchical dogma with a sense that the mystical and immediate forces of wisdom and inner knowing, traditionally viewed to be feminine, are invaluable to a rounded worldview and healthy spirituality.

And so I have also found Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, a Jungian analyst, storyteller and mythological expert, who explores the archetype of the wild woman and the healing powers to be gained from engaging with the associated myths, memories and images. Cultivating the feminine forces of intuitive thinking is for her a psychological task for the individual woman; to help her own parts of herself and her life experience that get pushed to the side in contemporary culture. This is no self-help book in any traditional sense, as it draws upon the rich mythology of countless cultures, Western, indigenous, common and obscure. It shows these myths as the repositories of great knowledge about psychological process, the phases of life, the dangers of particular attitudes and the value of others. Developing a real, honest, instinctual relationship with yourself that runs deep, that doesn't sit neatly with fluffy self-help platitudes but which looks fiercely into the depths and shadows of the soul is presented as the necessary journey to heal disconnection in ourselves, and by extension, in society too. It is as empowering as it is chilling, as enchanting as it is shocking.

All of these writers see their subjects as providing tasks for both men and women. To balance the objective and the subjective, to recognise that there is no perpetual motion and only entropy, that birth is followed by death and that matter is constantly arranged and rearranged each second that passes. Masculine and feminine are forces in themselves - they do not equate to male and female, but are present in all and everything. Save the atheist fundamentalists, those who believe in the infallible doctrine of Science at the expense of subjective understandings of the world, there are a goodly number of people who understand that empiricism is not, and should not, be the only way of understanding the world and each other. However, the more that the subjective immediate form of knowledge is valued, the more individuals are valued - and the more society moves towards cooperative integration, rather than positivist didacticism.
Perhaps this is the equivalent of what some Wiccans and nondescript New Agers would call the Age of Aquarius, a time emergent since the second half of the twentieth century, where the impermeable iron of modernity and the military-industrial complex has begun to melt and evolve into something as yet unknowable. More scientifically, social theorists in their hundreds would call this postmodernity. But few of them would ascribe a 'project' or goal to this dissolution of the hyper-masculine. What is most pleasing and makes the most sense to me is that this social entropy is not collapse for its own sake, but part of a cycle of rearranging and reimagining; that it gives possibilities for birth and beauty in the decay of old systems. And on some level, this is shown by the growth of feminism, environmentalism, LGBTQ rights, decolonisation, animal rights, civil rights and other liberation movements that began to simmer after 1945 and which we are still living in the struggle of. The point is, there are things being created to replace that which went before.
People who have followed my Twitter, read my past blogs, or who know me at all in any way, will understand how this approach is a complete melding of my deepest interests. Social conscience, spirituality, creativity and feminism fusing into one philosophy, one mission of sorts, to rehabilitate particular ways of viewing the past, and to reimagine social and individual roles to accept kinder, more positive ways of being in the world.

I'm now working through this reading list from the Glastonbury Goddess Temple's Priestess training course, and every book is challenging me on spiritual, intellectual, and creative levels. It's amazingly empowering to find other people who believe that the laws of thermodynamics themselves are worth celebrating, not because they come from any god/dess but because they are a creative force, a wonderful cycle in which everything is constantly being reimagined. The universe creates and so do we, and greater harmony within ourselves and in society comes from accepting the whole spectrum of creative thought and being as reflective of what is most precious about our existence. It's an adrenaline rush and a thrilling journey.

Blogs to come next week: My current stationery hoard, Books of Shadows, Review: Moleskine Large Japanese Album, and a collage update.

What just happened there?

2010-08-14T06:31:00.002+01:00

I know, I know. I said I'd be posting. But I got a bit distracted by giant mindbending frustrations which eclipsed everything, eventually including themselves.

So, I was unemployed for four months. Needless to say, two people getting by on 60 quid a week is a bit rough and not especially ideal, so I wasn't very happy that nobody seemed interested in hiring me. I applied for over 300 jobs - and finally, someone really seemed interested, beyond anything I could have expected. They enthused over my phone calls and spent interviews flattering me in every way they could. Working for a marketing company that raised money for big-name charities sounded good to me, and I was told over and over about how much money I could be making through commission. Training was easy, and then I had my first day in the field fundraising for the Red Cross.

...and then the penny dropped. This is a business only a hair's breadth away from being a classic pyramid scheme. They exploit you to work unreasonable hours in distant locations, for which you do not even get paid a minimum wage. In fact, as I found out only 3 days into the job, it's 100% commission based, meaning your pay is down to the whims of the general public and how generous they feel that day. Meaning I earned 15 quid for 3 days of work. Meanwhile, I paid 18 quid to get to and from work for those three days.
How exactly did I get conned? A mixture of naivety, selfish response to flattery, and sheer financial desparation. And, blatantly being lied to. As are some of the largest charities in the UK, who are giving contracts to companies which are exploitative and vaguely sinister.

I'm glad I quit. There was nothing about this situation which would be good for me. 14 hour days leave little time for doing the 'real' work which is the focus of my days, which is creative and spiritual.

I quit on Wednesday this week, a week after having first been interviewed for the job. On Friday, I got another job - only 15 hours a week, but it's a start, and a start which leaves me in control of my time and goals. As humbling and humiliating as it is to be conned, at least I am disillusioned, and not still illusioned.

Filling in the gaps

2010-07-26T18:28:00.001+01:00

I remember the worksheets I used to complete diligently in primary school. They were called 'cloze exercises' for some reason which Googling is not proferring any explanation for. Essentially, one fills in the gap. Each sentence lacks a word or phrase, with the space indicated with a black line.

Performing those exercises - about three a day, due to the one-size-fits-all approach of early years curriculums - also taught me the word 'context' at the age of six. I instinctively knew that if you looked at the words around the gap, you knew what word to put in, but knowing the special word naming that approach made me feel ineffably proud.

And so, I perform a 21st century cloze exercise on my life, for adults. There's been a big ol' gap for many people, not just here in my bloggerly silence, but also on Twitter, where I was on hiatus for about two months, and am still more taciturn than I was. My Australian family might consider me less reachable than I was, and I am indeed in less contact with them. I have contracted the circle of my world quite tightly around myself and left others to look at the context to work out what's going on.

That context? Being another uprooting, leaving a well-paying job to move to the town of one's dreams yet where I knew no one, and where I had no job lined up for me. The context of not having a job for what is now three months, and over three hundred applications later. The context of the first anniversary of my mother's death and the tumult of processing that, compounded by further psychological work I have undertaken alone, without the supervision of a therapist who I could not afford. Creative work, Jungian study, learning alternative history, writing, walking, meditation, collage and more. A lot of baking. A lot of everything.

So a hard road, a harsh road, but the right one. I have had time to work on myself, time to explore my new city, and though living from day to day literally on spare pennies is difficult, it's a skill I probably need. And most importantly, I haven't done any of this alone, but have had the enriching wisdom of a partner who doesn't tire of me nearly as much as he should.

So, where now? I'm here, in one piece, and with a massive backlog of ideas to share. Prepare for the flood after the drought.

What's that? On the horizon?

2010-07-26T18:09:00.001+01:00

Well, hello, stranger.

Fancy seeing you around these parts.

Allow me to brush aside the last of the tumbleweeds and make this place inhabitable again.

Chipping away at rage.

2010-03-29T11:39:00.000+01:00

Right now, my approach to writing is haphazard at best, and at worst that of a functional but out of use machine. I do my morning pages 4 days out of 7 on a bad week, and that’s about it. I’m mired in some kind of conceptual drought, a whirling drive for escapism that prevents me from wanting to spend any time at all in my own head. Picking up a pen, I can feel a resistance that manifests physically as tightness in my chest, the first tell-tale sign of anxiety. My novel draft is sitting there ominously on my boyfriend’s desk, getting dusty, because I know I need to rewrite, not tinker at the edges and redraft. I need to gut the interior and build from the inside out. And that makes me seize up. Thinking too much makes me seize up.

So I sat down and had a little internal dialogue with this malignant bitterness. And it seems that I’ve been using writing to force calm upon myself, to force myself to work through things too efficiently to allow the dust to settle, to allow things to feel real and meaningful. And I have years and years of rage and anxiety and sheer energy that need voicing, not just papering over. I need to write angry as well as calm. As angry as my novel is (those who’ve read the first draft will agree), writing it was a way of forcing progress and calm on myself. And somehow I need to let the anger out fruitfully. And I need to rewrite my novel in a way which makes it more than a piece of catharsis, and more like a work of literature.

I’m not sure where this is leading. But I think at the very least this knowledge will be something I can draw on for energy to help me write. Mappa Mundi will probably sit on the shelf a bit longer while I reconfigure my approach to it, work out how to loosen the cords around the words and let them breathe easier. But my words are congested at the moment anyway… it’s a tricky one. How do you loosen words when they don’t want to be written? That’s my task for today’s writing intensive. I’m sure I’ll get somewhere with it, I’m just not sure where yet.

'...make mistakes, lose everything, and start again...'

2010-03-25T19:39:00.000Z

Papery discoveries.

2010-03-23T19:32:00.001Z

On the way home from the train station, late at night, on an empty street in light rain, I discovered a playing card placed carefully in the middle of the footpath. It was The Joker, in one of his more carnivalesque incarnations. Odd. I picked it up and took it.

Ten metres later, I found another. Ace of Spades. I laughed and thought of Motorhead, and continued.

Another few metres, another. And another after that. Seven cards tossed on the footpath, seeming fresh from the packet, barely wet from the rain that had begun to fall, and no one around.

I am still quite excited and enthralled about finding these. I have no idea why anyone would discard (ha) these cards so fresh from the packet, in the rain, and dispose of them on a quiet suburban street by leaving them on a public path. The random nature of it is what pleases me so. Strange papery intrusions! I'd like to do something special with them. At the very least, frame them; if not, something more elaborate involving a mixed media painting. Everyone needs some chance and fortituousness in their days, and it gives me an odd buzz still to reflect on mine.

(And yes, that's our friend Mr A3 Mole from my last post. See, he's versatile!)

Review: Moleskine Folio Notebook (A3)

2010-03-21T19:31:00.000Z

The thing with Moleskine's folio range is that most of it makes complete sense. Most artists want big sketchbooks as well as little ones, and big watercolour books as well as little ones. Most people can see the logic in a big set of memo pockets (in fact, what you're meant to put in the tiny ones is kind of beyond me.) But an A3 notebook? Who writes on paper that size?

Well, I do. And I am completely and utterly thrilled, enamoured, in love with, overjoyed at the existence of the A3 notebook.

Portability seems to have colonised the modern consciousness. It is meant to be seen as natural and logical that at all times, we must be able to do all things, and that if we aren't, we are either being deprived of something critical or we are in dangerous territory. What if we can't be contacted at any given second? Or what if we have an idea and don't have a pen and paper / keyboard to write it down? Technology and/or consumerism is meant to be the road out of this. Buy Product X (which may or may not be designed by Apple) and you will never be not able to contact people, look at porn, do your shopping, read the news, play games, be bombarded by work emails... and so on. Buy a pocket Moleskine and you'll never let those bolts of inspiration escape into the void.This is meant to be liberating, the idea that everything can be made small, portable and carried with us. We're safe because the world is in our pocket, our ears and our hands.

Leaving aside the neo-Luddite technology rants, which are rather hypocritical for such an avid user of social networking, I do think there is a need to not, well, do everything all the time. There's a place for a big, cumbersome notebook that can't be carried anywhere, that sits at home and waits for you to curl up with it and spill forth the ideas that built up over the day.

My mainstay, Julia Cameron, rightly notes that cramped pages can reflect cramped thinking; if you think in terms of ideas that fit on a few square inches of page, there will be no flow, no development, until you free your words on something larger. Tristine Rainer says the same - larger, longer notebooks give you space to really explore in a way that traditional formats do not. The very act of opening out your boundaries when you write allows you to change format, draw, fill in blanks, annotate, stick in, and question, in a way that I simply don't have room for in a smaller book. I can write, sure, but that's pretty much all.

And so my main journal has moved from the extra large cahier (right) to the Moleskine A3 folio notebook:

One of its most inviting characteristics is the way it sits on your lap perfectly, creating an instant huge blank canvas. Unlike other smaller Moleskines, the hard cover folds back on itself very well for when you don't want both pages exposed simultaneously. This gives it a flexibility of format which really encourages experimentation and following whatever whim you have in the moment.

Planning and brainstorming...

Broadsheet style free associative writing...

Mindmaps, shopping lists, things to do (and smudges)

And collage (with mandala doodles).

It's become rather the accessory for other parts of my life - in particular, it makes a great laptop tarot table:

And when I am finished a reading, I just open up and note down what I found.

I'm not going to do the usual ink test here. We all know what Moleskine paper is like by now, and people are very set in their opinions about it too. It's worth noting that the paper in this notebook is probably the best quality notebook paper Moleskine make - the negative effects like bleed through and feathering that bother some people are fairly nonexistent here. Although I've basically stuck to my perfect team of Waterman Harmonie and Private Reserve Burgundy Mist on this one here, my 'comfort writing' implements of choice, and have deliberately not been too experimental.

One of the things I've noticed is that this notebook encourages me to go back and fill in pages, to use up all available space, in a way that I don't normally do in a smaller book. I think this is a sign of me becoming more attached to it; it's not a quickly finished, expendable book. Unlike a Large Moleskine, which I can fill in two weeks, this takes time and when it's finished, will tell a real story of it's own, one I haven't lived yet. It's getting smudgy and coffee stained, and this is making me love it all the more. It's becoming part of my life - one that I don't allow myself to enjoy often enough, but an important one - to curl up with this book and let whatever is inside me out, to really examine myself and the world as I see it. Which is the whole point of a journal. I think I've really found my keeper, my go-to notebook that I will stock up on and use exclusively from here on in. True pennington love.

Cue Montage ... #2. Mandalas and doodling.

2010-03-03T16:28:00.001Z

The collages I posted here were created over the top of A3 sized doodles in a variety of random media. I've filled two sketchbooks with them and am pondering whether they should stay as they are, or be covered up like the others.

Crayons, pencil, candle wax, Waterman green ink, Diamine Monaco Red, Imperial Purple and WES Blue.

Some of the as-yet-unused painted sheets are slowly growing Sharpie mandalas over the top of them.

To be honest, I much prefer doing that to doing mandalas in the style of these two above; starting on a blank page and slowly filling it up. It's then that I tend to screw up, or get self-conscious. If I obliterate the blank page all at once with swathes of colour, though, it feels like I can make anything over the top and it doesn't matter, because the page is already 'full'.

So there'll be more of this to come in the next little while as I untangle my pre-verbal and non-verbal self. It's a nice experience to give oneself permission to operate without words, on the basis of intuitive action. A drink of water for the spirit.

Cue montage... #1. Collage.

2010-03-02T16:28:00.003Z

I've been less than verbose lately, but I've been working with pictures more than words. More specifically, I've been collaging over mixed-media paintings, usually consisting of crayon, Sharpie, wax, and fountain pen ink in sloshy, copious amounts. Some are adorning my walls, some are filling up sketchbooks, or what might now be rightfully called art journals. It's been very therapeutic and helped me order my mind (which is something I've sorely needed lately.)

Not the finest of photos, I know, but I was inspired to take them while lounging in the sunshine in our garden, looking at my favourite tree, and as warm as the sun was, its light was starker than my winter eyes are used to.

It simply feels good to make things. So often I forget that. I need to hire someone to skywrite it for me on days I risk forgetting it.

The rereading for the redrafting: making friends with my novel.

2010-02-16T12:55:00.000Z

Since NaNoWrimo, I have let my novel to its own devices, steeping like overdrawn tea in its neat folder in the corner. I sent it out to some trusted souls, some who proved that maybe my trust was misgiven, and some who gave and are still giving the most useful feedback and encouragement. Two months have now passed and I'm testing the waters before redrafting.

Rereading it, I am generally struck by how I slowly 'wrote into myself'. The coherence of the second portion feels much more natural, the links more intelligible and the ideas more fully grounded. It's as if the secondary (or tertiary, or quarterenary) tale of my novel is that of me learning to let myself write.

It's fascinating to catch a glimpse of the energy, too, with which it was written. The sentences invariably hold too many ideas, are too compressed and heavily laden with imagery and references to things I never expounded upon, side stories that were never there. It feels condensed, boiled down, but not in a pristine way. It's a series of ideas squashed up against each other, chafing and overlapping, that I need to spread out and tease into recognisable, smooth shape, before sending on.

And that will take a lot of work, and a lot of rewriting. But it's still awfully nice to have had a break from my work, to come back and see that it is still there, that it is still very much a novel, if an unpolished one, and it is waiting for me to hew it into more perfect shape (though never completely so). It forms a reassuring block of my words, and I'm very glad of its patience, while I try to grasp how to form it into what I want it to be.

The Moleskine Passions Journals - missing the point?

2010-02-10T16:19:00.000Z

When I first heard of the Moleskine Passions journals, I was really more excited than I should be about paper products. (But then we would expect that by now, wouldn't we.) The book journal and recipe journal in particular look really useful, and the structures of their page layouts look really intuitive and like they'll be easy to refer back to.

But... the Wellness journal is just not what I was expecting. I was expecting something a little, well, more... hippy-ish. When I finally saw pictures of the inside, it seems to be not much more than an exercise and diet planner. Which is certainly wellness of a sense, but would be better described as 'Fitness' to me. 'Wellness' has always been a more spiritual term, and I was looking forward to a journal which, rather than just a blank page, allowed you to organise your inner life a little more. But it's not to be, or at least not yet. I think that given the huge numbers of people who use Moleskine for self development purposes, they are leaving a gaping hole in their potential market by not trying to cater more to them.

But, on the other hand, these people often have perfected systems of their own that work for them, and might not be likely to pick up a preformatted notebook. Although I certainly would get at least one, to see if the format worked for me. If it did, I'd tear through hundreds.

I'd like to see what Moleskine could come up with on this themed journal front, if they looked to something more about spiritual and self development... anyone else agree?

Just Imagine Mandala notebooks

2010-02-02T19:31:00.001Z

I've been lucky enough to spend the last few weeks with my family, visiting from Australia. In the time I spent showing them the sights of the UK, I took them to Glastonbury, where we climbed the tor and wandered the streets soaking up the gorgeous energy of the town. Sigh. I'd live there in a flash if I had the chance.

One of my favourite parts of visiting Glastonbury is the amazing selection of shops which, predictably, tend to specialise in esoteric and new age literature, unusual clothing, secondhand vinyl and beautiful crystal jewellery. The Speaking Tree is an amazing two-storey bookstore full of unusual art books, great texts on psychology, history, religion and philosophy. They can also usually be seen at the Glastonbury festival - last year their stall was in the Avalon field. And that's where I discovered their stationery range.

They stock a range of notebooks by 'Just Imagine' which have beautiful covers printed with mandalas, natural scenes and astrological signs, among other images.

In all other ways, both sizes resemble the pocket and large sizes of Moleskine; elasticated closure, ribbon tie, warm creamy coloured paper, which is thicker and more substantial than that of a Mole notebook yet not as rigid as the sketchbook. The 'pocket' size is £1.99 and the 'large' £2.99.... I know. That's good.

...Mind you, I didn't buy any, because I'd already maxed out my budget in the store. But looking at the samples they had out there, I could see a whole range of pens had been scribbled and tested on the paper, and the paper looks to be very flexible. Hope it handles fountain pen ink well - although for Mandala art I prefer to use felt tips so maybe it wouldn't matter so much. And the mandala covers are complete standouts in the range, and I'd love to fill one with my own mandala designs when I can muster up or justify the cash.

The Speaking Tree's website is already bookmarked on my home and work computers, and is one of my most visited sites most of the time. So it won't be long till I end up with one of these when I have a spare few quid, I think... in the mean time, I'm hoping someone else out there with deeper pockets will give them a try and let me know what they think!

The quest for kraft paper.

2010-01-19T14:34:00.000Z

I was ridiculously lucky in high school, in that despite having a small art department, it was populated with very dedicated people who wanted to supply and help in any way that it was humanly possible. In final year art, we had full run of the place. Anything we wanted could be accommodated in the name of our final projects – I was even actively encouraged to turn the science lab into an etching laboratory so I could make professional printing plates. This huge amount of effort by the teachers was in spite of the fact that I was the only student who gave a damn about printmaking, so I was the only person who would benefit. We were spoiled, or more correctly, our creativity was truly nurtured.

One of the things I took for granted then, and have pined for ever since, was a roll of kraft paper. This was not your average packing paper, though. This was heavy duty, roughly 320gsm, recycled card which was about two metres wide and came in a roll of about 1000 metres. The giant roll stood in the corner of the room and we would all help ourselves to it without thinking that this incredible paper was an incredible luxury.

It took all mediums beautifully. Gessoed, it had a delicious texture that was perfect for large-scale paintings without the fuss, and that were easy to roll up and take to interviews for art school. It was smooth, with just the right fine amount of tooth and slight absorbency that would make anything you did to it seem profound and beautiful.
I am actually not exaggerating. This was amazing paper. And having access to the right materials can make a real difference to your inspiration by changing your ideas of what’s possible.
So, having been haunted by memories of that paper for the last five years, I decided to go out in search of some, after a few ideas for paintings had popped into my head. I very specifically wanted to see them on this particular luscious paper.
I spent a lot of time trying to work out the GSM – I knew it had to be at least 200 in order to be able to hold paint. But it had been so long since I’d used kraft paper that I didn’t know what the thinner, cheaper paper could actually do. So first point of call was a packaging company on eBay, where I bought a random 90gsm roll for £2. What could I lose?

Purchase 1: Fail.

Random 90gsm eBay kraft roll.
Kraft paper is ribbed in this country? I’m definitely not used to ribbed brown paper. It’s too slick, shiny and non-absorbent to take anything but Sharpie. That’s fine, but its use is way too limited. I ended up using this to wrap Christmas presents, along with scraps of the Financial Times. It’s just not nice. But for £2, I don’t really mind. It’ll get used for mounting collages, but that’s all.

More Googling was clearly necessary. I have no idea how, but I ended up looking at bookbinding paper, and came to discover Shepherd’s Bookbinding supplies. This felt like automatic jackpot territory. So many beautiful papers, and (as I found) such a ridiculously efficient delivery service, this site has become a major threat to the stability of my bank account, and only copious amounts of self-control are saving it from ruin.

Purchase 2: Inconclusive
Shepherd's Bookbinding supplies: Archival Manila, £1.68 for a 765x1020mm sheet.

Well, first, I got the wrong colour. No idea why I bought this. Maybe because 'archival manila' sounded like a beautiful turn of phrase, no matter what it was describing. And it’s thinner than I thought, too. I have no idea what was going on here. However, it’s lovely, silky, and takes a variety of media well – it just doesn’t hold its weight when hung. This makes sense; after all, it’s for binding, not for sticking on walls. It’s very lovely, just not quite right.

Purchase 3: Ultimate Win
Shepherd's Bookbinding supplies: Cairn Natural Kraft 320gsm, £1.79 per 900x600 sheet.

This is IT. Actually slightly thicker than what I remember, and it only comes in A1 sheets, but hell, it’s still the right stuff. Very rigid, porous, the right rich golden kraft tone… it’s perfect. Can’t wait to unleash myself on this. I’m just holding back, waiting for the right moment – don’t want to waste paper this good with mediocre ideas. All I’ve got to wait for now is the inspiration, or the right idea, and then I'll show it off to you. It's truly glorious stuff, and in my mind, is the perfect paper.

Review: Remarkable Pencils. They kinda are.

2010-01-15T16:04:00.002Z

As you can imagine, I get unnaturally excited when it comes time to order office stationery. I pore over the thick index with its porous, shiny paper, searching fervently for cheap, generically available stationery sold by our stockist that is at all pleasing. And sometimes - like now they've started stocking Clairefontaine notebooks - we are actually able to hit the jackpot.

I can categorically state that these are some of the most gorgeous pencils I have used in a long time.

Remarkable use recycled products to make stationery - things like car tires and retail packaging become notebooks, pencil cases, erasers, and other highly functional office products. The functionality of the products, their colourful yet not overly brash design, and their environmental friendliness makes them easy to convince your manager to approve company money being spent on. (The day I can rationalise getting a fountain pen, for example, on company money will be a glorious and unlikely day indeed.)

The greylead, HB pencils can be bought in blister packs of three, packs of ten, or tubs of sixty. (They also sell coloured pencils I'm dying to try.) All Remarkable products are labelled with what they 'used to be'. The pencils are made of mixed products, but my batch were all labelled 'I used to be a CD case'. They come in vibrant colours that cover the whole pencil - not just the outside, but the 'woody' inner part too', showing off red, purple, black, blue and other luminous shades.

They sharpen beautifully and smoothly, more so than many cheap woodcase pencils, due to the way the plastic has been treated. They feel silky under your finger, making them a pleasure to hold. The graphite is soft and effortlessly runs like molten lava over any paper I've tried it on, whether it be my Moleskines or Clairefontaine or office paper. Even scratchy recycled paper or newsprint doesn't result in a rough output.

Importantly, they can resist being dropped, rolling off tables and otherwise mistreated. I have treated mine very badly indeed and they show no sign of it - no chipping, scratching or any marks at all. In fact, they look pristine.

These are really astonishingly good. I am completely smitten. They're recycled, and they make the 9-5 a little more joyful, and they're gorgeously colourful, and they stand up to heavy duty work... I can't find a thing not to like about them.

They're also very reasonably priced. So good for if, when our office supply runs out, I need to inexpensively reward myself, or bribe myself into doing something. I'm sure I'll come up with a reason.

Buy them from Remarkableshop.com

Newington-on-the-year.

2010-01-02T18:54:00.000Z

I find it mildly worrying to watch the compulsive bloggery of those whom I share a niche with - stationery nerds, creative wistful types, and hippies in general. The rate at which they churn out blog entries is both intimidating and a bit overwhelming given my tendency to ruminate at longstanding. I, however, have not even done so of late. I have simply not had the energy or mental strength to do anything more than sit on different couches for the last howevermany weeks. I think I made a mandala once or twice, to celebrate my bottles of ink returning from loan to the MIL. I've written roughly 20 journal pages, but even that was a major effort. I did my first Tree of Life tarot reading the other day, and that was my first (and only) one for about a month. I haven't read any more of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, even though I was enjoying it. Life has really slowed, slowed, slowed. To the point that it's about food, water, shelter, and boyfriend. I'm mildly concerned about the return to work and commuting and the real world in general just because I'm just ticking over for now.

The main reasons for this can be summarised in the highly useful end-of-year review list I made in my XL Skine the other day.

Best of 2009:

Emigrating and living with my boyfriend in England
Adapting well to the new country and lifestyle
Getting my first grown up job (and first job in England) and doing well at it
Getting our own place with lots of space
Developing a strong, loving relationship
Boyfriend's family being awesome people and welcoming me
Learning about Jung and tarot and esotericism on my own, outside of a university
Going vegan
Writing my first novel
Planning to get married this year (2010)

Worst of 2009:

My mother's mental illness worsening into psychosis, her abusing and terrorising family, then killing herself two days before my birthday
Being ill and exhausted, not having energy to look after myself properly
Lacking time to spend on things I want to prioritise - creativity, mental health, stress relief
Barely having enough money to get by on
Not coping well with lifestyle stress at times

So on paper - or on a screen - that was a hell of a year. A hell hell hell of a year! And you unfortunate readers came along part way through that, while I foolhardily anticipated still being able to keep up a breakneck pace of reviews of bits and pieces I like, ideas I enjoy, and to be generating a hefty creative output of my own to comment on as I went.

This was a bit optimistic at best, after reviewing the above summary of 2009.

I fully intend to do all of these things anyway, it's just that the timing of them needs to reflect my life, not becoming things I feel guilty about or stressed about, but things which help me connect to the world. Which ultimately just means I need to set my own pace.

So, I'm not redrafting my novel yet - still waiting for feedback from some parties. I'll do that next month, when I'm hopefully feeling less awful. I'm not reviewing stacks of new notebooks, or even using them very much. It's old faithful XL Moleskine plain notebook and a handful of mini Stabilo fineliners in jolly colours to grease the wheels of my mind. Familiar tools, nothing too overwhelming. Gently, gently as it goes.

This little old check in is therefore to affirm that things are taking a much needed snail's pace, because anything more advanced leads to trainwrecks. And we don't want those. When my energy shows up, all the notebooks and pens and paper and novel drafts and ideas will still be there waiting for me, and they won't be any the worse for having done so. Writing sans railway-wreckage; a good creativity motto for me this year. I can do what I need provided I look after myself first. The words will follow then.

Play-acting at the Tortured Artist: Goading Myself into the Redraft.

2009-12-17T10:24:00.000Z

So much for the promises of writing more of these things. The post-novel-draft-completion malaise has truly seeped into my bones, chiefly due to the barbs of criticism, however well-intentioned, I am receiving from reviewers. Some have been most kind and enthusiastic, name-dropping all of my favourite authors and generally glowing. There is a definite need for structural revision, and apparently my wording can be exceptionally torturous. (As you may have already noted here.) I'm feeling very dispirited about it, chiefly because what I want to say isn't being heard, and I'm not sure I believe in my capacity to express it as fully as I want. I care deeply about doing so, not just because it's my first novel, but because I have so much about my experience that I want to express, and I really believe in the strength of the ideas.

So, at the moment, I'm just halfheartedly searching for 'novel revision' ideas from my favourite literary bloggers.

The below have been inspirational in this time of malaise:

http://procrastinatingwritersblog.com/2009/12/how-to-do-a-one-pass-manuscript-revision/
Holly Lisle's revision technique
I wouldn't dare do a one-pass revision- some novels might be able to get away with that, but mine needs deeper excavatory work done, as I am too ambitious for my own good. However, this article grounded me when I was wailing to myself about what needs to be done with my work. By reiterating some of the advice I have already been given, but which I have been a bit too pained by to take in, it helped bypass my bruised ego and remind me of the practical task ahead.

http://procrastinatingwritersblog.com/2009/12/how-to-breathe-and-reboot-your-writing-project/
More simple advice that I need to hear someone else tell me when I'm bemoaning my literary wrongdoings. Simple, to the point, with great comments as per usual.

Literary Darwinism - When do I give up on my book? (Behler Blog via BubbleCow)
I'm very very very far off being ready to show more than a handful of people my novel, let alone publishing it. On that level, the advice in this article wasn't really for me. However this gave me a good idea of the long view to take; that when you write a novel, it has a life cycle of its own, and when it goes out there

... and this led me to some more good advice, from dear old prolific Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing. In the preface to the tenth-anniversary reprint of 'The Golden Notebook', she describes the varying letters she has received about it, all of which focus on completely different aspects of her novel. A novel which, by the way, is not overly dissimilar in structure and goals than my own, though we say very different things, and of course she is a master while I'm just starting out.

It is at this point that she ultimately says exactly what I need to hear; that despite the work that needs to be done, and that there is a lot of it, that people will see different things in my book, and miss the point, or understand only half of it, or none at all. That's how it goes.

"The book is alive and potent and fructifying and able to promote thought and discussion only when its plan and shape and intention are not understood, because that moment of seeing the shape and plan and intention is also the moment when there isn’t anything more to be got out of it.

And when a book’s pattern and the shape of its inner life is as plain to the reader as it is to the author — then perhaps it is time to throw the book aside, as having had its day, and start again on something new."

So yes, I need to fix the parts that need fixing, because otherwise it's just an illiterate headblurt and not the best piece of writing I could possibly make it. But I can't sweat the audience response too much, or it'll drive me mad, particularly if they just don't get it. I've just got to be as clear and as measured as I can in the mean time, to make it live up to my own standards, and like with all communication, I've got to trust that the words I use mean vaguely similar things to those I use them to.

Further digressions on stuckness.

2009-12-07T10:12:00.000Z

The problem with stubbornness, no matter over how righteous an issue, is that it is the strongest form of resistance. It resists everything except itself. It is pure and unmovable. A refusal to move.

While it is good not to yield to other people's direction all of the time, and especially on the most important issues of self, the problem is choosing to remain immobile, and in doing so, to be stuck.

It is more important to still move, but to do so in another way, as well as in another direction.

Also. I say a lot of things, but I put them into action less and less. Another form of resistance. And resistance is probably what is making me so tired, making me so contrary and such hard work to be around lately, and it is definitely what is making me so coy and angular in my writing.

So it seems I need not even to resist resistance, but just to trust and let things flow. Which, when things feel big, scary, traumatic and overwhelming, is the most petrifying thing of all. But that doesn't make it any less necessary.

Someone remind me of this when next I have a tantrum. Or even when I don't. It's such hard work to just remember that it's ok to let go.

On falling into a damp, muddy hole while it rains emphatically on your forehead.

2009-12-06T11:37:00.000Z

My oh my, I have had a week of it.

I won NaNo on Monday and had these delightful visions of simultaneously finishing my novel by this weekend, also catching up on the epic list of blogs I wish to write and post, somehow spending more time with my boyfriend, and making headway into the huge workload I am actually paid to complete.

None of these have actually happened.

Instead, I have spent most of the week as a complete and utter wreck, curled up on a variety of soft couches and slurping hot beverages while I either complain, rage, cry or am just generally overwrought and melodramatic. Outsourced my drama into venting about the less salubrious aspects of my life.

Writing a novel that actively explores personal trauma as part of NaNo? Not so good acktshually. The parts I have left to write are some of the most painful and the ones I want to write least; so they are steeping in my subconscious now instead of being set free on a page.

It's a peculiar form of writer's block. I've tinkered with existing passages and expanded my novel by about 1000 words in the process. So technically, slow progress has been made. Just none on the big gaps in the manuscript that need to be filled.

Sometimes I hate it when Julia Cameron is right. She is a lot, when I don't expect her to be. But she genuinely does seem to understand the ways we hold ourselves back creatively and in life.

I don't particularly want to keep facing particular parts of my life. But writing them into a novel is making them make sense, and is setting them free from the traps of my memory. And so even though I fear the process of actually describing my main character's insanity, I do need to do it. And it will be good for me to get it out. It's just a matter of doing so; of combining time, energy, motivation and insight.

Not that I'm trying to trick myself into thinking that I need a magic potion or some transcendent set of circumstances before I can write this.

But I have blocked myself up because I've come so far in exploring such painful, personal issues about how I have been treated and what I have experienced. It's inevitable I'd hit some resistance at some point. There's only so long you can do that at an intensive rate (like the 7500 I wrote last weekend for NaNoWriMo) without needing to collapse a bit, feel your wounds ache and complain loudly and vocally about everything in life.

So I've done a lot of that. But it's not the answer, and it won't get this novel written. Which needs to be done, for my own sanity and for everyone else's.

So as far as I can tell, I need to do a combination of things to get out of this extreme funk (not one of the good Herbie Hancock ones either.)

1. Journal lots more and keep clearing space for my thoughts to breathe.
2. Make sure I have time to get this novel out. Don't pressure myself in this, but give it priority and work through steadily, calmly.
3. Stop vocalising and indulging my every negative thought. I know I have the right to feel it, so now I've worked out how to express myself I don't have to give voice to my every negativity. I can just let it go.

And most importantly...

4. Let myself rest. Don't guilt myself for needing it. Just let myself recover from all the stess and pain of this year.

So for those who I promised novel drafts to, please hold. Your call will be attended to shortly when I have the energy to do so.

Normal service will resume shortly.

2009-11-30T12:01:00.000Z

Yep, I did it. 50,039 words as of twelve minutes ago.

So the blog will return to normal-ish service shortly. I have made rather a fine number of creative discoveries which I fully intend to blather on about here anon. I am still working on my novel, and intend to finish the first draft by the end of this week, but with slightly less frenetic a pace now.

Thank you for bearing with me and for being so very encouraging to me while I undertook this harebrained scheme. It's nice to feel like I'm a proper writer now.

A novel snippet.

2009-11-27T12:08:00.000Z

This is an excerpt from what I've been writing the past month, which I offer as justification for my being so wholeheartedly absent. This is my main character, Anne, visiting the British Library soon after she moves to London.

The room was kept artificially dark. It was small, intimate, almost cramped, compared to the cavernous hall she had entered from, with the phallic pillar of George the third's library penetrating the ceiling like a sceptre of knowledge. Here the books were kept in dimly lit glass cages, one by one, and did not rely on such grandiosity for their impact. Anne's eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom, and her ears adjusted to the low murmur of tourists moving softly through the gallery. It was full of people, more full than she would have expected for a Tuesday evening, though perhaps other people were as hard pressed as she to find free attractions to divert them from the cold winter rain outside. She approached the first cabinet. The curators had clearly tried to put a few show stoppers out the front to draw people in; Alice and Wonderland, William Blake. Letters by various political figures. Even the hand written lyrics of Beatles songs, anomalously contemporary alongside the medieval tomes and the dark Islamic texts from centuries ago. Anne did not begrudge them their modern classic status. She still, however, skipped past them into the next room to look at texts that held more historical gravitas.

In the depths of the gallery, she began to find what she was looking for. Decorated tomes from other eras, and in some cases from different cultures; thick calligraphy in Sanskrit - or was it Hindi? - and brush strokes in Arabic and Chinese. Impenetrable contributors to her culture. She stared at them, trying to glean something, but in the end was forced to trust the significance the curators and the gallery gave them. Beyond the microcosmic beauty of the fine hand and careful artwork, there was no more she could understand from them.

Then she approached the cabinets of medieval religious texts, and her heart began to warm. The caricatures in Lewis Carroll's manuscripts, imposing as they might have been in the previous room, could only half-heartedly echo the delightful marginalia of these books. William Blake's earnest prints and carefully painted biblical art, and his bold theology of fire, seemed like the workings of a malformed child beside these glorious standards, these perfect medieval originals. He had aspired so much to reach their standards, and it was clear to see why. Anne bathed in their multicoloured beauty and their pristine nature, then moved on to the next room.

Here stood a brown, singed and tattered text. It was presumably a text, because it was being kept in the library; but barely a word was identifiable on the surface of the vellum. It was very definitely vellum, and not parchment, but beyond that and a radiating pattern of brown swirls and squiggles, very little was visible.

The sign to the right stated that this sad page was an original copy of the Magna Carta. Such a transcendent document to so many, such a symbol of he birth of democratic consciousness, as much as at the time it represented the grumbling of a selection of earls rather than the true voice of a people speaking as one. Yet it was so humble here, so fragile, so nearly ruined. Anne read the piece on the wall beside it about the terrible tragedy of the Cotton manuscript fire; Henry Cotton's house burst into flames while guarding some of the most precious historical documents that England new. Some pieces were saved, others lost forever in that eighteenth century fire, after being tended by loving hands for so many centuries before that. A dropped match, a tipped candle or lantern, and swathes of written history were unwritten and erased in the flames. And so it was that this pathetic, singed calfskin held the supposed cornerstone of British democracy. Anne felt pained, empathy burning at her ribcage. The poor thing, she thought. That poor thing, trapped in that burning house. I'm so glad it survived. I'm so glad it's here.
She placed her hands on the glass, as close as possible to the magic document itself. She could feel the flames that once scorched it warming her fingertips. She closed her eyes and fed her consciousness into her palms resting lightly on the cabinet, and felt again, trying to pass through the barrier of the flames, to reach back into the document's history. But the fire formed a hellish barrier, like Styx had opened up between her and the careful royal scribes of the twelfth century, who had penned the words that had nearly perished. She stood with her eyes shut, focusing all she had on pulling through the spirit of that page, but all she could get to was the flames.

That's one of my favourite parts so far. There's something glorious about writing things into being. And as such, I will remain in hibernation until I have completed doing so. Hope the above has whetted whatever palates might exist.

xx

Further digressions on Flow, Flow, Flow, and NaNoWriMo. (I Rhyme, Oh.)

2009-11-17T11:14:00.000Z

If you got past that torturous title, congratulations. Honestly.

However it does serve a purpose (I promise). It is indicative of the way your mind goes into a tangential space when you're open to creative process. And while I make no assertions about the quality of the novel I am writing for NaNoWriMo, I am creating something, and dedicating swathes of my energy to doing so every day.

When writing becomes such an immersory experience, and such a constant one, it does alter the way your brain works and the way you approach everything in your life. It makes absolutes seem fuzzy, and helps you see the way that one thing could very well be another. Everything feels a bit more mutable, and everything you say, do and perceive feels far more within your control.

Writing constantly and frequently in the manner that NaNo requires is deeply immersory. I write on the train and on the way home each morning; I write through my lunchbreak and in any spare minutes I can grab at work. Every minute of my day that I'm not working, sleeping, or curled up on the couch with my boyfriend for R&R, I'm writing. And occupying a state of mind where you are generating new ideas without stopping means that you have to privilege yourself as a place of origin. Your subjective viewpoint becomes central, rather than marginal or relative - while I certainly would never go so far as to assume mine is the only way of seeing or doing things, the fact is that constantly creating forces you to place a level of faith in yourself that filters through to every aspect of your life. It makes you see yourself as 'original' in Julia Cameron's perspective - a fundamentally empowered being who 'makes' the world in the process of interpreting it. Your ability to choose becomes heightened. It is a literal form of centering yourself, by placing yourself in the centre of both the world of creative work you are creating, and the world outside yourself you interact with.

However, the state of flow is very easily disrupted. I took a day off writing, to restructure my novel so I could work out exactly what I needed to write next. So now I am in the twin positions of being behind on my NaNo goal (again) and feeling a little inertia about not writing. It's like coming up for air and not wanting to plunge down again, but knowing you need to. And the suspense of not doing it is, of course, infinitely worse than just getting over yourself and starting again, knowing that you will feel the benefit of it shortly. Like with any new habit, aborted however briefly, that need to question still comes up.

BUT, flow, flow, flow it shall be. My lunchbreak approaches and so does some writing. I think I can get 1500 words in that hour (I hope, courtesy of Write or Die.) So I'll dive down again and embrace the fuzzy edges of my brain, and the silky relativism it's bringing me. After all, it's a very indulgent feeling.

NaNoWriMo - the facts and stats.

2009-11-12T11:13:00.000Z

There are two situations in which I feel I can be as creative as I like without feeling like something is amiss.

Sitting in a cafe with a notebook, handwriting, watching the world go by.
Early in the morning, before my boyfriend is awake, with a cup of tea, at my desk looking out the window while I type away. Doing a 3-card tarot reading beforehand really helps too.

Tea and coffee (decaf) are my creative friends.
So are Lamy Safari FPs, all colours and nib sizes, because they can be treated very badly in the line of duty and they never complain.
The Asda executive is a glorious companion for novel writing because the paper is luscious and thick, but can be removed neatly and inserted elsewhere if you want to rearrange plotlines.
Paperchase's 300 page graph journals are a surprise runner-up contender for journals which are friends of the novel writer. Lovely paper, feint ruled, and nice and flexible (the downfall of the Asda executive is that it can't bend!)
'Write or Die' is a lovely piece of software which everyone should use in the interests of productivity. It's helping me write minutes for work as well as all sorts of other non-novel things.
The eBook 'How to be More Creative' by Marelisa Fabrega is a fabulous digest of all the creativity tips you normally shell out ridiculous amounts of cash for in book form... so it's a great resource for dipping in and out of, both exposing you to new things as well as reminding you of things you already know.
I've filled my fountain pens three times this week, which may be a record. Considering how I like to cycle through several ink/nib/colour combos.
This is really transforming my perspective on what is possible, on what CAN be achieved while ostensibly living a normal 9-5 life. I'm so glad I'm able to shoehorn in at least some of the things I'd really love to be doing all the time, it's a very good start.
Eeep. I have 1127 words left before I hit today's target, and a lot of 'real world' work to do too. Fingers crossed for me, please, that I get this all done.

Checking in...

2009-11-10T13:17:00.000Z

So I decided to do NaNoWriMo after all. I'm 15,000 words in so far and enjoying it, though I'm very overwhelmed and a bit lost too.

A brief synopsis of my novel:

a) There's a novel within the novel. In it, Anne emigrates to England and finds her mind colonised by medieval philosophy after she meets Robert, an unassuming student of Jung and medievalism.
b) Also in the novel-within-the-novel, we see sections of Robert's thesis which explore (and explain) Anne's peculiar form of madness.
c) This is where it gets all meta. 'You' are an unnamed reader of the novel-within-the-novel who finds strange parallels and interactions between the book you are reading and what is going on in your life. I'm not telling more about this because I'm super proud of it and I don't want to give it away.

I can write part b and c fine, but a is proving to be a bit of a bitch, frankly. We'll see how it all goes. I will get there in the end, but, of course, I wouldn't be me if I wasn't needlessly ambitious.

To compensate for the dearth of reading material I am supplying this month, please check out the awesome article below, which has been very inspiring (though I haven't used tarot to help me structure, I probably should have.)

Tarot as a tool for writing a novel

See you at the end of the month.

TarotWriMo.

2009-10-29T14:07:00.000Z

As you probably know, I twitter a lot at work, largely because it allows me to commiserate with others whose souls are vacuumed out of them by 9-5 work. It's awfully nice to commune daily with vegans and stationery geeks, when in reality I know nobody from those groups.

Today I was bemoaning my lack of energy and stamina to do NaNoWriMo this year, partly because I'm feeling more artistically inspired than literarily so. And so Sara, aka @DIYSara whose bloggery can be found here, suggested that I "TarotWriMo" - design a deck of tarot cards in a month. I was hoping to get a deck done by Christmas so I can print one up and give it to a friend, so this sounds like great inspiration.

And so it shall be. I've done sketches for the 6 cards below so far, and I consider that those can count fine towards my total, though I will polish them and rework them to make them suitable.

30 days in November = 72 remaining cards = 2 sketches per day on weekdays, and 4 per day on weekends, with a few extra days for fixing/reworking cards, or just being tired.

Since I've just done a massive tarot-journalling effort, I'm definitely primed, prepared, and ready to go.

November is my TarotWriMo.

Excavating the subconscious: tarot journalling and Jungian archetypes.

2009-10-28T16:08:00.000Z

(from the DruidCraft tarot, art by Will Worthington)

Within two days of my picking up a tarot deck for the first time, a deep, massive personal tragedy occured. Having emigrated, and escaped a very negative personal environment for the first time, I was already in the throes of self-renewal, the first heady, frightening days of freedom in which one begins to map out what might happen next.

I encountered the works of Jung at this time, and experienced the glorious triple sensation of being inspired, stimulated, and reassured that I am not alone in the way I choose to think and live. As an aspiring cultural scholar, Jung's focus on the role of archetypes, or notions of being which exist beyond the collective subconscious, fascinated me, and so I chose to look into tarot to explore archetypal imagery.

I love that reading tarot encourages a sense that life can be viewed from any number of viewpoints, and that the evets of any one life can be found resonating in the lives and experiences of others. I do not read for divination, but to explore possible associations and open my mind to new perspectives.

When I first began learning tarot, I kept a journal to help me learn the meanings and associations of the cards, but that dropped off sharply when life became a little too convoluted, and grief too severe, to maintain any ritual save that of waking, eating and sleeping. Most teachers of tarot recommend students keep a journal at least at the start of their progress, if not always, in order to record readings, to assist analysis of cards, and to help explore personal associations.

My current approach is designed as a tarot refresher course - I am going through the cards one by one and listing what I remember from what I have learnt, but also cultural imagery, historical events, life experiences, and anything else I can think of which I associate with the card. This is therefore a mixed bag of academic learning, free associative writing, meditation, and autobiography. Given that I've given myself a break from writing, this felt like a structured, safe way back in.

Of course, choosing notebooks was a major ordeal. I went with one XL Moleskine Squared Cahier for the Minor Arcana, and one for the Major Arcana plus any other musings, after toying with the idea of a soemwhat prettier Asda Executive from my stash. Expansive, but flexible and light, this also gives me enough space to do another 'refresher' in the same notebooks, and thus refer back to them at the same time and see how my subconscious associations, and knowledge of tarot, is growing.

So far, so good. There have been some obstacles; the suit of swords, particularly cards eight, nine and ten, are actually too painful for me to look at or think about because of the associations in my life that they bring up. Of course, I was blithely journalling at work this morning until I ran into those and a tumult of emotion came flowing out. I had to quickly skip on to Cups, which is a suit I feel innately in tune with, and Wands, which is starting to make more sense to me now (interesting, now I'm becoming more inspired, I can interpret cards about inspiration better...)

I'll post some pictures when I'm done, hopefully tomorrow. I'm trying to complete the journals quickly so that this weekend I can reap the benefits of this work and delve more into my other creative project, which is becoming more and more grandiose in its ambitions. I feel like I have Icarus wings... in any case, at least this seems to be a way of putting one foot in front of the other, which is a very good start before I take off.

Some tarot links:

Sallie Nichols' 'Jung and Tarot' : one of my favourite books, a fascinating exploration of world history and culture through Jung and the Major Arcana.
Learn Tarot: Free online course, explanation of tarot, and database of different decks.

My decks:
Druidcraft (my first and favourite)
Classic Rider-Waite
New Century Tarot
Marseille
Hermetic (fascinating for learning about the history of esoteric thought)

Artistic check-in...

2009-10-25T19:34:00.000Z

This is a map drawn in the 1200s by Richard of Holdingham and Lafford, which is held in Hereford Cathedral. It's the largest medieval map still in existence, and is a fascinating representation of the philosophy of mind as space, and the complex medieval conception of the human relationship to the environment.

The above is Grayson Perry's latest work, The Walthamstow Tapestry... a modern twist on the Bayeux, and more generally the imagery of contemporary culture. Fabulous. Can't wait to pop down to Islington to see it.

The two of these are making the cogs in my brain turn with alacrity. Things will come of this inspiration, and hopefully by that time I will have access to a good enough camera to show my finished works off to you. It's nice to finally feel inspired.

Kuretake Waterbrush and more tarot sketches.

2009-10-24T22:48:00.000+01:00

Given that I've done sketches for six cards in three months, I'm a bit despondent about ever completing my own tarot deck. Nonetheless, it's nice to work with the imagery. In mine, I'm trying to make the designs as streamlined and controlled as possible, using only Noodler's Lexington Grey and Bulletproof Black, a random dip pen I picked up for 99p on eBay, and a Kuretake Waterbrush.

I've had the brush a while now (for as long as I've been promising a review - I know, I know) and I picked it up from Jetpens for $4.50.

Firstly, this is GREAT FUN and great value. It's very easy to control the water flow through the brush, and it's so convenient. The 'fine' brush size is not quite as fine as a felt-tip, but you can get some precision lines if you are steady-handed enough to just use the tip. It works stunningly with fountain pen ink, even the bulletproof kind, as you can mix with water literally as you brush to create varied washes. This is really freeing creatively and involves far less logistical stuffing around before you can get to the process of making what you want to make. As such, it is a perfect tool - for me, it's really indispensible, which is impressive for a couple of quid.

The only issue, which to me is no issue, is that the brush tip has discoloured from using Noodler's ink. While it was once white, it now looks like this:

Bad picture, yes, but I now most definitely have a black-bristled brush pen. This doesn't bother me in the slightest, but the finicky might conceivably have a problem.

Buy one here.

And now, new tarot sketches. 'Scuse camera quality, as always. The Hermit, Temperance, The World, and The Wheel of Fortune. I'm going to have to add colour to that one - was going for the effect of a circle of feathers floating on a pond amongst lilypads, but it was a bit ambitious for me to capture. All completed in my Asda Executive notebook I won from Sam, aka Future Nostalgic some months ago - which takes ink washes perfectly. And stay tuned, because I bought a swag of them home from Asda last week, and I WILL be giving some away. :)

Review: The Sharpie Retractable Pen

2009-10-22T22:49:00.001+01:00

I won the Sharpie pen quite a few months ago from the good OfficeSupplyGeek. The idea of it was quite exciting, and even though as a rule I try to avoid disposable pens, I was keen to see what Sharpie were coming up with, given their market saturation with markers. And besides, it was free, and I can't resist a competition. Moreover, this isn't available in the UK yet so I felt delightfully avantgarde.

At first, I really loved these. I keep them at work usually, and as I type most of the day, I only really get a chance to use them in meetings. it feels lovely to use, even though at first glance it's rather unlike what I expected from a Sharpie branded pen. Perhaps slightly too thick, but as someone used to fountain pens, this isn't a big problem. The grip is smooth and unobtrusive, and at first it had a lovely smooth flow, giving a fine line (about 0.7 mm to my eye). I also love the novelty of a retractable felt-tip. It feels like a minor victory for modern science in some way. The retractable function is also really effective and also rather fun. It reminds me rather a lot of being in primary school and annoying teachers by continuously clicking my pen. The ink is nice and opaque, a good pure black.

However after sitting on my desk for about two months, I'm pretty disappointed by the way this has worn over time. Again, it rather reminds me of the Artline fineline pens we had to buy for school. They were glorious to start with, but the tip would blunt and bend over time and become very difficult to use. This is not so extreme a case, but the tip on my Sharpie is going that way rather quickly. It's not affecting the way my writing appears at this stage, but it feels awkward to use now that the tip is stiffening and folding at an angle.

This is such a shame, and I think can be put down to the fact that Sharpie tend to focus more on thicker tips, and permanent ink. While this product is good to start with, I just don't think Sharpie I have worked out how to 'do' pens of this nature yet. With some further development, this could be a great pen, but since it's only really usable for a short time, I can't really recommend it yet. If they bring out a revised model, I will definitely be up for it. It's just a shame when a disposable pen gives out so soon, as there's no way of fixing it or dealing with it. So while I can't say I'll be picking up any shortly, I'll be watching Sharpie closely to see where they go with this.

Check it out at the official Sharpie site.

Reading as therapy.

2009-10-21T15:34:00.001+01:00

So much of 'fixing ourselves' or others or the world we live in seems to be oriented towards deep, textual analysis, writing screeves on every interconnected topic in the hope of reaching the forgotten, the lost, the subatomic particles of truth that will help us in the ends of explaining away the troubles we face.

Sometimes, even for a person who by nature is an avid journal writer, who loves academia and who has shamefully constrained literary aspirations, the time comes to stop navelgazing.

This has been the inspiration for my 'writing holiday' - for thinking a little more about what I write, and why I write it - for not unearthing pain for the sake of it, but to reflect without words, to feel without analysing, to let things settle and rearrange themselves somewhat before dragging forth words and 'answers' and essays and other signifiers of 'productivity'.

I've always been big on music as therapy. Fairport Convention's Unhalfbricking was my escapist therapeutic soul-cleanser of 2006-2007; something about it just unlocked all the unarticulated and inconceivable feelings floating around me at that time. Kaki King's Dreaming of Revenge was the next one - ever since I heard it, right up until now, it's got a hold over me that I can only attribute to the way I feel its language, in colours and visions and emotions and sights which go beyond words and hit me straight in the soul.

Reading, and taking in, is one of my main forms of 'therapy' at the moment. Natalie Goldberg talks about the compost heap of the mind - the need to keep raking over ideas and let them decompose until they finally bring forth rewards, reformed and reconstituted by the act of reflection. She tends to encourage writing as the tool for this, but as anyone with a compost heap knows, sometimes you need to let it sit for a while, and not touch it, before you start poking around to see what it can give you. And letting rich matter pile up as fuel can allow you to reap bigger, more fruitful rewards later.

I can read about 200 pages a day just on the train to and from work, so if I put my mind to it I can tear through rather a lot. And that's what I've been trying to do lately - plug myself back into the world of writing not by dredging out ideas from a dry well, but from filling it with ideas and inspiration.

The Idiot - Fydor Dostoyevsky
The Trial - Franz Kafka
The Undiscovered Self - C.G. Jung
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
The Glass Bead Game - Herman Hesse
Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
I've also been reading lots of tarot, and lots of books about tarot. This has been really helpful in getting my brain working in terms of imagery, rearrangement, the interaction of concepts. Tarot is like playing with Lego for an artist. Sticking ideas together, pulling them apart - using timehonoured, unbreakable bricks, playing with new configurations, reinterpreting and reforming the world in our preferred image. It's fundamental, soothing, and inherently enriching to allow your current whims, concerns and fears to be 'plugged in' to a vast cultural history through the means of tarot archetypal imagery - at once making you feel original and the mystic heir of a tradition which flows through the human experience, bypassing the individualism of creation and tapping into shared knowledge.
Julia Cameron talks about 'filling the well', and by doing so with the words of others I'm beginning to feel a lot more well-rounded and generally coherent than I have for a long time. Cameron is referring more to experiences, such as going new places, but I think it fits with just sitting and reading, be it books or tarot. Taking a holiday from writing is thus working wonderfully, as I slowly feel like I'm reconnecting with the world around me by just seeing for its own sake - reading for the sake of knowing. I feel now like when I take up writing in earnest again, it will mean all the more because of it.

Review: Quo Vadis Scholar Planner - makes me happier than killing new plants.

2009-10-21T12:30:00.000+01:00

One day when I was pining for stationery I dropped by Quo Vadis and replied to a giveaway post, in which I happened to mention I had a blog (i.e. this one) and would look forward to reviewing some of their items.
Fast forward a few weeks later, when I receive a lovely package from Karen in the US with a Scholar Planner in their Equology range, and a free baby Rhodia No.10 notebook in it. When I happened to mention on Twitter that I had gotten caught in the rain with my new notebooks, they even noticed my tweet and offered to replace them free of charge.

(The Scholar in an Equology cover)
To be honest, that's fairly impressive to me. And given that bloggers can now have their pants/trousers/legwarmers sued off if we don't disclose interests, I disclose herewith that Karen from Quo Vadis did kindly send these items out to me for free in exchange for a review, which I am more than happy to give considering the almost unnaturally lovely manner of service I've received from them. (lthough I'd disclose interests anyway, mind you, because it's just basically ethical. I just find it amusing it's now legally enshrined in the US.)

And so, here is my slightly worse-for-wear Textagenda Scholar. I chose it because of the 100% recycled paper content, which is definitely a step above most stationery of that quality.

I chose to order mine without a cover, though you can get black, pink purple and all sorts of slip cases. I like the woodgrainish retro feel of the embossed paper, and as you can see, it held up pretty well with the English rain.

The layout is quite different to what I'm used to in a planner. Firstly, I'm glad there's no endless pages of "how to convert a hundredweight into acres squared" and other needless "reference" pages that drive me mad in most planners I've ever owned. The standout function for me was the daily 'priority' section which I've ended up making for myself in most planners I've ever had - very glad to see it 'built in' to allow you to clearly mark the most important concerns for the day.

The paper is very smooth. Unfortunately its being so highly bleached and processed sort of undermines part of the point of it being an 'eco' range. To be honest, I would have preferred a slightly less pristine paper feel. But for most people that's hardly a problem, and truthfully I'm just quibbling. This feels just as clear and crisp (though not as translucent) as most Clairefontaine paper, which is a definite plus on minimising show through and allowing your notes to have an eyepopping quality.

The media I tried were Noodler's Lexington Grey, Diamine Umber, a Preppy Platignum, and a Sharpie fineliner pen (courtesy of OfficeSupplyGeek). All of these worked perfectly, with no problem, whatsoever.

Most of my planners over the last few years have been 18 month Moleys, as I love having 18 months over the usual 12, and the format of the week on one page, notebook page on the other format that allows me to be more free-form. And to be honest, I do miss that here. All the space is very structured and there's not much space for random notes, shopping lists and so on. However if I was still a student, this is exactly the kind of thing I would have needed, a good, firm structure to pour my study commitments into in order to force me through the semester's work in a vaguely timely fashion. The blue ink with which it's printed isn't exactly my cup of tea, as I prefer a more muted colour scheme, but it's clear and crisp and easy to read. This is a highly functional planner that doesn't take any nonsense, and there's a lot to like about that, even coming from a hyper-aestheticised Moleskine-planner background. It's crisp, linear and looks like a blank canvas, but is in fact deviously structured to drive you to actually performing the tasks you write down, rather than just staring admiringly at them.

If I were to buy one myself, I think I'd go for the daily, though, if only because I think it looks a bit more charming ... also, I'm leaning towards putting my daily 'to-do's' in my planner so they're all in one place, and I think that they might not fit in the weekly.
I'd like to see Exaclair keep going down the road of more environmentally friendly stationery. At 100% post-consumer paper, and 85% recycled materials overall, this is a real knockout, and this is certainly a more ethical option than many commercially available planners out there. What's more it's actually a great product, which is versatile and of very high quality, so there's not a sense that you're suffering for choosing something slightly more environmentally friendly. As such I really look forward to seeing what they come up with next, as I think this range will push the quality stationery market forward in terms of sensible, quality production. I wholeheartedly thank Quo Vadis to try this product out!

Buy here at Quo Vadis USA.

Info from Quo Vadis:

Collection recycled at 85%
90 g alkaline/neutral paper
Certified EcoLogo, processed chlorine-free and FSC recycled
Printed on 100% recycled paper
Contains 100% post-consumer fiber
Manufactured using biogas energy
Cover made without chlorine
Soft, lightly textured, textile feel cover
Refillable
12 months, August to July
Extra white, super smooth paper
90g, acid-free and pH neutral paper
Annual planning calendar for 2010
Tear-off corner opens to week in progress
Sewn or spiral binding
Sewn binding, lays flat when open
Space for assignments, project notes, test dates
Ruled lines to write neatly
Maps
Detachable address book
Refillable

Review: Clairefontaine are notebook tofu.

2009-10-19T14:41:00.000+01:00

I bought this Clairefontaine notebook months ago on a stationery binge of unknown origin. I think it may have been as simple a fact as it was a sunny day, and £2.99 to try out a Clairefontaine notebook (which so many people obsess over) seemed like a trifle.

However, in the rush of consumer-insulin flooding my bloodstream, I omitted to remember that I hate to use wirebound notebooks for anything but the most functional tasks – which meant that it was relegated to the ‘minute-taking’ pile at work and largely forgotten.

And so by the time I got to using it, my initial motivations were completely forgotten, and I merely grabbed it on the way to yet another meeting. No aesthetic or pleasure-oriented motivations came into play – it was a series of bound pages, and I needed such for my work.

This ghastly utilitarianism was somewhat put to rest in the act of actually using the notebook.

The paper is like porcelain, translucent, charming, crisp and impeccably white. Show-through seems like a feature, rather than a detraction, in this context, illustrating the ghostly purity of the paper. This is, of course, laden with hyperbole, but this is possibly the first time I’ve encountered paper which felt like a curiosity in itself, a strange half-existent film of whiteness waiting for the shock of an inkstain.

However, the problem for me with items so impeccable is the fact that they are too much of a blank slate. While crisp, unmarked perfection has its place, that place is certainly far away from me. In anything I encounter in life, I want distinctive, original character, a sense of originality and purpose. The unobtrusiveness of the Clairefontaine is remarkable, but for me that makes it undesirable. It’s the tofu of notebooks. A big slice of bland waiting to be dressed up – by use in Exaclair or Rhodia notebooks, for example, which at least have unique styles. In those contexts, the paper shines, instead of here, in which it simpers sadly between wretchedly uniform covers. Perfectly suited to my mindlessly bureaucratic job, in its way, but not something I’d voluntarily include in my life any more than absolutely necessary.

I have a still-shrinkwrapped pad of Clairefontaine Triomphe which I will definitely use, and I will look with favour upon products such as QuoVadis and Rhodia which use Clairefontaine paper. But I won’t be seeking out their original home-brand products again. I’d prefer a rebranding which infuses some life and verve into the notebook, which makes it a real creative tool, rather than a featureless redundancy.

£2.99, A5 Clairefontaine wirebound notebook from Rymans.co.uk.

Lady Lazarus is writing the mental detox.

2009-10-07T15:21:00.001+01:00

John Millais - Ophelia (1850)

Following on from my last couple of posts here and here, I think I need to have me a Lady Lazarus moment.

"Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air."

Now I neither have red hair nor intend to consume men. The reason, however that Plath's poem gets bandied about so often and fills the "quotes" section of a million Facebook pages is because she so aptly puts the metaphor of a biblical rebirth into the concept of self-definition, rebirth and self-empowerment through a casting off of that which went before.

So much of what gets in the way of any attempt at self expression, be it clear speaking, clear thinking, or potent writing, is the detritus of life we cling to and which clings to us. The mildew and parasites and fungal growths and clinging vines and snares and the adapted limps and stunted mannerisms one attracts in trying to navigate life are the source of inspiration, but they are also a source of constriction and negativity. Observing them, rather than being ensnared by them, is the key. And observation requires distance in order to focus.

If you inhabit your thoughts, you can't formulate the words clamouring at your throat - such as when you are too angry to speak, too grief-striken to cry. If you inhabit your past, you lack the distance to reflect on it. The spatial metaphor is as valuable as that of rebirth. When you separate yourself from your life - or a part of your life - or the constraints which have grown around you - it is only then that the perspective becomes unified enough to express. Funhouse-mirror imagery can be evocative but it also fails to communicate its content.

I refer mainly to habits of thinking, manners of expression, fears, imagery, and preoccupations which are carried from minute to minute around our beings. When we speak and we carry the weight of previous judgements, when we write under the influence of past praises and criticisms, is when the content of our thoughts and perceptions is conditioned by the world outside ourselves, and we express ideas that fit that.

Now it is one thing to own your experiences, and to speak from them. But it is quite another to let them stunt the ways you can feel, and communicate, and be. And I think it is often the most painful experiences that have the greatest capacity to stunt, but also have the most burning need to be expressed.

That's certainly the case for me. To put it mildly, I've had a hell of a time of it lately, with anxiety, PTSD, emigrating, a close family member's suicide, and a number of other drastic changes (not all so terible as those).

I don't say that for any reason other than to acknowledge that now the dust has settled, it is very healthy to step outside of the mental bunker I built for my mind while it was under attack.

Living, thinking and trying to write while operating under the constraints of a 'survival mode' mindset just didn't work for me. When sanity feels tentative, life is too tumultuous, and emotions are too primal for articulation, trying to wring words from myself that meant anything at all was both painful and laughable.

So I might not go quite so far as a Lady Lazarus physical metamorphasis, but a mental detox sounds fully appropriate here. Although interesting I used the image of a bunker just above - not all that different from Plath's subterranean imagery, rising from the grave, shirking the detritus of decay and emerging clean.

But the end point - the clean, uninhibited perspective on the tumultuous past, and the energetic, clear perspective on the future - is necessary, desirable and now possible.

So, a list of that which I cast away in my creative/intellectual/spiritual/whateveral rebirth:

1. Guilt. I know exactly what happened in my life to make me feel it. That doesn't make it valid to feel it so frequently and constantly. It makes me think small, act small, and speak small. When it appears, it doesn't need to be inhabited.

2. Shame. Seemingly similar to the above but in fact involves positing the judgement of others. Which in most cases is an unnecessary externalisation of the conscience, or an internalisation of the most virulent censor, which you yourself become. In my case, has same origin as guilt, and can therefore disappear also.

3. Mental clutter. My head is racing to keep up with a hectic life that has largely abated. Things are simpler than I give them credit for. Rather than anticipating complexity, stress and negativity from without, I'm clearing the slate. It's all gone. Or it will be once I've finished sweeping it away. The Buddhist expression is 'The Ten Thousand Things'. In my case, most of those things don't even feature in my life any more but appear only as ghosts. The rest are largely the irrelevancy of white noise. From which I now believe it is timely to tune out.

4. Primal emotion. I don't have so much of a choice in this one, due to the miracles of human neuropsychology. Conditioning leads to chemical release which leads to certain feelings or flashbacks or whatever else. Once the initial wave has passed, or before it has begun, I can do things about, though. I can stop fearing my own mental capacities, and I can choose not to continue to inhabit them once the moment has passed. I can minimise the impact it has on the rest of my life by choosing to see it as part of the flow, and not a threat. And from a creative standpoint, PTSD and dissociative experiences are genuinely interesting topics for art. So the more distance and perspective I can gain on those experiences, the better I can express them without letting them consume me.

So there. I choose none of those to be part of who I am anymore. A long blog to explain a short list. Like Lady Lazarus, I am reborn, but I severely doubt if what I write next will turn out like Sylvia Plath. But at least, hopefully, it will turn out something like myself.

Get sick, get well, hang around an inkwell: On getting off my own back.

2009-10-05T12:00:00.001+01:00

Exhibit A: Look out, kid, you're gonna get hit.

Exhibit B: “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's.” ~ William Blake.

Exhibit C: John Stuart Mill was brought up by his father on a strict diet of intellectualism. He was reading Ancient Greek and Latin fluently in early childhood - never had time to play - had few if any friends, did literally nothing but study in his waking hours, until his early 20s.

And then, suddenly, he had an episode. One in which he was confined to his bed for months and felt nothing but lethargy and despair. And then he delved deeply into Coleridge and Wordsworth and the poetry his father had forbidden him to read. His father had said such art had no purpose - it was not scientific, did not further the world's progress, was merely subjective daydreams and would do nothing but indulge human weakness and rot the brain.

Mill said that turning to these works of art restored him, fed him, nurtured him. He was able to recover from his nervous collapse and come to be one of the 19th century's foremost political philosophers, by expounding a form of rationalism that came tinged with a subjective understanding his contemporaries lacked - an understanding he traced back to the Romantic poets that he believed saved him from a nervous breakdown.

Exhibit D: 'NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!' ~ Opening lines of 'Hard Times' by Charles Dickens.

No matter where I look, everyone my whole life has been both offering systems and telling me to create my own. Academia. Religion. Spirituality. Philosophy. Art. Everything has a model. There are even model blogs I wistfully look at, wishing I too could dutifully fill mine with neat, well-photographed reviews and insightful witticisms.

Jung makes a brilliant point that at the heart of Christian dogma is a contradiction - follow blindly this set doctrine, yet it is one which describes an individual's journey of discovery of himself and other people. So you're meant to emulate the life of Jesus, but rather than follow your own path, you're meant to copy the officially sanctioned one - which undermines the whole notion of self-development.

So to follow the model you're meant to find your own way. Which is a model in itself, in which I have any number of role models - Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Jung, artists like Turner and Kandinsky and Robert Morris, and any number of people who made the world fit them, and not the other way around.

So why do I keep seeking out models - refuge in lists of 'shoulds' and extant moral, creative and spiritual models? Like anyone else, because it's safe. I consider my self-awareness regarding this to at least move me one step towards demolishing it, but that in itself is not enough.

The act of finding your own way involves the extreme paradox of becoming aware of greater and greater systems, the myriad of individual ways of being, and then somehow constructing that which is appropriate specifically to yourself. So it involves more and more awareness, more and more external influence, more and more openness, and more self-examination. You choose your existence. Infinite subjectivity.

And the more I think about it, that's what interests me beyond anything else. Subjective meaning, proper post-Romanticist MEANING in the nihilistic, self-constructed sense. This is strange because I'm ostensibly training to be a historian, and I've already found that this bent in my writing can rile a few empiricists (who are still out there, believing in their absolute knowables and teleologies of human progress).

Like many people with "difficult" upbringings, I am in two minds about a great many things - and only one of those is my own. The other is a very harsh, reductive manner of thinking which I was taught was right, while my own was wrong. This mind voices its opinions loudly and often and spins an orthodoxy chosen for me by elder members of my family, my school, the 'friends' I chose later on as surrogates for parental authority. A voice that is fundamentally not mine, overlaid on one that is.

The act of choosing not to follow that is intrinsically difficult because it involves constant vigilance to erode tendencies that are borrowed, ideas that are not genuine, and beliefs that ring hollow. So you end up picking your battles and hanging in there and hoping that at some point you can hear your own voice loud enough to do what you actually want.

But I can't guilt myself about that. Or, more accurately, I can, and do, and have decided to desist henceforth.

Because I've proved I can hear myself when I want. I emigrated at 21, I stood up to abusive family members, I became vegan, I chose a hard and innovative thesis topic and stuck it out till the end, and I've done lots of other things that prove there is a voice that's mine in there.

So the next stage is to just get off my own back. To let the writing come when it wants, and when I want - to stop borrowing other people's tricks and to find my own - to just relax about what I do, when and why I do it, and know that I am now in a safe place to do so without anyone bringing me down except myself.

So all I need to do then is relax. Watch my parking meters and let myself, my writing and creativity, my thesis ideas, and everything else evolve. It'll happen when it needs to, and I don't need to rush out in search of a system to save and fix that which nothing but time will let mature. I'll just hang around my inkwell until I'm good and ready to say what needs to be said.

Writing guilt.

2009-09-30T11:07:00.000+01:00

I have had so much writing guilt lately.

Blog posts I haven't finished, emails I haven't written, stuff I haven't reviewed, stories I haven't written. And then there's a general feeling that I 'should be writing' - even though I can't pin this feeling down. I don't know what exactly I'm meant to be writing, but I'm sure it's something, and the fact that I'm not makes me feel awful and ashamed.

This, however, is completely ridiculous. I understand the value of writing as a habit and writing when you feel like you don't - this is why I do Julia Cameron's 'Morning Pages' each morning, 3 pages of longhand as soon as you get up (or in my case on the train to work) of unmitigated headpour.

But right now, my resources are very limited, and I think there's only so much navel-gazing one can do. I've done an awful lot lately, a ridiculous amount of plumbing deep psychological depths and pulling out all kinds of images and memories and truths from my subconscious. At the same time, I'd been barely reading, by my standards. I adore reading and always have, and something feels amiss when I'm not taking in new ideas in vast amounts on a regular basis.

And I think the reason I'm not writing, either longhand, or online, is just that the idea of any more words issuing forth from me is a bit distasteful.

Or maybe that I'm putting too much out without taking enough in.

So I'm on a writing holiday, other than the 'morning pages' to keep my consciousness in order. I think I need a little break from incessantly analysing and assessing and pulling apart my world to replicate it in words. It's not always good for you to just keep writing, just keep forcing yourself to dredge a dry well. Sometimes you need to fill it up.

Anyway, I will keep blogging because it's conversational and doesn't feel like 'real writing', and I do still want to keep those reviews coming (when I finish them... ), but I think being so obsessive about my output is just doing no favours. For a little while, I'm going to think about taking in the world, rather than just reporting its existence.

O-Check in Disguise - Katy and June Stationery

2009-09-22T10:12:00.000+01:00

The kind people at Papernation informed me the other day that O-Check Designs, whose absence I was lamenting in the UK... are actually available here. The reason I couldn't find them was because they are marketed under the name 'Katy and June' here.

You can find their collection here. It's exactly the same, and lacks the insanely prohibitive shipping costs incurred by buying them from Australia. Such good value, such good quality, and such character!

Some of my favourite items aren't available in the UK yet, but I have much more faith now that I know there's at least one stockist who loves them as much as I do. The range at PaperNation seems more brightly coloured and childlike than the ranges available in Australia. For the more retro-style pieces, Notemaker is still definitely the way to go, at least for now... but I will be keeping an eye out to see if any pops up here. Am irrationally excited about this.

Jung and the Creative Zing

2009-09-20T17:47:00.004+01:00

Shamdasani found in a self-published book written by a former
client, in which she recalls Jung’s advice for processing what went on in the
deeper and sometimes frightening parts of her mind.
“I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can — in some beautifully bound book,” Jung instructed. “It will seem as if you were making the visions banal — but then you need to do that — then you are freed from the power of them. . . .
Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book
& turn over the pages & for you it will be your church — your
cathedral — the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If
anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them — then
you will lose your soul — for in that book is your soul.”

From 'Carl Jung and the Holy Grail of the Unconscious' in the NY Times.

For those who aren't as ardently obsessive about Jung as I am swiftly becoming:

Just prior to World War I, CG Jung, a diligent psychiatrist, felt himself becoming less and less happy to sit amongst the current scientific thinking of his peers, not only with regards to mental illness and how to treat it, but with what he saw as a more general malaise of scientific rationalism at the expense of vast swathes of the human experience.

At about this time, he began to experience what he called 'visions'. For six years, he actively plunged into the darkest imagery of his subconscious, inviting these powerful images and ideas into his head, so that he could process them, make sense of them, and finally make art of them, by copying them into a red leather-bound book, with swirling antique-style calligraphy and illuminated images. He made a 15th-century manuscript of his soul.

And soon, according to NYT, it will be published for the first time. I cannot WAIT to finally see this. This has long seemed to me like the most beautiful thing someone could do with a journal, and one of the most powerful tools towards self-understanding.

I think I have come close to doing this at times, however I cannot work so immaculately as Jung and my books become sloppy, victims of the speed of my mind as I process and unearth forgotten traumas or surprise pleasant memories.

But I think this has to be the goal, really. To really get yourself out onto the page. To really get INTO yourself to understand what is there. It's that perfect symbiosis of self and page that so many people are drawn to, such that it might even be an innate human need to self-express the possibilities there lurk within us. We have to do it. It's not even negotiable. Problems occur when we act as if it is. Imagine if Jung had stifled those visions - they would have truly driven him mad. If Ginsberg had stifled his.

We go into ourselves to find what we need, and having found it, we need to document the coordinates. Writing (or painting or dancing or speaking or thinking poetry or making music or cakes or whatever you do that makes your life art) is a basic human need. These are just our cave paintings, the marks we need to make to make ourselves right inside. And so we do.

The Julia Cameron Phenomenon AND review of Ryman's Bumper Casebound Notebook

2009-09-20T13:10:00.008+01:00

The Julia Cameron Phenomenon is a pervasive one. She's got to be very well off now, having sold so many millions of books and she's STILL touring, doing classes based on her work, all over the world.

A lot of people say she teaches what people should find for themselves anyway - that more personal means should be used for individuals to get in touch with their creative selves. A lot more people say she's too spiritualistic and new-agey - a lot more say she's too traditionally Christian - a lot more say she's blind to feminist/race/blahblah in her approaches... and so it goes. A lot of people, too, swear by her works.

For those who might have been trapped under a funky mattress for the past 20 years, her first book, The Artist's Way, is a 12-week 'recovery programme' for those who she calls 'blocked creatives' - people who have lost touch with the creative aspect of their selves and lives, and who want to reinvigorate it. She suggests tools to allow yourself more time, space, and to give yourself psychological permission to create, and to adopt attitudes to yourself, your committments, the needs of others, and the world around you, which are conducive to creativity.

I started with The Artist's Way about four years ago and have gone through it twice. Her later books, The Vein of Gold and The Sound of Paper, have been of far more use to me as creative therapy, helping me work through some traumatic life experiences in a creative way, and helping me reconnect with aspects of my personality and my worldview I thought I had lost through negative life experiences. They also helped me persevere through my undergraduate dissertation, so far the only long-term writing project I have undertaken, and gave me a lot of strength and inspiration during the harder portions of the year.

Sometimes she gets a bit too traditionally religious for me, but you can always reframe that. Her later books are more esoterically inclined, which suits me more, but it also leaves more space for personal interpretation and reinterpretation of her ideas. And of course, if she suggests an exercise that doesn't sit right with you, you don't do it. Or better still, you give it a try and see how you go. Some parts of her philosophy don't agree with me - but I don't mind, because her project is far more that you go out and develop your own way of thinking.

Because of this, I've found her books to be a great support to me when I've been in hard places, and her ideas have really helped me develop a greater sense of myself as a writer.

SO. I've been feeling bleugh lately and needing to get back in touch with things that keep me more well balanced - like writing enough, and doing enough creative ANYTHING, and planning my MA dissertation proposal. So I thought a return to The Vein of Gold would give me a kick start. So I needed a fresh notebook to get into it with.

A few weeks ago I went into Ryman's, the UK high street stationer, for the first time, and I came out with this.

I bought it for two main reasons - it was 352 pages, and I am tiring quickly of notebooks with only 200 pages or so, because I never get enough chances to get to know them.

Also, they remind me of a cheaper version of Bookbinders Design notebooks, which I adored in Melbourne and inexplicably cannot get in the UK.

The pages are sewn signatures which are glued together. It looks and feels really secure - only shortcoming is that the central pages don't open completely flat, but with such a thick book that's partly to be expected. It has a hard cover with a matte lowkey version of the faux-leatherette that everyone seems to use for their black notebook coverings. At 18 x 23.5 cm it's a bit between A5 and quarto size, which feels quite natural to use. It has discreet grey endpapers, which is more than can be said for the marking on the spine:

Yes, Ryman's, I know. I bought a ruled notebook. I don't need this loudly emblazoned on the spine. I'm looking out for a groovy label to cover this up with.

That's probably the only shortcoming on this notebook for me, though. It has nice generous ruling, which I prefer because I find it easier to ignore if I choose to, as well as allowing me to use it when I need. The paper is exceptionally smooth, if a little on the thin side - my new Sharpie pens (courtesy of OfficeSupplyGeek!) and Noodler's Bulletproof Black both showed through, but not in a distracting way. Pencil glides across the paper in a very seductively silky way (Staedtler Mars Technico being my clutch pencil of choice... I love the ones that hold giant leads.)

The white of the paper is very inviting, not too stark, and the lines aren't too bold, both of which are often problems for me with cheaper lined notebooks. I know the photos make it look quite grey.... but to give you an idea, the endpapers are not unlike the grey background on Microsoft Word if you zoom out from the page... and the white of the paper is warmer than office paper, and subtler and duller, while still being white. The endpapers also took ink very well, which can sometimes be a problem (I like to write on any and all available space.)

(endpaper in Sharpie Pen black, first page in Noodler's Bulletproof black and my own blend of bulletproof black and Lexington Grey. Apologies for the awful photo, my phone camera is literally held together with cardboard and stickytape. The above is the preparatory guidelines and commitment to yourself you sign at the start of working with a Julia Cameron book.)

I have really missed Bookbinders Design notebooks, with a ridiculous passion. Nothing can really replace them for me, and sadly I and my bank account are not quite ready to spend 25 euro to have them shipped from Sweden to me. In the meantime, this is a pretty fabulous addition to the arsenal. At £4.99 for a 352 page notebook, it's not expensive, and is readily available online or if I make a trip down Baker St on my lunch break. I'm getting so tired of just getting acquainted with a notebook only to have it finished, and I'd really rather not spend SO much money on them either while things are a bit tight. (When the money rolls in, watch out Sweden, because a massive bulk order from Bookbinders is coming your way.)

And it's just perfect to re-start my Vein of Gold work in. Big enough to do some intensive work and lots of digging around in my subconscious, while I can keep as much of it as I can in the one easy to refer to book (without losing it somewhere in my giant boxes of notebooks). It feels like a really natural combination, and that tends to be the best way to do it - when it feels effortless, and it just makes sense.

Old diaries, old thoughts, and Pezimystic.

2009-09-14T14:48:00.003+01:00

This post at Notebook Stories really got me thinking today.

I don't have any of my childhood or teenage diaries. My mother kept reading them and using their contents against me; sometimes she would write responses in them, often cruel and hurtful ones, to my innermost thoughts. I think I ended up throwing them away.

I still have all my diaries/notebooks from 2004 onwards. When I emigrated, I had to box them all up, and in the name of making a new life for myself and soldiering forth into the future, they remain in a box in my grandmother's garage in Melbourne, awaiting the day I can pay huge expense to ship them over.

This regularly pains me, that so much of my art and internal process and thoughts and feelings and inner life is inaccessible to me. I forgot how much I rely on having certain things near me, just for comfort - I feel like a whole section of my past is now beyond my reach, my old identity lost and kept in mothballs. This is liberating in some ways but it also leaves me with a deep sense of loss, being unable to access swathes of the thoughts and aspects of my former self, for an indeterminate future being held in suspense.

Which is in part why I think the work of my friend Penny, a Melbourne-based artist, is so brave and ingenious. Her latest exhibition was called Notes; a selection of artist's books, artworks and installation pieces constructed from her journals, notes, and ideas. Sadly I was on the wrong side of the world to see it myself, but I can't wait to buy some of the pieces from it. She is really insightful about her own creative process, and very brave and honest to literally make art from the paper on which her notes are taken.

She is a very inspirational artist and her blog is fabulous. She also makes wearable art too...

Check her out and keep posted on her blog.

It makes me very happy to see someone refashioning her thoughts into beautiful things, and not just leaving them to moulder in a dusty garage.

Drawing and sticking.

2009-09-14T11:14:00.005+01:00

About a year ago, I did a series of collages which included pictures of Damian Hirst artworks, so nihilistic and empty and aggressive, as centrepieces.

Glad I didn't try to flog them.

This is just a bit ridiculous, no?

I think he's forgetting the point of, oh, everything he's ever done. If it had a point. Cut the collagers some slack, Damian, and just deal with being ubiquitous.

........

This is one of a series I took with my dodgy phone camera on the Tube the other day. I want to draw these in charcoal - hence the blur doesn't matter too much, and besides, I would have been bumped into by commuters had I stopped to take them properly. The walkway from the Waterloo & City line at Bank - it looks like something from a sci-fi film.

Guess where I'm going?

2009-09-10T11:18:00.002+01:00

Oh yeah. The train service to London decided to just not run last Sunday, thwarting my attempts to go to the London Vegan Festival. Also, I slept in anyway. But still, I would have loved to have gone.

But this rail thwarting shall be no more! Or it'd better be.

The London Writing Equipment Show, Sunday 6th October 09, Kensington Town Hall.

I'm there, and so should you be, if you want to gawk at the pretties and get inspired to write write write because it's beautiful.

The Underrated Preppy - The Sign Pen.

2009-09-09T17:47:00.008+01:00

Everyone goes on and on and on about the Preppy fountain pen. Made by Platinum... cheap, Japanese, easy to convert to an eyedropper (apparently - puts the fear of god in me.) I too love this pen... especially the fact that it comes with a nib that matches the colour of the ink you buy it with. They're sturdy and can be treated exceptionally badly with seemingly no ill effects. They don't look hideous (like most no-name plastic UK FPs I've seen... WH Smith, I'm looking at you.)

BUT there is actually a little more to the whole Preppy thing than just FPs. The Preppy also comes in a sign pen format - refillable tips, take the same ink cartridges as the fountain pens, are in the same design. And are the same insanely good price... Jetpens have them for $US 2.25 each. For a REFILLABLE pen which seems like it would bear up well from a sledgehammer hit. (Or at least would shatter in a really aesthetically pleasing way.)

I've only tested the purple in both FP and sign pen, but it is a truly lovely colour so I stand by that. Sepia/Brown will probably be next.

I won't repost the pictures from my last blog which formed the test... but they were more than satisfactory to me.

I haven't tried changing the tip yet, but I bought a cute and inexpensive 2-pack to have sitting in the back of my drawer when the time comes. ($us 1.50 at Jetpens.) They look tough and fibrous - as tough as the one in the pen to start with. I don't use that word to mean unyielding - there's a beautiful inky flow that gives a very highly saturated thick line. But unlike the Lamy felt tip refills for their rollerball pens, this one can take a good amount of aggressive writing with NO indication that the tip will feather/split/blunt/do any of those awful things that you remember markers doing in primary school when you were over-vigorous in your colouring in.

For those who draw with fountain pens, this is a great tool - it uses the exact same ink cartridges as a Preppy fountain pen, so the ink can be drawn out and painted with by brush in the same way, and it's a great way to add solid colour blocks to artwork. They're also great vibrant underlining/highlighting colours, and the sign pen is a way more eyecatching way of annotating a text visually in that manner. I've been writing shopping lists with mine and I love the way the incandescent purple ink vibrates before my tired eyes under the lights of a 24 hour supermarket, ordering me to aisles and reminding me of a world outside consumer chaos. The world where I can get home and use the same pen to draw with luscious colours. The line is not fine, but that's what the fountain pen is for. This is roughly a 0.7 mil line, from my squinting estimate.

So, internet. Why no hype for this pen? Now I have become reacquainted with the joys of felt-tip without feeling sad that I'm killing baby ducks and expanding the Sahara by contributing to the waste of disposable pens.

As mentioned, JetPens is where I got mine, and everyone should really be ordering from them because they have lovely things. (I have no affiliation, I just like them lots.) They offer multi-packs as well, and surpass infinitely the Stabilo and Staedtler competition in the vibrant felt-tip combination.

Justifying my tardiness: picturama.

2009-09-03T10:26:00.004+01:00

I've been terribly lax this past week and a half, I know. But I've been spending my random spare minutes scribbling first, rather than writing about it... until now. Some visual journalling in the gorgeous Asda Executive notebook I traded with Sam of Future;Nostalgic, for your pleasure or otherwise. Including some rough ideas for my own tarot deck.

My draft for the Ace of Cups... Noodler's bulletproof black and Lexington Grey in a random dip pen I bought for £1 on eBay.

Sketchy (and smudgy) Two of Cups. I'm quite proud of this, actually, I think it includes all the right symbolism in a minimalistic way.

Playing with scraps of paper, spilled ink and a brand new waterbrush (review forthcoming.)

Draft of The World or maybe The Wheel of Fortune (inspired by Jung and The Spirtitual Evolution of the Bean!) Preppy refillable felt tip with Noodler's Lexington Grey.

Smudgy Private Reserve Burgundy Mist, the best kind.

Can't wait for this weekend to play some more.

On staring at pens instead of taking minutes.

2009-08-26T16:07:00.000+01:00

Call me strange (many have) but I was so distracted during a meeting today that it was hard to take notes. Part of this was definitely to do with the fact that it was 2pm and I was ill and exhausted, but also because the chair had a fascinating pen. And I didn't ask what it was. Ho hum. But it had a nib/tip/something that completely fascinated me. It looked almost like a plastic-nibbed fountain pen. Has anyone ever come across something like this? If only I had taken a sneaky photo with my phone...

Review from afar: O-Check Designs

2009-08-23T11:08:00.002+01:00

I never thought when I moved from Melbourne to the UK that I would miss anything about the stationery culture of Melbourne. I genuinely thought that since I was moving to a country that sold fountain pens at the supermarket, that everything I was already accustomed to would be readily available to me in the UK as well.

I was wrong - some of the best and greatest loved stationery I can inexplicably only find traces of over here, or can find not at all, or with prohibitive shipping charges.

This is where the internet comes to save me.

One of my finest memories of the last few months of living in Melbourne is of coming out of the cafe at the National Gallery of Victoria, after having sought solace in Rothko and brownies from the tumult of a life I needed to escape from. Walking into the bookstore, I was confronted by a beautiful display of homely, old-fashioned, yet refined and inventive stationery. An old wooden desk was set up with a worn chair, and an array of the most inviting products I have ever seen (yes) were laid out across the display. About fifteen of us were crowding around handling the paper, looking at the stamps, opening the cases and playing with the pencils - our hands all over these new products, experiencing them. It was like a slice of another world.

Online, and on the other side of the world, O-Check Designs are not so easy to find. A few UK online retailers seem to sell a handful of items, but due to the vagaries of search functions (and the complete uselessness of some sites' attempts to have one) I just haven't found one that gives me what I want.

Enter NoteMaker - a site which some more enlightened pensters outside Australia are familiar with, but in my opinion, nowhere near enough.

The items that most caught my eye were the journals - in particular the travel journal made of scraps of beautiful recycled papers and interspersed with storage pockets, hardbound journals that look like vintage novels, and a notebook with an old library card pocket on the front. (Anyone else used to steal these from the back of library books? :) I loved them at age 7.)

The range includes amazingly thoughtful additions like adhesive corners to add pockets to the inside of your notebook; coordinated nametags, designer stickytape and even drawing-pins; deskware like coarse, beautiful twine and scissor sets... everything channeling a 1950s professor's office, with a hint of bohemia, and somehow managing to feel charming without feeling stuffy.

Practically, all of the items are made from biodegradable ink and glue, and many of my favourite products use a range of recycled and found papers. O-Check is a Korean brand so shipping miles are an issue... but the prices of the items are so incredibly reasonable, if price not carbon emissions is your main concern, it evens out well.

Sadly I have none of my O-Check collection with me in the UK. But using a huge array of fountain pens, ballpoints, and anything else that could made a mark on paper, I have never had a problem at all with them. No prohibitive feathering/showthrough/anything - the paper is great quality, and the construction of all the items I've tested has been brilliant, immaculate even.

I haven't tried the diaries and schedulers yet, which look like really practical as well as gorgeous designs... haven't tried the cahiers yet either... but when I win the lottery, those are next on the list. (Particularly the one with the squirrel on it!)

I miss these. Miss miss miss them. And knowing NoteMaker is out there to save me when I summon up the finances to order a bunch makes me feel a LOT better.

The word from O-Check from NoteMaker:

Korean-based O-Check Design Graphics is the creator of a thoughtful and ever-changing collection of stationery that weaves unique charm into its’ highly original designs.

O-Check is environmentally conscious, creating many of its products from recycled paper, natural fabrics, wood and soy ink.

The designers of O-Check are inspired by their travels, books, music, conversation and imagery, and work to capture the beauty of life and express it through charming and timeless stationery.

NoteMaker is the only Australian retailer to stock the full range of O-CHECK products.

About O-Check:

O-Check was established in 2000 in Seoul, Korea and quickly developed a reputation for stationery that is both beautiful and functional.

The name ‘O-Check’ is derived from the Korean word ‘gongcheck’ which translated literally means ‘a book with nothing inside’. Substituting a zero for the word ‘gong’ O-Check captured the essence of its notebooks which upon creation are empty, but come alive when filled with words, thoughts, feelings and drawings.

O-Check’s unique collection of stationery is constantly changing as new ideas and designs are brought to life.

Prices start from about $3.95 Aussie ... so about 2 quid or $3 US dollars. You'll find something you like and can afford. And your life will be improved. Really.

Notemaker's O-Check store. They ship worldwide. No excuses... not even for me!

Cahiercovering.

2009-08-21T13:36:00.006+01:00

I like to doodle and stick things on my notebooks as well as in them. Lazy Friday picblog it is then... just my last couple of notebooks I've used up this month. More will come when I bludgeon my phone camera into submission.

The writing is 'Cosmopolitan Greetings', my favourite Allen Ginsberg poem, and Kerouac's manifesto on Spontaneous Prose, written all over in a stubby old Sharpie. I've just added a teabag's swing tag next to Kerouac's line "be an old Teahead of time".

A delayed review of glory. Asda Executive - not an oxymoron.

2009-08-21T10:17:00.005+01:00

I have tried twice to post this, and twice Blogger has eaten it and I have had to write again from scratch. This has disheartened me greatly so I am now taking the dubious precaution of entrusting my text to Microsoft Word prior to uploading. A hard-won technique. Hence forgive the laxity of my posting… I was too despondent at Blogger’s internet cannibalism.

Last week I offered to trade readers whatever they so fancied for bottles of Diamine ink (of which I still have two bottles left… Monaco Red and Imperial Blue. Feel free to contact me to arrange a trade for these!) My kind first respondent was Sam of the Future; Nostalgic blog, who traded me an Asda Executive Notebook for a bottle of Diamine Umber ink. He reviewed it himself a few weeks ago, and as my local Asda does not stock it, I was very pleased to get a chance to give one a test drive.

First up, an aside. I’ve heard all the horror stories about Walmart’s treatment of its workers, and it’s inevitable that the £1.50 t-shirts sold at my local Asda were not made by someone paid a living wage. So, I don’t buy the clothing… but the staff at my local store are all so friendly and happy, even on a Sunday afternoon when it’s manic, that it’s actually very nice to shop there for my groceries and whatnot.

Now, this is a Mole clone, but essentially the best I’ve ever seen. Such that I would say it is BETTER than a large hardcover plain-paper Moleskine. This is a fine, fine, FINE notebook. Truly.

The paper is as thick as sketchbook Moleskine paper, but without that horrid waxy finish that makes fountain pens cry tears of ineffectiveness. It’s very smooth, a nicer, creamier tone than Mole paper, and with a slight tooth that makes it a pleasure to write across. Every page is perforated but with strong perforations that look that they would not accidentally slip out. It’s signature sewn, with a glued spine that actually looks mighty secure. The thickness of the page means this is a more imposing looking, heavier notebook than a Moleskine – it has the look of a serious black brick, whereas a Mole in comparison is a mere lightweight. It has presence and gravitas. The ribbon marker looks like it won’t fray irritatingly like Moleskine ones. The expanding pocket at the back is a proper mini file-organiser, with three substantial sections which would really accommodate a lot of meeting agenda and receipts and whateversoever you wish.

No show through at all with any of the ink combos tested (Waterman Brown in a Waterman Audace, Diamine Imperial Purple in a Lamy Safari B, Lexington Grey Noodler's in a Lamy Safari F, Private Reserve Burgundy Mist in a Waterman Harmonie M, Parker washable blue in a Vector.)

Some slight feathering visible on the closest of inspections, but it’s rather delicate, vein-like and charming, like your text has sprouted forth and grown branches and put down roots in the page. Only with my wet writers did this occur – didn’t try out my Visconti Maxi Van Gogh/Pelikan Purple combination, which is the inkiest, wettest writer ever invented, but it would have feathered aplenty. This is probably because it feels like it dispenses a river of ink with every stroke, and should cast no aspersions on the quality of the paper in this notebook. But yes, this is a complete digression.

There is a little quality hiccup on my copy, in that the oilcloth on the cover didn’t quite bind so well, but I’m going to cover mine with random postcards and teabag packets anyway so it doesn’t bother me at all. Literally everything else about this notebook is flawless and it will be worth my while trying epically hard to find an Asda near me which sells this notebook (no luck yet). I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t switched allegiance to larger-size notebooks (cahiers in particular) because I’d love to tear through a couple of these a month. I can’t wait to find a use for it – in fact, I think it will really suit being used as a sketch- and collage book as it has such gorgeous paper for fountain pen ink (maybe watercolour too? hmmm, will get back to you) and I could easily remove blank pages to compensate for extra weight collaged items would place on the spine.

Oh, the possibilities! Check your Asda's stationery aisle next time you drop in for aubergines and loo roll and bask in the glory of a grand notebook.

This is a fine notebook, infinitely better than I expected and a real joy to use. Thanks again to Sam from Future;Nostalgic for indulging in my barter economy antics and trading with me… anyone else up for a trade let me know!

The Ethics of Ink?

2009-08-16T08:27:00.005+01:00

I have only just discovered that until very recently BIC Corporation tested its inks, and other products, on animals. In the past it has claimed this was a legal requirement (!) and more recently it has admitted to 'cheating' on its moratoria on animal testing, so it's not clear whether they do or do not currently animal-test. It seems that BIC is pretty keen to avoid scrutiny on this issue, and they refuse to rule out future animal tests.
(My sources are PETA.org, and Veggieboards.com for people who have personally corresponded with BIC.)

Since I consider that it's a massive act of hubris for humans to assume they have the ultimate power to determine which lives are valid and which are not, I'm not a fan of this. At all. But trying to rectify my interest in writing/creativity with my newfound veganness is not that easy.

Caring Consumer's lists of cruelty-free companies do include some of the big guns, thankfully.

Berol, Eberhard Faber, Pilot, Sanford, and Staedtler do not test their writing instruments on animals.

Berol, Eberhard Faber, and Sanford do not test their ink on animals, but since Pilot is listed as a vegan company, and is the only vegan company that is listed, I presume they are also included here, as animal testing your ink is not exactly vegan. Or not at all. (Yay - I may have to become a fan of Pilot!)

But trying to track down whether my favourite inks have bone charcoal in them, or are tested on animals, has become a priority. I will be writing to Noodler's, Private Reserve, and Diamine to see what they have to say on this. Hopefully the fact that they are small companies means that they don't, but the fact is that I just don't know.

Obviously Noodler's Iron Gall ink is not vegan, and will contain insects. But I want to know if this carries through to their other ranges? Is gelatine or bits of boiled animal included in my favourite inks? Is their red pigment ground cochineal insects? I hope not, very much indeed - but the only way to find out, it seems, is to write and ask. So write I will.

One of the things that first attracted me to fountain pens, however, was the environmental aspect. I hate disposable pens with a passion. Why buy anything if you're just going to throw it away when you're done? On top of the wastefulness, you also don't get a chance to build any kind of relationship with your pen - it's only with you for a brief time, and then it's gone. You're encouraging expendability, really, and buying more plastic/boiled crude oil which is likely not to be reused or recycled and which is helping no one.

So to me it makes sense to take this environmental responsibility a step further. I'm trying very hard to eliminate all the exploitative products and practices I can from my life (95% of the time I buy from charities to recycle and to support social causes, I buy food loose and in bulk to limit packaging, I limit buying products that have had to be shipped long distances, I am a practicing vegan, etc).

Until I hear back from these companies, I guess if I need any more ink, I'll have to make sure I buy Pilot to be on the safe side. But those who care about minimising cruelty, stay tuned!

You must philosophise.

2009-08-13T09:17:00.004+01:00

Ink, for me, is perfectly imperfect. Its unpredictable failings are actually its successes. In a world ruled by principles of homogenization, efficient uniformity, and safe sterility, ink is the mark -- the unexpected mark -- of an alternative. I don't want my handwritten pages to resemble justified, crisp, spotless sheets of Times New Roman; that's precisely why I cling so stubbornly to my fountain pen and my splattering ink. I need to know that when I write, I don't know what will happen. The blank page sits patiently in front of me, and it will never be blank again as soon as the writing begins. (Have I stolen this from Paul Auster's The Invention of Solitude?) This much is certain, predictable. But what's unknown when real ink is involved is precisely how the blankness will recede, how its white challenge will come to colour. And that's the force of writing.
~ Ink Quest's latest
entry

The above is completely and utterly how I feel. I want Waterman's South Seas blue staining my cuticles from overzealous convertor-filling (I had turquoise hands for a week once in 2006.) I want bumps and nicks on my pens from tumbling around in my handbag waiting for me to use them, often for so long I forget which ink they are filled with and it surprises me. I want to be torn between using one of a million combinations of pen and notebook such that every choice feels like a response to the needs of that very moment, that very second. I want to order things off the internet sight unseen, with nothing but the recommendations of trusted yet faceless pen-bloggers to guide me. And I want to have no idea what I'm going to say until I begin to say it, when the scrawl and splatter and mess follow me in tune with the rhythm of my ideas, such that my medium of choice will mirror the state of my spirit.

Chaos theory is writing life, when every idea is a performance of
pen to paper.

This is why I write.

And I've been ill lately so please excuse the somewhat lazy posts... on the weekend (hopefully) when I can move with a little less pain, shall be talkin' some or all of the following: Asda Exec, Rymans, strange index cards, the joy of refillable felt-tips, and a massive list of products that US and UK pen/paperists seem to be oblivious to, at their spiritual peril.

Cheers, and please send some anti-tension-headache energies my way if you have any to spare... such an invalid these last three days I have no concept of space, time or even who I am. Ugh. Onward and hopefully upward...

Trade update and Strange Lamys Afoot...

2009-08-11T12:50:00.002+01:00

Just a quick note to say the TWD Umber ink is spoken for - I will be trading with the lovely Sam of Future; Nostalgic and will post a review of the treats he sends in return!

That means Diamine/TWD Monaco Red and Imperial Blue are still up for grabs for whosoever wishes, provided they send me something cute and groovy in return... offer is open until I get rid of them!

Also, Inkyjournal has posted about the new Lamy Dialog 3. Which I have mixed feelings about.

Is it just me or does this look like writing with a big, unyielding... stick? Or a pole? Or something totally unsuited to the contours of a human hand?

Part of Lamy's charm can be the sleek retro-futuristic thing they do... but I think I'll give this one a miss.

More capless fountain pens, though, please!

Anyone want to trade?

2009-08-08T11:02:00.003+01:00

I have three giant bottles of ink I am never going to use and I think they need a good home.

Also, I love getting packages in the mail. It makes my boyfriend excited too, he sits and watches me open them like Christmas.

So to combine these two simple joys, I propose a trade!

If anyone is up for Diamine Umber, Diamine Imperial Blue, and Diamine Monaco Red (in the TWD super-big plastic bottles as seen above)... I will accept journals, index card packs, dip pens, markers, stamps... anything, really! I just get sad when stationery doesn't get loved enough and these bottles need to go to a good home.

Swabs and a description are here, on The Writing Desk's website. Also, Spiritual Evolution of the Bean did an epic Diamine-swabbing a few weeks ago, which can be seen here. The bottles are 100ml so you'll be getting a fine deal on about 18 quid worth of ink.

Any takers hit me with a comment! :)

The Moley debate.

2009-08-07T15:21:00.000+01:00

I figure like every blogger with a scant interest in the pen-to-paper business, I should weigh in on the Moleskine debate, thus getting it out of the way so we can move on.

Yes, they are market-saturated, they don’t use paper crafted from 120 gsm nymphs’ tears, yes, they’re becoming irritatingly ubiquitous (more in the UK than Australia), and yes, they’re made in China... (Why that’s bad in itself I’m not quite sure, as China and Japan have historically created some of the finest stationery and paper-based art around. But I'm sure people are using 'made in China' as an excuse to bash quality, which just doesn't work.)

Part of the irritation is most likely down to the fact that non-pen-and-paper-people think the Moley is the bees knees. There are oodles of people out there with no conception that there could be nicer, more practical, or just *different* journals out there – because the Mole-clone is almost as ubiquitous these days. So of course, the dedicated stationerier will grind their teeth at the suggestion that such a notebook is the epitome of journaling excellence.

Particularly because of the paper quality. It’s too thin, it doesn’t come with a listed gsm weight, it feathers, it shows through… it just makes

Here comes the crunch, and where I will either lose whatever scant readership I have garnered, or will just bewilder people:

I don’t mind show-through. Or feathering.

I exclusively use fountain pens, and to me if you’re going to use thick inky wet nibs, I want it to fuse into the paper. That’s a big portion of the satisfaction, letting a rich velvety ink sink into the paper and come to sit there. I’ve never had such extreme feathering issues with my Moles as some have reported – it’s a few vinelike creepers which appear chiefly with my medium-nibbed Visconti, which is a super-wet writer, and infinitely glorious because of that. (Review to come.) Writing is a tactile experience, and getting ink all over your fingers, smudging when you close the book too fast, and yes, feathering, are part of that process. Precision calligraphy is a beautiful art, but when I put pen to paper I want earthy viscerality, and a bit of mess.

As for the ubiquity, I rather like the fact that I can duck into WH Smith’s at Euston and pick up a new notebook without running late for my train, and thus am not forced to read thelondonpaper over someone’s shoulder, searing my retinas. Also, because they’re everywhere, they no longer have the hold over me that some more beautiful or esoteric journals do, where I hold back, waiting for mystical inspiration such that I will inscribe it with nothing but the finest prose. Which always means I don’t use the actual notebook. Rather, I can rip open a pack of cahiers and scribble down dream records, ideas for dissertations, and a shopping list, all without guilt.

My Mole of choice is the blue and red cahier... ruled if I have to, plain is preferred (but less frequently on 3 for 2 offers in chain stores.) Above it's with my beloved Waterman Harmonie, which I think is still filled with Private Reserve Burgundy Mist.

[Oh, and my header is an arty version of what I did on my lunchbreak, i.e. scrawl Kerouac and Ginsberg quotes to inspire me all over it in a borrowed Sharpie. Be an old teahead of time!]

I will admit it’s not the nicest notebook ever made, and it’s got nothing on my favourite (Bookbinders Design, for the record). But the Moley backlash sometimes bewilders me. There’s something to be said for having an expendable, reasonably sleek and hard-wearing notebook which responds to how you use it. Which, of course, is why among the nay-sayers and the over-excited amateurs there are the quiet(er) voices of serious artists and writers who stick by them, for other reasons than that sometimes you can buy them at the services in Derby. This is a very fine way to spend an afternoon soaking up the way that creative people manage to not only use the Mole, but use it well.

More fantastic Mole bloggers: here, and complete perfection here.

A blurry Tarot reading in Diamine Umber.

It was Moleskinerie who got me into the joyfully voyeuristic world of stationery, art and pen blogging, too, so I guess out of politeness I need to start by giving a nod to the Mole.

Coming soon, O-Check Design review. (These products will just make you melt.)

Thesisising.

2009-08-07T14:59:00.000+01:00

(Blurring adds mystique... brainstorming in a blue Mole cahier with ugly Parker ink on my lunch break.)

I used to be able to fill books with thesis ideas, and I did. My last few years of my history degree I managed to fill little exercise books with frantically scribbled mindmaps about all the lovely notions I'd like to write about.

Then I had to actually write my thesis, and it hurt. A lot. Particularly because my life went down a few very interesting roads at that time. Luckily the history department at Melbourne uni and my supervisor were ridiculously understanding and somehow kept me going when I thought about abandoning ship.

Now I want to do a Masters. Thinking Uni of Exeter's MA in Western Esotericism: http://www.exeter.ac.uk/postgraduate/degrees/history/esotericismma/

Or this little fellow:
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/birtha/themes/reception/ma_reception.html

Or, of course, anyone who'd kindly give me a full scholarship for international fees (£10,000 or thereabouts) plus maybe £5,000 of a bursary... god. I could conceivably get a scholarship, but nonetheless. God.

But generally, I want to do something strange, that jumps off the page. I figure a Master's degree is a nice little jaunt between undergrad and PhD where you can take advantage of advanced coursework in a way you can't at any other time... so specialised programs like the above, have the benefit of still being "history Masters'" but (hopefully) make me look a little more interesting than the next person with a plain old MA in modern history, and I'll get to really enjoy the structure of coursework with some advanced content.

But, to get into these delightful courses, you still need a dissertation topic. And my brain has only just recovered (if that) from a single year in which I had a complete several-month-long collapse with exhaustion, had my parents split up and one of them die, emigrated to the other side of the world, fell in love and moved in with my boyfriend, and started working full-time.

But so far, here's what I have. My interests in the past have been Britain post '45 and interpretations of its culture, but American-British cultural relations kind of interest me in general, along with historical memory and the historiography of the recent past, particularly books that blend autobiography and history. So:

Countercultural constructions of history and time, 1956-1975.

Not sure if I want Britain and America or just Britain; but generally, want to check out the construction of intellectual and cultural traditions by countercultural groups, and the way they reimagined the past and their contemporary national and transnational identities. Fun, no? I think so. I get to talk about the grassroots politics of the Diggers in '66 SF and the contemporary ideas of Britain as a land of myth... and contrast the Romantic idealism of New Age politics with the Marxian reimaginings of history by the likes of E.P. Thompson. So, perceptions of historical time as a lens for looking at a whole lot of issues around 'countercultural' groups and 1960s politics, while mixing in the adequate amount of theory for my tastes.

Clunky at this stage but it might just work! At the very least I've worked out a way to combine my interests in 1960s counterculture with esotericism, as I think I'll do quite a bit on the way that British mystical traditions were used politically, and so on. Yay. I have something!

Introduction...

2009-08-02T21:13:00.000+01:00

I've been voraciously reading all the pen-and-paper blogs I could find for quite a few months now, such that I get ridiculously impatient from new posts from my favourites.

I also spend eons on my most beloved stationery websites, lusting over fine new products and maxing out my credit card when I should be buying, oh, little things like food... train tickets to work... trifling matters in the scheme of things. Or so I tell my partner, who unfortunately is very encouraging.

And so the final step in the addiction stakes was to start my own.

Ever since I was a child I've been fascinated by writing, drawing, fresh stationery and what can be done with it. Then some unthinking (or perhaps a truly wise?) soul gave me a job at a pen counter in a Melbourne department store, a staff discount card, and gave me training sessions.

There was never any hope for me beyond that point. While the idea of returning to retail sets my teeth on edge a bit, I am most nostalgic for a job where 'developing product knowledge' involved fiddling with the stock until I found something I loved, and where 'stocking the cabinet' was a process of me working out what I was going to buy on my lunch break.

Fast forward four years (too many Fs!) and I'm in Buckinghamshire, working in London, and insisting on taking minutes at meetings in a 1.1 Lamy Safari with Private Reserve Burgundy Mist, instead of the awful budget ballpoints deemed appropriate for our office. Outside of work, I dabble in a wide array of creative fields, and am an avid journal writer - the pens and paper I tear through are being used to map my subconscious and the outside world, and sometimes to write shopping lists. When I can afford the fees, I am also a student, so sometimes my words end up in dissertations and maybe one day will be published by an institution with somewhat more intellectual gravitas than Blogger. (No offence, guys.)

I'm also a good 20-30 years younger than most pen nerds I've ever met. And I'm a woman. So I think that gives me a little edge in this penblog world, or so I fancy.

And so, here I am, trying to join 'the gang' of blogs I've been following incessantly for so long. I WILL post frequently and at length, so please keep up!

~L