Paper Notes In A Digital World

Okay, I admit, I am a sucker for books about simplifying life. I read almost all I come across as I am on a journey of self-discovery – simplified. Recently, I saw this tiny (I mean really small) book at Borders called, Keeping Life Simple : 380 Tips & Ideas. Karen Levine’s little book of tips wasn’t a disappointment for $8.95 and I found a few gems in the book.

Here’s a few that jumped out at me. Not because I never have thought about things like this before, but because it’s been long enough that I needed the reminder! Nothing Earth-shattering, but thoughts that are nice to keep in mind.

As Albert Einstein said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.”

You know you’re really excited about analog when you can read with excitement, as I did, an article about a pencil. The Pencil Revolution closes the year with a guest post by Michael Leddy with a nice piece on the 100th birthday of the Faber-Castell 9000, a green pencil with a long history wonderfully brought to life by Leddy of Orange Crate Art.

Update July, 2010: Link is broken on article mentioned above.

How could you not love an article that begins with such pangs for simpler times?

My love of “supplies” — pencils, pens, notebooks — goes back to Saturday morning trips with my father and brother to Alan’s Stationers in Brooklyn. My dad was (and is) a meticulous artist, and his affection for tools and materials was something I picked up on very early. I remember my own early “supplies” very well — a series of miniature Carter’s dip pens, which came packaged with miniature bottles of ink; a Scripto mechanical pencil; dozens of Venus coloring pencils; and a gray “T-Ball Jotter” (I never thought of it as a Parker) with thick, fragrant blue ink.

As I’ve gotten older, the fascination of “supplies” has fused with my deep affection for the artifacts of what I like to call “the dowdy world” — modern American life before it was refigured (or disfigured) by certain forms of technology. My affection for supplies has become, of necessity, an affection for what is largely past. As I’m writing these words, I’m looking at a Mongol ad from the 1950s, framed on the wall to my right:

Your Best Buy’s
MONGOL
2,162 words
for
one cent

In the dowdy world, people took their pencils seriously.

Nice piece from Michael Leddy who blogs regularly at Orange Crate Art.

As we leave another year behind, now is a good time to reflect on the past and remember – while we still can.

Many readers of Paper Notes keep journals of one kind or another. Many also have only recently made journaling a part of their lives. But when you find yourself wondering what to write, don’t forget to widen your thoughts and remembrances to the distant past. We all have a unique and very personal history that can be saved for ourselves and future generations with just a few minutes a week.

Consider yourself the archivist of your personal history, charged with the responsibility of documenting and preserving your life and times. We all have those great memories we are certain we will never forget. Yet, as one year rolls into the next the mind has more to remember, catalog and file away. Those “unforgettable” memories suddenly become the ,”Oh yeah! I had forgotten that!” moments. Writing your personal history now can preserve those moments forever.

Am I suggesting writing a memoir or full-blown autobiography? Not unless you want to. I am thinking more of preserving your history by writing nuggets from your life – one memory at a time. Here’s a few thoughts and ideas to help you get started painlessly.

While writing down personal history, you will obviously be confronted with questions about what (and what not) to write about. Should you really write it exactly as it was? What about the sad and unhappy times? Should you name names? What about the feelings and emotions some memories bring to the surface? There are different answers and different choices for different people. I’ll address some of these things soon in a follow-up post. For now, you can take the step of capturing memories in three words in the form of those memory triggers. Or, if you’re ready to take the plunge – start writing about that tenth birthday party!

Getting Back To The Paper Chase

Another article in the MSM about getting back to paper.

f you have ever submitted a manuscript to a publisher and received a rejection letter, you have some rather prestigious company. Most all of the greatest writers of our times received boxes of rejections before the big sale. But if you ever needed proof that the critical eye is many times lacking, look no further than a recent experiment by the Sunday Times Of London.

The newspaper sent the first chapters of novels, assumed to be the writing of aspiring novelists, to 20 publishers and agents. All but one of the 21 replies were rejections. The manuscripts, get this, were actually Booker Prize winners in the 1970s!

The books were “Holiday,” by Stanley Middleton; and “In a Free State,” by V. S. Naipaul, one of Britain’s greatest living writers who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. Middleton wasn’t the least bit surprised saying, “People don’t seem to know what a good novel is nowadays…To see something is well written and appetizingly written takes a lot of talent, and there is not a great deal of that around. With all the other forms of entertainment today, there are very few people around who would understand what a good paragraph is.”

There are a lot of theories about the snub, but most seem to agree that publishing is relying more than ever on celebrity authors, at the expense of great writing. The whole story from the Sunday Times is here. Read it and weep (or cheer).

My favorite rejection of all-time is the note from a major publisher to Vladimir Nabokov as they passed on “Lolita”…….

‘… overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.’

I think the moral of this post is: if you believe in yourself, don’t take rejection too seriously. Keep writing.