It is ironic that for one who loves ink so well that I should do the vast majority of my writing on a digital screen with virtual ink. Virtual ink does not have a distinct odor, does not smear or run, does not drip or splatter–it is, in fact, not really ink at all, virtual or otherwise. I keep bottles of ink around–on my desk, near the computer, in the bathroom. You never know when a creative moment might hit you, and you want to be prepared for anything. The worse thing that can happen to the occasional writer is to find themselves with an empty pen, either actually or metaphorically. To avoid scraping a dry fountain pen across the blank surface of a blank leaf of paper, I always err on the side of caution and have several ink wells at my beck and call. Real ink, the kind that gets on your fingers and makes a mess, is so different than the modern inks of ball point pens or the ink gels common in faux-disposable writing utensils from big box retailers that sell in packs of ten. No writing instrument worth its salt is sold in packs of ten. Real writing instruments grow on duck’s wings or have highly polished and systematically designed nibs which help guide the flow of ink on the paper. If you have a good nib and fluid ink, you barely need touch the paper to coax the ink to do its job, create a new piece of art. I admire calligraphers because they immerse themselves in the process, but they are artists with an artists point of view whereas I am a blue-collar writer with an imperfect hand. If I were a medieval copyist in a cold, dark monastery scriptorium, I’m sure I would assigned the more menial tasks such as the abbey’s shopping and to-do lists. No one would have ever entrusted me with creating new hymn books or a new book of hours. I love ink, but my letters are often inconsistent, run into one another like drunk patrons at a soccer game, sail wildly above and below the lines as if it were a gusty day, impersonate one another in confusing and troubling ways. I recognize my handiwork, but readers might have questions. My handwriting is only for me. Yet the ink beckons like an unpredictable desire, yearning to dry into new and unpredictable patterns, dividing the light from the dark, forming new loops, circles, curves as dots drop in over the errant “i’s” and the “t’s” can only hope for their cross which will distinguish them from the lurking, if upright, “l’s.” My use of ink so erratic that what I call handwriting either really neither cursive nor printing, but a hybrid wondering between the two, instead. Some letters stand alone like solitary night watchmen waiting in the dark to be relieved while other letters run together in some unhealthy and incestuous ways. Real ink, spilled and splattered ink gives one the liberty and freedom to express oneself, to let the passion flow, the anger rage. Ink is changing the plain white sheet of paper into a whirl of new spaces which are blocked off into lines and rows and, guiding the eye into some sort of disciplined order of reading, releasing its information or perhaps causing some genuine confusion–either way, I’ll be satisfied. Modern writing instruments–the computer, ball point pens and the related ilk of the sort, lead us away from our souls and stifle our creativity, limiting what we think we can do, killing our rhetoric, stifling our fire, stamping out our art. Ink, spilled, splattered, controlled, sets us free in a world only too willing to control us, repress us, oppress us. I am gently reminded of the fire in real ink when I glance at a copy, a facsimile of The Declaration of Independence and I am reminded that it was hand-written with a real quill, real fire, real ink.
Category Archives: ink
On ink
It is ironic that for one who loves ink so well that I should do the vast majority of my writing on a digital screen with virtual ink. Virtual ink does not have a distinct odor, does not smear or run, does not drip or splatter–it is, in fact, not really ink at all, virtual or otherwise. I keep bottles of ink around–on my desk, near the computer, in the bathroom. You never know when a creative moment might hit you, and you want to be prepared for anything. The worse thing that can happen to the occasional writer is to find themselves with an empty pen, either actually or metaphorically. To avoid scraping a dry fountain pen across the blank surface of a blank leaf of paper, I always err on the side of caution and have several ink wells at my beck and call. Real ink, the kind that gets on your fingers and makes a mess, is so different than the modern inks of ball point pens or the ink gels common in faux-disposable writing utensils from big box retailers that sell in packs of ten. No writing instrument worth its salt is sold in packs of ten. Real writing instruments grow on duck’s wings or have highly polished and systematically designed nibs which help guide the flow of ink on the paper. If you have a good nib and fluid ink, you barely need touch the paper to coax the ink to do its job, create a new piece of art. I admire calligraphers because they immerse themselves in the process, but they are artists with an artists point of view whereas I am a blue-collar writer with an imperfect hand. If I were a medieval copyist in a cold, dark monastery scriptorium, I’m sure I would assigned the more menial tasks such as the abbey’s shopping and to-do lists. No one would have ever entrusted me with creating new hymn books or a new book of hours. I love ink, but my letters are often inconsistent, run into one another like drunk patrons at a soccer game, sail wildly above and below the lines as if it were a gusty day, impersonate one another in confusing and troubling ways. I recognize my handiwork, but readers might have questions. My handwriting is only for me. Yet the ink beckons like an unpredictable desire, yearning to dry into new and unpredictable patterns, dividing the light from the dark, forming new loops, circles, curves as dots drop in over the errant “i’s” and the “t’s” can only hope for their cross which will distinguish them from the lurking, if upright, “l’s.” My use of ink so erratic that what I call handwriting either really neither cursive nor printing, but a hybrid wondering between the two, instead. Some letters stand alone like solitary night watchmen waiting in the dark to be relieved while other letters run together in some unhealthy and incestuous ways. Real ink, spilled and splattered ink gives one the liberty and freedom to express oneself, to let the passion flow, the anger rage. Ink is changing the plain white sheet of paper into a whirl of new spaces which are blocked off into lines and rows and, guiding the eye into some sort of disciplined order of reading, releasing its information or perhaps causing some genuine confusion–either way, I’ll be satisfied. Modern writing instruments–the computer, ball point pens and the related ilk of the sort, lead us away from our souls and stifle our creativity, limiting what we think we can do, killing our rhetoric, stifling our fire, stamping out our art. Ink, spilled, splattered, controlled, sets us free in a world only too willing to control us, repress us, oppress us. I am gently reminded of the fire in real ink when I glance at a copy, a facsimile of The Declaration of Independence and I am reminded that it was hand-written with a real quill, real fire, real ink.
On writing well
The question of how to write well is, I think, both a mystery and a conundrum in this sense: you know when the writing is bad and why, but it’s harder to tell why writing is good, elegant, meaningful. Having read, literally, thousands of writers from all over the globe and from every period of human history, I have come to the conclusion that good writing has nothing to with using complicated words or impenetrable syntax, nothing to do with subtle arguments or complex rhetorical strategies, nothing to do with tricky poetic tropes, unusual metaphors, or innovative symbols although these are often attributes given to good writing and are often found in good writing. Good writing has to do, more likely, with what is in the writer’s heart. Passion seems to be a hallmark of good writing, but it’s not just passion either because some passionate writing in awful, overridden by tired cliches and worn out tropes. I like clarity, but I have read many things that were utterly clear and despised them. The art of writing has to be a combination of passion and clarity, incisive commentary and enlightened observation, entangled within an engaging combination words, phrases, and clauses that invite the reader to continue reading. Boring writing is dead writing, even when the writing is clear and meaningful. There is a “matter-of-factness” about good writing which draws in the reader so they want to find out what might be next. Predictable writing is also dead writing, so writing that will bring something new to the rhetorical table is welcome and fresh. Perhaps there is also an element of truth that must ring out in good writing because the reader cannot for a second suspect the writer of shoveling so much syntactic and semantic manure or the cause is lost. Writing that goes unread is not writing at all, dead, sepulchral, frozen, unmovable. I also suspect that writing which is too concrete is tedious, boring, and dreadful. Ambiguity, well done, can raise good writing to a higher state of sublime creation where allegory, fable, metaphor, and symbol dwell in rhetorical paradise, meaning, signifying, but untethered to a literal meaning or interpretation. I also suspect that good writing is tied to an unfettered imagination, explosive creativity, and unbridled originality. So if we tie a true passionate heart to an inventive creative mind that will not be bounded by mundane or ordinary, dreary or humdrum, prose, then good writing can hit its stride, leap outside the boundaries of everyday and commonplace usage and be something worth experiencing. If good writing exists, it is because someone cared enough to create and polish a new work of art. Someone struggled with their conjunctions and commas, fought with the adjectives and the adverbs, knew when to cut and throw away, figured out that humility was a virtue and that ego is death. They also knew when to stop.
On writing well
The question of how to write well is, I think, both a mystery and a conundrum in this sense: you know when the writing is bad and why, but it’s harder to tell why writing is good, elegant, meaningful. Having read, literally, thousands of writers from all over the globe and from every period of human history, I have come to the conclusion that good writing has nothing to with using complicated words or impenetrable syntax, nothing to do with subtle arguments or complex rhetorical strategies, nothing to do with tricky poetic tropes, unusual metaphors, or innovative symbols although these are often attributes given to good writing and are often found in good writing. Good writing has to do, more likely, with what is in the writer’s heart. Passion seems to be a hallmark of good writing, but it’s not just passion either because some passionate writing in awful, overridden by tired cliches and worn out tropes. I like clarity, but I have read many things that were utterly clear and despised them. The art of writing has to be a combination of passion and clarity, incisive commentary and enlightened observation, entangled within an engaging combination words, phrases, and clauses that invite the reader to continue reading. Boring writing is dead writing, even when the writing is clear and meaningful. There is a “matter-of-factness” about good writing which draws in the reader so they want to find out what might be next. Predictable writing is also dead writing, so writing that will bring something new to the rhetorical table is welcome and fresh. Perhaps there is also an element of truth that must ring out in good writing because the reader cannot for a second suspect the writer of shoveling so much syntactic and semantic manure or the cause is lost. Writing that goes unread is not writing at all, dead, sepulchral, frozen, unmovable. I also suspect that writing which is too concrete is tedious, boring, and dreadful. Ambiguity, well done, can raise good writing to a higher state of sublime creation where allegory, fable, metaphor, and symbol dwell in rhetorical paradise, meaning, signifying, but untethered to a literal meaning or interpretation. I also suspect that good writing is tied to an unfettered imagination, explosive creativity, and unbridled originality. So if we tie a true passionate heart to an inventive creative mind that will not be bounded by mundane or ordinary, dreary or humdrum, prose, then good writing can hit its stride, leap outside the boundaries of everyday and commonplace usage and be something worth experiencing. If good writing exists, it is because someone cared enough to create and polish a new work of art. Someone struggled with their conjunctions and commas, fought with the adjectives and the adverbs, knew when to cut and throw away, figured out that humility was a virtue and that ego is death. They also knew when to stop.
On the thesis
Generally speaking, whenever anyone writes anything, they want to accomplish some objective, argue some idea, express an opinion, make a point. Writing, however, is a little harder than some imagine, and it can often get in the way of a well-argued thesis. Somewhere between having the idea and making the argument, the author falls into a series of labyrinthine mazes surrounded by endless linguistic dead ends, infinite mangled grammar structures, and enough semantic smoke and mirrors to foil even the most earnest essayist. Many writers simply lose track of their objective, and their thesis dies a slow and painful death beneath a mountain of rubble consisting of headless nouns, crippled verbs, dead adjectives, mindless adverbs, stumbling articles, and wild interjections. The thesis lies crushed under this heap of flotsam and jetsam even before it has had a chance to flower, to be heard, to sing. The writing, of course, would be easier if the writer would isolate the thesis ahead of time, make sure that it is arguable, and focus it under a microscope before some lame attempt at exposing it to the world before it is ready. A great thesis should be neither too general nor too specific. It should not be a straw man that the writer would like to knock over in some naive way. A great thesis should not suggest black and white answers. A great thesis should establish a problem that the author wishes to address in some specific way. In this way, the author may explore alternatives and options that may or may not establish a clear answer. Not all thesis have either complete answers or clear solutions. A thesis will give a reader something to think about as the author marshals their arguments for or against. Yet, a thesis should not be so ambiguous that it can serve any argument or any line of reasoning. A thesis is a stance on a subject which the author must either attack or defend or dismiss or defend. A spurious thesis based on fallacious underpinnings and untrue suppositions should always be left on the ash heap of discarded writings. The first and most important parameter for a good thesis is that it be true in some honest and earnest way. This is the ethical responsibility of the essay writer, whether he/she be writing about politics, religion, art, sex, war, literature, or history. The thesis must be defensible within the realm of reasonable scholarship and accepted paradigms which have been accepted and established by the vast majority of writers in that field. Being a complete naysayer or iconoclast, though interesting, can often lead the thesis writer right out into left-field. Purposefully leading people astray is both dishonest and disheartening. Writing a paper without a thesis is like trying to find a treasure without a map: you may bang around in the dark for a long time, but you will never find anything. A good thesis is concise without being pedantic, suggestive without being overbearing, intriguing without being arcane. The thesis will lead a writer to tame the verbs, choose the nouns, avoid the adverbs, and carefully select their adjectives before blindly running downhill to their conclusions. Often, a great thesis cannot be completely proved or disproved, especially if the object of that thesis is a question with many answers or a conundrum with no answers.
On the thesis
Generally speaking, whenever anyone writes anything, they want to accomplish some objective, argue some idea, express an opinion, make a point. Writing, however, is a little harder than some imagine, and it can often get in the way of a well-argued thesis. Somewhere between having the idea and making the argument, the author falls into a series of labyrinthine mazes surrounded by endless linguistic dead ends, infinite mangled grammar structures, and enough semantic smoke and mirrors to foil even the most earnest essayist. Many writers simply lose track of their objective, and their thesis dies a slow and painful death beneath a mountain of rubble consisting of headless nouns, crippled verbs, dead adjectives, mindless adverbs, stumbling articles, and wild interjections. The thesis lies crushed under this heap of flotsam and jetsam even before it has had a chance to flower, to be heard, to sing. The writing, of course, would be easier if the writer would isolate the thesis ahead of time, make sure that it is arguable, and focus it under a microscope before some lame attempt at exposing it to the world before it is ready. A great thesis should be neither too general nor too specific. It should not be a straw man that the writer would like to knock over in some naive way. A great thesis should not suggest black and white answers. A great thesis should establish a problem that the author wishes to address in some specific way. In this way, the author may explore alternatives and options that may or may not establish a clear answer. Not all thesis have either complete answers or clear solutions. A thesis will give a reader something to think about as the author marshals their arguments for or against. Yet, a thesis should not be so ambiguous that it can serve any argument or any line of reasoning. A thesis is a stance on a subject which the author must either attack or defend or dismiss or defend. A spurious thesis based on fallacious underpinnings and untrue suppositions should always be left on the ash heap of discarded writings. The first and most important parameter for a good thesis is that it be true in some honest and earnest way. This is the ethical responsibility of the essay writer, whether he/she be writing about politics, religion, art, sex, war, literature, or history. The thesis must be defensible within the realm of reasonable scholarship and accepted paradigms which have been accepted and established by the vast majority of writers in that field. Being a complete naysayer or iconoclast, though interesting, can often lead the thesis writer right out into left-field. Purposefully leading people astray is both dishonest and disheartening. Writing a paper without a thesis is like trying to find a treasure without a map: you may bang around in the dark for a long time, but you will never find anything. A good thesis is concise without being pedantic, suggestive without being overbearing, intriguing without being arcane. The thesis will lead a writer to tame the verbs, choose the nouns, avoid the adverbs, and carefully select their adjectives before blindly running downhill to their conclusions. Often, a great thesis cannot be completely proved or disproved, especially if the object of that thesis is a question with many answers or a conundrum with no answers.
On paperwork
I have commented in the past how paperwork is a kind of dark, lurid karma that follows me around, thwarting my every move. Today I spent several hours putting paperwork together for my study abroad program. I understand the need for the paperwork, but I sometimes wonder if paperwork wasn’t invented to make this or that process seem efficient and safe, but paperwork as an end in itself is only illusory and does not serve the purpose for which it was intended. My son is currently involved in filing the necessary paperwork for his Eagle Scout project, and the paperwork is more difficult and complicated than his project was (he served his community by retiring over 300 hundred worn out, dirty, and tattered American flags). So my question is this: should the amount of paperwork necessary to complete a project be inversely proportional to the amount of work required to do the original project? Does paperwork actually serve a deeper purpose to confuse, nee, to deter people from doing good things because the paperwork is overtly onerous and unnecessarily complicated? I think that original intentions, no matter how misguided, have often allowed rather simple, clear, safe procedures that work to become completely and utterly complex, erasing the original objective of the paperwork, which was to gather important information and make it accessible to directors, managers, and administrative assistants. When paperwork is designed, however, by those who do not participate in the original program, whatever it might be, paperwork develops a life of its own as labyrinthine paperwork, developing a strange complexity that dooms it to unending failure. Paperwork should only be about collecting the necessary information for allowing those doing the work to succeed. Complex paperwork such as tax forms needlessly complicate tax procedures, tax collection, and tax calculations until the system begins to sag under its own enormous weight of laws, rules and regulations, all because nobody kept an eye on keeping the paperwork simple. I would happily do all the paperwork required of me if I knew that it eventually would serve some greater purpose of keeping me safe or ensuring that my program run better. The muddiness of complex paperwork is depressing, time-consuming, and doomed to a life of death, a Dantesque contrapasso for those who demanded paperwork of others without understanding that they were neither making the process better, nor were they ensuring the success of the process for which the paperwork is demanded. Complex paperwork not only does not collect the rudimentary information it needs to be successful, it clouds all information, and no one can distinguish the true objective of the paperwork, much less understand why it was collected in the first place. Just because you have data doesn’t mean the data means anything.
On ink
Do you actually own a bottle of ink? The ball point pen has just about eliminated and killed the liquid ink market, but there are still a few sybarites around who use fountain pens and keep a stray bottle on their desk. I am torn by the comparative metaphors that fountain pens and ball point pens represent. Fountain pens, with their liquid ink, steel nibs, refillable reservoirs, aesthetic styling, grace, history and tradition, invoke the traditions of pen and ink that carried civilization through the middle ages and copied the most important works of literature that we still honor and value today. The fountain pen represents both the greatest authors and their greatest works. The ball point pen, on the other hand, is made to be disposable. It has little style and no grace as it scratches across the surface of the paper. You can lose them, they are anonymous, and you can throw it away if it runs dry. Ball point pens are neat and useful, however, and they don’t leak or smudge nearly as often as a fountain pen which will leave your fingers with dark smudges on a daily basis. Ball point pens are often about advertising, and one usually has a collection of “advertising” pens on one’s desk, preferably in an old coffee cup–three quarters of which don’t work. I believe the main difference is in the ink. When I first switched over to using only fountain pens (about fourteen years ago), I was constantly getting my fingers smudged with ink. A fountain pen must be treated with a certain amount of respect, they must be used on a regular basis, and holding and writing with a good fountain pen has little or nothing to do with the barbaric writing habits one might employ while writing with a pen that cost twenty-nine cents. Fountain pens can fly across the page if you know how much pressure to employ (which is almost none, by the way). You don’t force a fountain pen. Instead, you let it do the writing. Good ink and a quality writing instrument will never let you down. Your hand won’t be tired; what you have written is aesthetically pleasing; you pay homage to all those scribes who have gone before you. So the next time you walk past a pen store, walk in and have new experience, and check your ball points at the door.
