22/09/2020 – 18:54
Today, I thought I’d try something a little different. I did my morning run as (generally) normal and then my shower and breakfast. At this point, I’d switch the computer on and have a little flick over emails before starting my studies. Yep, study time has started again. Actually, the website for the Masters opened a few weeks back but the course really gets started at the beginning of October. Anyways, rather than turn to the website and find out that I need to read a whole set of articles about bending genres or something, I decided to have a little write instead.
I have found a few websites that supply some great nonfiction, creative and otherwise. I have subscribed to one of them and become a paid member to another one. This paid for service has stirred up a lot of motivation.
I always worried about reading other people’s work as I simply didn’t want to absorb too much of other’s work and get an unconscious slant toward my own. I don’t think I’ll get that influence from these pieces, but I will get spurred. And sometimes, as a writer, I need that.
I have had trouble finding my own little routine but I think I’m finally getting to the place that I need to be at.
Yes, I still want a Freewrite but there’s simply no way at this stage of my regaining financial stability journey that I could justify purchasing one. And even if I, the great justifier, could justify purchasing one, there’s simply no way at this stage of my regaining financial stability journey that I could afford to purchase one.
I have looked at alternatives. Mechanical keyboards mainly. And as previously mentioned, I’ll probably stick with the set-up that I have. Which is great, but not the best. It’s not the ultimate set-up for sitting in Costa with. But on Saturday, I took my boys with me for a family consultation in Ikea. From there, we bought a desk. It’s certainly not the folding table that I thought I’d get from Argos. Nope, it’s not even the smaller desk that I had thought would help with the lack of space in my bedroom. It’s a computer desk. One with the pull-out keyboard drawer. It’s not the biggest I’ve seen, but it’s definitely the biggest I could’ve got to fit in my room. I can justify the purchase as I’m working from home for at least the next three months as far as I can see. Plus, home study for the Open University until May of next year.
This means that my study space is very much metamorphosing into my bedroom rather than a coffee shop, library or pub; which as nice as it sounds, isn’t really all that suitable. Well, it wasn’t. But now with this desk and the space available I can begin to settle down and crack on with what I feel is a part of my destiny.
One thing life has taught me is that very rarely, things are straight forward. This doesn’t mean I’m a defeatist. I don’t often give up unless it’s through boredom. Many a project has fallen by the wayside in this manner. Yet in one way or another, writing has always been there for me.
The clickety click – perhaps not the best onomatopoeia for describing it – of letter hitting screen is missing. And so is the scratching of fountain pen nib on 90gsm paper.
I looked at getting a typewriter t’other day. It was a Smith Corona Zephyr II in a Cancer Research window. A tenner. That’s all it would have cost. This was pre-writing desk I must point out. Whilst the ribbon is out of production, a little research later had me find a chap that can do similar; a little manipulation would see it through. A short cliché made longer later, and the following day when I went to buy it, they’d sold it moments before. Ebay have quite a few. I do like to research. What I found is that not every typewriter works.
What I also found, which is more interesting and being honest, I hadn’t thought about it before this little escapade, is that they also have different fonts. Fancy that. I think in the depths of my memory I knew, but I had never thought about it.
And here is when things took a real turn. My mind wondered onto how the old writers used to write. Would they use pen and paper and then type up their manuscripts to hand in to their publishers? Or would they type up and alter their works as they went, scoring out, crossing out and overwriting? Perhaps they would do as you see in the films and scrunch up the paper into balls and attempt to throw them into the bin which would be sitting just too far out of reach to be accurately targeted.
Would Au Père Tranquille let me take a typewriter up to their second floor and sit there during daylight hours, hammering away at a truly mechanical keyboard, whilst paper built up beside me; some laying flat, the majority laying crumpled on the surrounding surfaces?
An Englishman in Paris 