Scribe

Foreign.

Hey, Andy. What up? How's it going?

So.

you want to give.

Yeah, sounds good.

So I, this is, I feel like I have a reputation on this podcast of being. What's the word? Like when you like sort of change your mind all the time. What am I thinking of? Fickle. Fickle Tim. Fickle Tim. Btim. Yeah. No, but just that I like, I'm always like really excited when I find something I think is my favorite, which there are certain things that have stuck. The Palomino HP is stuck. I've been using that for like seven years now or whatever and I think I've found my favorite like non field note style pocket notebook. And because so I was this, this goes back like several months, but I bought some new hardback pocket notebooks and I bought, because I think I'd found them like on clearance at Barnes Noble and TJ Maxx and stuff like that that I'd like bought up a bunch of them. So I ended up with like Moleskine, Rhodia Leuchtturm, some other ones I don't know. And, and so I had been using, I used a, you know, field notes where the field notes is like sort of this like classic feel and it's, it's all right with pencils field or like a fountain pen just devastates it most of the time, you know. And so I like stopped using or like I finished that one off and was like kind of relieved and I moved on to the roadie and the roadie was almost too nice where it was like squeaky and like to the, the paper was too.

Yeah, it's like coated and dense and plasticky. Exactly. And so but I started using like a week and a half ago I busted out the first of three that I had bought on clearance at Barnes Noble. These like terminal pocket sized hardback notebooks. And there. And I could be wrong on this and I'm not, I'm not going to look it up because I'm not interested in facts right now. But I feel, I feel like it's a little longer.

Okay. Who needs facts when I've got my brain. But it's a little longer. Which was very pleasing. The paper is perfect. And I actually ended up going with dork grid which is not like my, my favorite historically, you know, but it is working out fantastically. And I'm in love with this notebook and I'm just like plowing through it. So I just, I was mentioning that about these because you know usually when you're talking about the pocket notebooks, you're talking about the paper ones or you're talking about a Moleskine and then the other ones kind of get lost in the shuffle. And I really love the like term hardback pocket notebook in, in dot grid. So I've got one more docker after this and I've got another lined one which I've realized and Johnny is the now a resident book binder. What's the, what is the width of the lined like term? Oh man, like the lines. I mean it's, it's shorter than average. Right.

Sure.

Their dot grid is really nice and I don't usually gravitate towards door grid. But like this one I really like and I have a lined like normal size like journal notebook that I. Well it's not the one that I bought when we were in, we were in D.C. together. It's the next one I bought and it's lined and it's Just a. It's one of those things where I feel like a crazy person because it's the, the lined. The lines are just short enough that it makes me. It like annoys me and I just think about it just too much where I'm like, God damn it. You know, like every page. But I'm still, I'm working through it. But, but they're, they're, they're. Dot grid's great. And so I'm just in love with this notebook. So I've been using it with the. I think last episode I talked about the Moon man retractable fountain pen that I got, which I'm still just like ravenously in love with. It's like all I've used fountain pen wise, aside from pencils and gel pens and other things. I just love it. And it's. They are a perfect, perfect match, this pocket notebook. And then you need to get one

Okay.

They're known, they're, they're known for their accuracy and their precision. Precision.

So, yeah, so that was the main, main thing in my like stationary life recently, aside from still just doting over the friggin Moon man pocket or retractable pen, which I'm still madly in love with. I just love that thing so much. So. And aside from that, and this is something that's been kind of like in the works for a while. And I'm just mentioning it, not because this is why you're here on the podcast, but I feel like I just need to share this because it's probably going to come out in conversations in the future is I got a new job.

Hey guys, guess what? Yeah, I got a new job and I start next, which if you're. You're listening to this, it's probably going to be like a couple days after I Start on Monday, September 19th. So with, with a new job. And it was a super long process in a very heartbreaking process in a lot of ways. So I've accepted a new job that I started interviewing for at the end of June. And my first like. So I had like a sort of pre interview. My first official interview was like July 5th, and I just found out that I got the job on August 15th, something like that. And then now I only have two more days. the time of recording, I have just two more teaching days. I. This is a Monday, and I took off today because my. My grandmother passed away and we were in Ohio for this. This funeral. And I'm going back and I've got two days with my students and then I've got a long weekend and I start a new job. And I'm very excited about it.

Yeah, it's not in teaching. Yeah. No, I got a job working very large international aid organization that is based out of Baltimore. How about that? Coincidence Among. That's not a coincidence. It's fate. That's what that is.

Yeah. No, I don't think so. How many Catholics are there out there in San Francisco?

No, but. Yeah. So I start Monday. I am going to be working as a training advisor for this organization, working from home. I'm incredibly excited about it and also incredibly heartbroken at the moment about just some of the students saying, you know, saying goodbye to them and. And still no regrets that it's a good thing that I'm making movements in the right direction. But. But, yeah, geez. It's. It was way harder than I imagined it. There's. There are certain students, a lot of certain students that, you know, you see the look on their face when you tell them the news and they're just like, yeah. And I. Yeah. You know, that's. It's a hard thing about teaching. You don't realize how many students like. Because you don't usually hear from students about how, like, the job you're doing or how. What they feel about, like, your class or something until they're 25 and you see him at a bar. They're like, your class is the best.

I thought you hated my class. You know, whatever. But when you leave. But when you leave a job, like, when you leave teaching, then you see these students be like, oh, my gosh. You know, you were my. Yeah, this. I loved this class or whatever then. So it was hard.

And got emotional a lot in the last week at school, but I'm still feeling really good about it, so. And I'm feeling very good about it being based in Baltimore because I can see my friend Johnny more, including next week. Next week. We'll make it happen at least once while we're there. We'll See, but yeah, as a training advisor, they work around the world, like, 110 countries. The organization is called CRS and Catholic Relief Services. And if new legislation is passed in our country, we do a lot of legislative activism. So I'll be putting together trainings about changes in legislation for the groups that are working around the country, as well as, like, onboarding curriculum. And I'm. I'm very excited.

Well, I will be a. The reporter for the lobbyists, thankfully, because I would be a terrible lobbyist.

No, it's fine.

Yeah. But I'm very excited. It's a cool opportunity. But. But those are. Yeah, those are the big things with. With me. Big, big news. So new favorite pocket notebook and a new career path.

Yes. All right. Absolutely. So that's me. So how about you, Johnny? My.

Yeah.

Emperor.

Emperor of Pencil Revolution.

On their website you can see a. There's a really nice like picture of like the innards of it where it's like, it's like two, you know, like, like, like those brass wedges that you used to talk about all the time. It's like two of the. It's. It's essentially two of those side by like, or let's say belly to belly, you know. So you're, you're sharpening on at 12 o' clock and at 6 o'. Clock. Yeah.

Yeah.

Actually make it weigh like three more pounds than it does.

I mean, I mean it feels very like the, to me, the look of it looks pretty on brand with the like the shirts and stuff that they've been, they've been releasing. It seems to fit the, the visual of the new direction. It certainly doesn't with like where they've been before. But we. And we've talked about that plenty, that they were clearly moving in a new direction. That makes sense.

Yeah.

A vinyl. A vinyl record of YouTube.

My kids collect those.

Just not.

Yeah, What'd you get?

Did you get anything at the show?

I knew they kind of like dropped off the map because I've got a Seven Seas Writer and I love it. But it's, you know, it's 7,000 pages long and so I haven't finished it yet. And so I haven't needed to look for more. But I heard that I wouldn't be able to find.

So what?

So how do you spell Sansem?

So close.

Yeah, that's. It's interesting you say that because I've got. I have a seven seas writer that I've had for six years or something. I've had it for a long time. And it came with a blotter sheet. But I've never noticed any issues with drawing because it's. That paper really was of all my like stationary experience that the original tomoe paper just felt like magic. I was like, how do you do. How do you do this? Like this does. This doesn't make sense because you'd write on it and I, you know, I usually write with broad or like medium or big stub nib fountain pens. If I'm writing in fountain pen, it would just. It would never bleed through. I could write on both sides. And I was like, this does make sense.

It's really cool.

Yeah, let's do it.

Yes, I do. Yeah. So the first one I wanted to bring up was one that I've. I've talked about on the podcast, but it's been a very long time. But the book is several short sentences about writing by Verlin Klinkenborg.

Yeah. And it's. It's a very weird book. It's a. It's a book that's almost written in. I don't know if I want to say it's in like, prose poems or it's in just kind of like micro chapters. I don't know how to describe it, but it's this book that's. It is like little aphorisms about writing that kind of jump, seemingly jump all over the place. And some of them are very short and very concise, and some of them are longer, but they're always. I don't know what the. As far as, like, connotation, I don't know what the positive connotation of vague is.

It is. Yeah. I mean, I don't. It's like they are very. The. The language is so inclusive that you can like. You can sort of like, apply it to anything. And, and I, I love it because. Because usually what I'm looking for in inspiration when I'm writing or, or even like working on projects, like for work, is that I'm looking for something that makes me think differently, you know, so it's like, I don't always want someone to tell me, hey, when you're writing a character like this, do this, or if you're stuck, try this. The. The way that this book works is it's very poetic and it's very. It's hard to explain, but it's like this book puts you in a place where you're hearing about writing from a different perspective than you've heard about it before. Like you're in different language or different modes of writing. So I've got some quotes that I pulled out here that I wanted to read to kind of explain what it felt like to read this book. So here's one. In school, you learn to write as if the reader were in constant danger of Getting lost. A problem you are taught to solve not by writing clearly, but by shackling your sentences and paragraphs together. Think about transitions. Remember how it goes. Late in the paragraph, you prepare for the transition to the next paragraph, the great leap over the void across the yawning indentation. You are taught the art of the flying trapeze, but not how to write. That's. That was a. That was a favorite and one that I. I feebly attempted to share with my students, but there's too much context. I kind of build around that. But, like. Because that's what I mean. All of the state standards and all of, like, what teaching people how to write these days is based on. Like, do this, then this, then this. Here's the order of things that you do. But. But what this book likes to do is to basically address the mystery of writing. You just, like, basically, like, boiling it down to, like, you just need to want to write something good. You need to want to write something interesting. You need to want to write something that sounds like you, as opposed to saying, like, five sentences in a paragraph. The first sentence is an introduction. The last sentence is a conclusion. The ones in between illuminate something. It's like, there's a huge difference there.

Which. That. That kind of thinking just really sort of cracks my mind wide open. Here. Here's. Here's another one. Here's another quote. We forget something fundamental as we read every sentence could have been otherwise, but isn't. We can't all. Oh, sorry. We can't see all the decisions that led to the final shape of the sentence, but we can see the residue of those decisions, which is like a great sentence about how. What. Whatever you're reading, especially if it's in a printed form, in a book you are reading something that has been mulled over, has been. Like, they've taken time to decide on this. I mean, I guess assuming it's something good, but, like, they've taken time and people have chosen. Like, is this sentence what we want it to say? And that. That's just not a fundamental thought that people typically will have. Like, I mean, my students. I was always applying this to my students. That my. My students would be like, well, it's. You asked for 200 words, and I gave you 200 words. So here you go. It's like, yeah, but is it the right 200 words? And they're like, I don't understand. It's 200 words. It's 200 words. What do you want? So those are the sorts of things that I just absorbed from this book. And I. This is a book that I actually have on audio. And I'll kind of like. It's. I think it's the only audiobook that I have that when I. Because I've read the whole thing. But I'll. I'll pull it up now. I basically always have it downloaded on. On Audible, and I will just play it and then take the little. I know what the word for it is, but, like, I'll. I'll drag forward like three hours and just drop it somewhere random and just listen wherever it falls because it doesn't really matter because you'll. You'll hear some different sort of aphoristic, beautiful thought. I. I've been like, avoid. This whole time I've been avoiding it. Avoiding explaining it this way, but that it really feels like a Bible or something because it's so mysterious, you know, like that. It's just like. I don't exactly know what you're going for. I don't know why it's in this order. I don't know why you're talking about things from point A to point B like this. And maybe that's the same way they talked about in the Bible. It's just kind of like thrown together randomly. But it's so. It's like you can jump around anywhere. You can jump around anywhere in this book and get some insight into the. The act of. The act of writing. And I. And I really appreciate it.

Yeah, no, that's pretty accurate. Yeah. And this. I'll. I'll end with this one for this book. But long sentences often tend to collapse or break down or become opaque or trip over their awkwardness. He. As in the title, several short sentences about writing. It's all about, like, just keeping things simple, and that's lost sometimes. So I. I love this book. It's a great one to just kind of pick up and flip through once you've read through it all the way. But I love it. So are we going through all of our three.

Yeah.

As far as. As far as writing books, that is one of the. The few, maybe like, the three in this whole genre that I remember exactly where I was when I read it, because I. I was in college, and I had read Hemingway and was like most college, like, white college males who are interested in writing. I was like, Hemingway, gosh. Like, this is amazing. Like, it's something. Something interesting. It's something different or whatever. And I went on a. It's called the Humanities tour to Europe, and I brought, like, three books with me when we went. And I spent. We spent two and a half weeks in Europe, and I brought a Movable Feast. Brave New World and Green Hills of Africa were like the three books that I brought with me. I ended up buying other things while I was there and reading them. But. But I remember reading Immovable Feast and literally being in Paris and being like. And I. And I. It's. I don't know if it's a good thing that I went from reading a movable piece, Movable Feast, in. In Paris and then graduating and then seeing A Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen and just, like, so totally, totally corrupted my brain, where my brain was just like, this is where you need to be. This is what you want to do. Like, you know, build yourself a time machine. But. But I was profoundly affected by that. Book and, and I almost remember nothing from it besides just like getting the glimpse into the sort of behind the scenes picture of seeing someone become a writer in a, in a time that was of course incredibly foreign to the time that, that I live in. He didn't have Snapchat.

Yeah, yeah, he'd be following a bunch of accounts on Instagram that are like morally questionable. He'd be like, all right, anyway, take it easy.

Yeah.

Yeah, sure. This is one that I, I know I mentioned on the, the previous episode, but one that's been really important to me is Ron Carlson writes a story which is written by a guy named Joe. No, I'm just kidding. Ron Carlson.

No, Ron Carlson. So Ron Carlson is a sort of like, I don't know, like mid level, not mid level and ability, but just as far as like how well he's known. Ron Carlson's short stories are not super mainstream like George Saunders or something, but they're somewhere in the middle and he's, he writes very good stories. And so his goal with this book that he, that he wrote and published with Gray Wolf was that he wanted to write a book about writing that was, you know, incredibly practical. And so he. He wrote the story of how he wrote the Governor's Ball, which is kind of his most, like, apparently his most anthologized story. And so it's a short book. It's just, you know, clocks in just over 100 pages, 110 pages. And he walks through the process of. I had this idea, and I had this idea, and then these two ideas smashed together and created this story, which is partially from my own life and partially from just, you know, a combination of memories and people I know and whatever. It's a really wonderful book. It's a really super practical book, and it's one that I've. I've read through several times. And I'll just read this. This is a quote from towards the beginning of the book about where you get your ideas. Write toward what you want to know. Sorry. Write toward what you know. Building an inventory and carefully using the imagination as the powerful sensing instrument it can be. Generally, story ideas are garnered from three sources. A writer's own experiences, experiences the writer has heard about or read about, or experiences and notions that the writer makes up. These categories are loose, and the word experiences could easily be replaced with images or events, phrases or moments. I can think of stories of mine that came from all three areas and. And combine all of them. Just. It's a really great. Whether it's short stories or, you know, creative nonfiction or songs that you're writing or whatever, just. It's a really great explanation of how, like, creating something comes from everywhere. Like, you. You pull inspiration from every direction and create something new that wasn't there before. It's not always just reporting or it's not always just pure creation, and I really like that. So he. He walks through the whole process about revision and how he thinks about characters and how he approaches issues like, this is my real life, and these are things. These are people that I know, situations that I've been in. Here's how I've converted them into fictional setting. So it's. It's a very practical and very, very entertaining book and a quick read. So I highly recommend it. Johnny. Johnny. What else?

Right? Like, that's.

She.

Yeah, I was, I was struggling to decide what my last one would be. I was between 2. The first option, which I'm not going to talk about because I feel like I've talked about it plenty, is bird by bird by animal motto. The highlight of which is the essay within the book that is called Shitty First Drafts. About, like every writer needs to create or needs to produce a shitty first draft in order to have a great fifth draft, you know, or like a, A better second draft or whatever. So I still recommend that one. The one that I decided to talk about was the Writing Life by Annie Dillard. And Annie Dillard is a really special writer, a really anachronistic writer. She just feels like she's from another century. She is. Sadly, from what I've heard, she's apparently suffering from. I don't know if it's Alzheimer's or just dementia or something right now, which is really hard because her writing is so incredibly vivid and beautiful. But she has a book about writing that she wrote called the Writing Life. It is also short. I mean, it's. It's almost exactly the same length as Ron Carlson writes a story. It's like 110 pages or something like that. And it, it fills the same kind of need. The several short sentences about writing does that It's. It's very expansive and it's very inclusive and it's vague in a good way, where it just kind of makes your mind go in directions that you weren't planning to go. And I'm going to read. I'm going to read two of my favorite quotes from this book. How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives, what we do with this hour and that one is what we were doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. If a net for it's a Sorry, it is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock up of reason and order, willed, faked, and so brought into being. It is a piece and a haven set into the wreck of time. It is a lifeboat on which you find yourself decades later, still living. That's the first one, which is like, her writing is so loose and beautiful. But also you realize that as a writer, she's very disciplined, which I think is a. Is a lesson that I'm constantly learning over and over again, that if something seems loose, it probably didn't start that way, right? The writer probably had a lot of discipline and came to it with. With a sense of, like, I need to revisit this every day. Revise, revise, revise. Iteration is everything. You know, that kind of idea. And the other quote I wanted to read is this one. One of the things I know about writing is this. Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book. Give it, give it, give it all. Give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep you to. To keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes. So my favorite quotes about writing of all time. If you have an idea, if you have something that feels fresh and vibrant and it's just vibrating in your soul as you're working on something, whether it's a song or a story or an article or whatever, spend it, use it now. Don't try to stockpile it away for later, because if you try to pull it out from the archives later, it's going to feel dead and lifeless. I love that you open your safe and you find ashes. I just think that it's. It's such. Also such a wonderful metaphor for, like, life is short. Use it now. Right, so that's. That one of my favorite writing quotes of all time from. From Annie Dillard. But, yeah, so, yeah, that's. That's. That's my last one. So, Johnny, what's your. What's your third job?

It's.

I have, as I've often referenced, I'm so fascinated by the Nolla. And she has, like. I think she has one or two collections of Nollas. It's like the collected novellas of Ursula Le Guin. And I've not read them yet, but I think I. I think I've bought if. If there's just one or if there's two. Like, I've bought at least one of them on sale on. For my Kindle, and I haven't gotten to them yet. I have never read anything by her, but. But I've. I'm. Which I feel very phony saying this, but, like, I'm. All the stuff I've heard over time and I've. I think I have a copy of Stirring the Craft that I haven't read the whole thing of. But I'm very drawn to her, that she seems like the kind of writer and the kind of personality that I'm drawn to. So, like, I need.

She's really great.

Well, I.

We left it open, but it's just this was a topic that we could spend a lot of time on. We. We discussed the idea of also, like suggesting things that just inspire us in general, whether it's like websites or books or the music or whatever that just make us want to create things. So I don't know, we'll see. We'll see where it takes us the next one. We'll talk about it between now and then. But I think this was. Personally, I was. I was really happy about making this because these types of books, there's a. There's a huge. There's a huge gap between the ones that are BS and the ones that are authentic. And I think we talked tonight about a lot of the ones that were very authentic about creating things that are meaningful for. For the people. Yeah, creating things that are. That they're to borrow, you know, from Elvis Costello. Yeah, their aim is true.

So, yeah.

You can find me on Instagram at Timothy Wassman, on Johnny. How about you, Tim Wasem?