My Typed Page

People do things to see if they can do it. Like marathoners, who run 26 and a bit of miles. Or bicyclists who ride 100 miles, a century. That seems like a lot to some people. To others it is a nice warm-up for their 400, 600, or 1200 kilometers There is an event where they run four miles (or something like that. it is not a tough distance the first time) at the top of the hour. And then another run of the same course. And it continues with a new start at the top of the hour until there is only one finisher. There is no stopping for eating or sleeping. You get to do that if you finisher your four (or whatever it is) miles and have time left in the hour. This is not restricted to physical things (Oh, wait, I forgot to mention the Ironman triathlete, my apology to any of you who have done one of them) anyway, it is not a physical event. I once joined a 365 Photo event. A photo every day for a year. How did I miss taking a photo on a day? I did in the midst of it all. But, like many, I did stay with it until my 365 photos were taken. You may recall my 1,000 consecutive days of Duolingo language learning. (I am still at that one) and there are lots of 30, or 31, or 28-day challenges based on months. Like Inktober right now. 30 days of cycling in April or September or both. I am not aware of the challenge of typewriting in days or words or pages. Are you?

Last weekend the subject of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) came up. Could you do that on a typewriter? How many words would you get credit for per page? It turns out that they do permit it, typing your novel. I am digging into getting the details of how it is counted and how much credit you get per page. If you would rather, of course, you can convert it to text and submit that. Though it seems like a pain. This is something like my nephew who is participating in NaNoWriMo by handwriting his novel. Writing out 1,667 words a day — transferring that to another format. Ow.

I di also look up how they validate the word count. There are hundreds of thousands of people participating. They have some metrics for determining the count. It is not like typing for speed where every five characters counts. It was supposed that they use something like the Unix utility “wc” to do their counting. That software breaks words by whitespace. Which means A J Person counts for three words, and Li Wu counts for two. While Suzanne Goodperson-HappyMarriage also counts for two words. Care with name selection sounds like it will be important.

Advice for beginners includes what to do if this seems like too much for you. Recommendations included writing a story a week, 25,000 words for the month (a half-NaNoWriMo), or just going for it and finding out how much you can write. Which sounds good to me. Just do not quit.

— MichaelRpdx :: h3k

Today woke up with an idea about how to write and what to write about. So much for that. That needs to wait until at least tomorrow. Yes, at least tomorrow. So today has another thing to write about. Now if lL can just pull that out of my mind and get it on paper.

Linda in D.C. – Now those are watches! Ah, those are good things to look at and wonderful to see. Thank you for restoring, a bit, faith in humanity.
Robert in Davis – hang on and bunker down and someday FedEx will, like mine, eventually deliver. Mine eventually did last Sunday. It is like spring, sooner or later its promise must be kept. It is beautiful when it comes.

Poll: How many of you remember what GENIE was? Answer coming up later.

“Don’t eat at Emelio’s”, that was a saying we had for people who did like spaghetti and beer. Just do not get it at Emelio’s place. I bought a t-shirt from there. In 1990 +/— 2 years, probably – not +. I wore that t-shirt today. It still fits. Admission: there were years when I could not have worn that shirt. I was way too fat (obese really) for that. But I can now. Every Tuesday and Thursday I wear a t-shirt from a different part of my life. Some of them have come close enough to be the same event, but different years. But still, the shirts are from different events or years. The 2000 Oregon Star Party, an EFF fundraiser, a Pizzamas fundraising shirt, an Oregon Country Fair staff shirt, a mountain turtle shirt, a (what I thought was) SF-Oregon Raid shirt, (but what I think now was just a Blackbird bicycle delivery service thing), (just add twenty or so years and your grip on memories and facts get loose), Emelio’s shirt was the most recent one. It gives us something to talk about as I do the treadmill and whatever he comes up with for my strength exercises. It is Pulmonary Rehab, which is similar to Cardiac Rehab and it is a lot like going to a gym. The largest difference is medically trained staff and my blood pressure and pulse are monitored all the time. So to give us something to talk about I wear a different shirt all the time every session.

Remembered GENIE yet? General Electric Network Information Exchange. Or something like that. It was a pre-internet place for nerds to nerd out and Emelio’s was a hangout for writers. I met a guy named Goehner, first name forgotten, who lived in Portland and he was one of my initial friends here in town. Ah memories, so many that drift in and out of your mind.

— MichaelRpdx :: h3k

Over the last three days, I have dived into Anthony Madrid’s essay (?) about the topic. One Typed Page on the idea itself and then two days going a little deeper into the types of books you can and should write. I have a seventh book, kinda sorta, for you to add to your list.

But first, Daniel in Ottowa, thank you for the recommendation of Sarah Andersen’s book, FANGS. (Who knew how many Fangs titled things there are at the library, a lot of them) but there was one available for putting on hold. So I have. Mike in Virginia, who took off on writing without knowing where he was going (a fine tradition in that method, by the way) until he found himself written into a corner. Have you read If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler? It would be a good book for someone in your position. Plenty of ways to get oneself out of a corner there in that book. Warning: I love that book and look for opportunities to recommend it.

So the other thing you can and should write is a “commonplace book” which is a scrapbook of ideas and other ephemera that you collect. Wikipedia has a wonderful article on it. As does Ryan Holliday whose commonplace book is a collection of 4×6″ index cards with ideas, quotes, references written on them. Holliday, for you unfamiliar with him, has written dozen-plus books From Trust Me, I’m Lying, through Courage is Calling the last one being on the subject of Stoicism. Most of his books are about Stoicism. Another example is the (were the?) cookbooks gathered up by women before they were allowed to be educated. The booklets contained more than recipe things that they need to know passed along. As I assert and will remind you again, this is not for publication, this is for you. So how this collection of things you find interesting or useful or whatever is gathered up is for you to decide.

You can find a number of examples of commonplace books via Google. In both articles and images. Enjoy finding out about this tradition that goes back (at least) as far as Marcus Aurelius’ what is now published as Meditations. A couple of thousand years of yes, there must be something to it.

— MichaelRpdx :: h3k

PS Tomorrow, a new subject and a different typewriter.

Yesterday I wrote about three of the reasons that you can and should write about. A book about yourself, a book about others, and a book about your favorite writings. Onward to the other books to be written.

Anthony Madrid called the next one a Dictionary of Received Ideas. And he then dives into a dictionary of words not in the sense of definitions of words as needed to look up. Instead, well it can be anything. Consider Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary hone to things like “TRUTHFUL, adj., Dumb and illiterate.” Of course, it is the meaning you assign to things. Like memories, for instance, summer is the time when it is fully bright when I get up. As opposed to winter then it is dark all the time. But if something grabs your attention, jot it down, include it here. There is so much more to words than whatever they put into a dictionary. Especially to you. Make this one about words.

Now for my favorite, a Book Of Lists. The example given is The Pillow Book, by Sei Shonagon. Like my list of “Randoneur events in which I did not finish last”, or “Summer Themes” or favorite foods, celebrity crushes, or Scars (I have 15, I cannot be a criminal), or Frisson Songs (the ones that cause your hair to stand up). Well, there are more things you can list. It is my favorite thing to write about and so I do.

A Book to Burn, Li Zhi. He wrote it with the idea of including all of the ideas that were not palatable and got people riled up. It was titled such that if you were caught with a copy you would be executed. He was caught with this book of ideas so inflammatory that he was sentenced to death. He committed suicide in prison before they could do so. We all need a place to say what we must not. Write it and burn it.

If you do not have anything to write about (like I have felt many times before) you can outline or do a bit of one of these books. A place to start.

— MichaelRpdx

Samuel Pepys kept an exact record of everything he did, or said, or heard, or saw, or ate, or hoped, or stepped in. Yes, I mean everything. He did not think about it. He just did it. Everything without reservation or comment or anything. This is probably due to the fact that he felt, he really believed, that no one, not a soul, would ever read it. So he wrote it all. Everything. Now he did live in interesting times and he knew some famous people but he wrote it all down.

You do not need to do that. Consider the distance between his tell-all and what the normal, make them look good, normal telling of someone’s tales. You can fall somewhere between the two. Give it a whirl.

And remember, this is a book for yourself. So put in as much as you can.

John Aubrey, on the other hand, took a similar approach but for other people. He just kept notes about the people he knew. But how well do you know people? That adage about writing about something in order to know it, that applies to people, and there is nobody to say you are wrong.

So write it up. Leave notes to yourself about the things that you are not sure of or in the lives of other people you can make it up. But trying to write about people you know is a good start.

Remember this is a book for yourself. You can and should write it.

(Francis Turner) Palgrave’s Golden Treasury was is a shortish anthology of British lyric poetry. This was personal choices and something that drew critics. (They had plenty of room to criticize it, the book has been updated) But that is not the point. Put together a booklet of the best writing you can find. (Tangled up in Blue, anyone?) Gather them together for your pleasures. This is your booklet and you can put what you want into it. There is no reason to have some compilation of other people’s “Best of … ” Choices. Make your own.

For yourself, remember it is for you to write.

This dips into the first three of the six books you can and should write. If you are at all curious about the three books listed here, you can find them at Project Gutenberg. All are available in a variety of formats. (Kindle, EPUB for other readers, an HTML version, and plain text.)

My favorite book I can and have actually started writing will come tomorrow. Give it some thought and perhaps type in something to get started on it.

— MichaelRpdx :: h3k