What’s Your Most Important Tool for Creating?
Thanks for stopping by! If you're new here and want to keep up on poetry and 32 Poems, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.
For a long time, I’ve been interested in what people use to create their work. I think this started after a discussion about uniball pens. Although not all of the uniball pens are good, some of them are fast writing. That’s all I require in a pen. I don’t want ink that wimps out in the middle a word, and I want the ink to glide onto the page.
I asked other artists about their most important tool. I’ll share a few each day over the next week or so. Here are two to start:
My favorite tools are materials samples for buildings. With them I can create a mini-palette of the entire building, where I can experience the way things will feel, their temperature, how they illuminate under natural light, and how they collage together.
Eve Fineman,
Architect & Partner, spaceLab architecture + design
Most often I draft poems on a Dell Latitude laptop, then fiddle with them on my Compaq desktop. For my daily journal pages, I wander: Uniball Vision Elite (”with airplane technology”!) my usual favorite, but the Pilot Precise Deluxe Extra Fine (black, or blue) is common; occasionally I use the Pilot P-700 fine (green or purple) for variety, and Christmas has brought me new toys: new Uniball Vision Elite in extra fine (black, red, blue, blue-black). And for squeamish revisions, there’s my Pentel 0.5 mm mechanical pencil, which has a finger-button on the side of the barrel, to advance the lead, instead of a push-button on the top.
David McAleavey
Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing
Please share your most important tool in the comments.
- January 16th
What a cool idea! I look forward to reading more of these—it’s such an interesting topic to me.
I used to draft poems long-hand with a fountain pen. Now I draft poems on my Mac Powerbook. For revising, I print them out and write all over them with liquid ink roller ball pen, usually a Waterman Carene pen. Then I return to the computer and enter the changes, sometime making more changes as I enter them. These cycle can repeat many times.
This is interesting and reminds me of the Paris Review’s interviews. For what it’s worth, I’m a combo. For poetry, long-hand in a moleskine notebook (although anything will do) and a mechanical pencil (any brand, but it must be 0.7 lead). I stash dozens of these around my desk, backpack, jacket and pants pockets because I always lose them.
For short stories and non-fiction it’s a Mac Powerbook using Ulysses writing software that eliminates all the hassle of formating.
Finally, the truly most important tool for creating is any or all of the following items that stimulate my brain: any good writing, this is the most important thing; many times I start reading and before I know it the pencil is out taking me on a terrific tangent. The others are good music and or coffee.
Cheers! I’m joying your site, which I only recently discovered.
Bud Parr,
Chekhov’s Mistress
http://www.chekhovsmistress.com
Bud, I’m glad you enjoy this blog. I just added you to my blog list on the right side of the page, and I look forward to reading what’s on your site/blog.
All, Thank you for your comments. If you don’t mind, I might post some of them in the main area of my blog so others can see them better.
My tool of choice is a Sony Pearlcorder microcassette recorder. Two reasons: usually, the time I get to compose is while driving to or from work, so my notebook and good Waterman pen are decorative but not functional. Also, I write as much for the ear as for the page, and speaking the words leads me places I don’t think my poor penmanship would take me.
David,
I find it fascinating you can record your work as you create it. I tried recording a few years back, and it felt too public too soon. Everyone discovers what works best for them, and that changes over time. Right now, it works best for me to write it down and get it to a certain point before I even speak the words.
Thanks for your comment.
D
What a cool question! The one constant in my “Toolbox” has always been a black mechanical pencil with the smallest point I can get my hands on. For a while I used a rapidograph, for the tiny point, but I went through them too quickly. Typically I use a yellow legal pad and a mechanical pencil because I like the constant of size and line, as though 8×17 paper and a .05 point are a form! I write on paper and transfer to screen for revising, where I generally recreate my stanzas. Now that I live in Atlanta, where I spend so much time in the car, I keep a minicasette recorder in the car… but I haven’t used it much yet.
Another Uniball fan here. However, I cannot find the kind I used to love. Uniballs in the Hudson Valley have changed.
My toolbox vote therefore goes to unlined composition notebooks, which can be found at the odd in-the-know art store but rarely in school sections of pharmacies and stationers, where lines rule. For anyone who draws, writes, and whose thoughts aren’t always linear, unruled rules.