"Benjamin Franklin suggested that writers should only write what they wish to read...."

“There’s nothing to writing.
All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”

— Sol Stein

I’ve been writing for a long time. For a few years back in the day I even kept a sort of poor man’s diary…..daily scribbles on frayed legal pads that I’d fill up and then dump in my bottom desk drawer, never to read again. They are still there. I just checked. I just randomly pulled one out and it was written the day Tiger Woods’ wife went after him and his car with a 9 iron (the specific club was in all the reports, a 9 iron. Loft matters) after she found out he’d been fucking all the waitresses at Hooters, or wherever. So that brings us back to 2009 at least. It’s nice to know that America hasn’t changed all that much. We’re still classy AF.

Twenty-five tablets. I even had some of those pocket-sized composition books that I’d carry with me, to jot down words when they arrived. There must have been hundreds of those. A few remain in various drawers and boxes, but most are long gone. I’m not sure what I was searching for, but I guarantee you I never found it. There’s not much point in writing only for yourself. It’s like shining your shoes for a Zoom call.

Not sure why I went all luddite and eschewed the computer, but I remember a quote from the great historian David McCullough, who when told that he could go oh so much faster if he stopped using his manual typewriter and moved to a computer, responded, “Well, what if I don’t WANT to go faster?”

Civil War historian Shelby Foote not only handwrote his massive war trilogy, each volume the size of the bible, the crazy fucker used a dip pen, which he had to refill after every few lines. He said it gave him time to think. And think he surely did, remarking that it took him 5 times longer to write about the war than it did for the war to be fought.

There is something satisfying about seeing a blank page become less and less blank, but after a while I think I missed the spell-checker the most. And I hated the way my hand would throb after a handwritten page or two. Not very Bukowski-esque I’m afraid, just nuts and bolts and the crazy irony of having to use a dictionary to look up how to spell a word that you DON’T KNOW HOW TO SPELL IN THE FIRST PLACE. I’m not sure this has been pondered enough by deep thinkers. As an example, if you didn’t already know how to spell “Wednesday”, how the fuck are you going to find it in the dictionary?

But I digress.

Back in the early 80s my Mom made my twin brother and I take a summer school typing course, possibly for no other reason than knowing that otherwise we were sleeping until noon. I hated everything about it, except the part where I realized that at the end of the summer I could now….you know….type. And I wasn’t one of those 2 finger peckers either. At least 6 combined digits are racing across this keyboard right now, with that backspace button getting a major workout to instantly fix what used to require that white-out paper on a typewriter. That’s the thing with computers. I’m not smarter. But I feel smarter. My manuscripts are mostly pristine, fully vetted, with even fancy words like “eschewed” spelled correctly, and no trace whatsoever of how I initially tried to spell it, which I’ll never tell. On paper that sort of ugliness is there for the world to see.

All that being said, writing is really the only thing I’m even half-way good at. Pushing words around a page comes easier to me than say…..fixing a broken door or being forced to navigate a Home Depot. I’m hopelessly impractical, in other words, and live mostly inside my own head, where I can do less damage.

I used to be a decent golfer in my teens, but once I had to pay my own green-fees I stopped playing. I picked up the clubs again a few years later and realized that I now sucked. And not just a little suck. A big big suck (golf is NOT like riding a bike). I was so bad that it was no longer fun. Golf became like trying to fix a broken door or being sent to Home Depot. My clubs are in the basement, and hopefully they will never be used again. Either on the course, or on my head.

Benjamin Franklin suggested that writers should only write what they want to read. That’s what I try to do. If I can interest myself, then I have a chance of interesting you. And if I interest you enough, maybe you’d be willing to help support me with the $5 monthly subscription. And I get it. The paywall thing can get annoying. But I ain’t a behemoth like the NY Times or the Washington Post asking for your spare change. I’m just some dude doing this in my spare time, paying the odd bill or bar tab. I’d be doing it even if I didn’t have subscribers.

But having ‘em sure is nice. So if you wouldn’t mind?

In a bit…

—tf