Everyman's Library

writer's bookshelf, the--a close-to-hand selection of books in the writer's work area; an idiosyncratic selection of reference guides and comfort reading the working writer will use; inspiration and edification between covers.

For some writers, the basic reference guides--The Chicago Manual of Style, an unabridged dictionary, Fowler's Modern American-English Usage--are enough; others still have titles related to a specific project in the works. Yet other writers have titles at hand to remind them of the cadence or vocabulary of a particular work. It is also possible that some works, discovered early in the writer's development--works such as The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-exupery--elicit a sentimental and inspirational connection. The important consideration: Past, present, and future reading are essential to the writer's continuous engagement with craft. The temptation to rely on easily accessible Internet references, the quid pro quo of you look, they tell, does not enhance retention where it matters--in the storage vaults of the senses.

The compiler of this lexicon keeps at close hand, in addition to CMOS, the (unabridged)American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 3rd and 4th eds., Fowler, and The New York Public Library Literature Companion, Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, Love and Death in the American Novel, by Leslie Fiedler, Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose, How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom, The Oxford University Press Classical Dictionary, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley, The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler, Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon, The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. These titles gravitated through frequency of use to the bookshelf adjacent the writer's desk.

What are yours? On consideration, what do they say about you and what you write?

Material Witnesses

material--raw dramatic data; outtakes from previous writing projects; unused research data; scraps of overheard conversation; notes and observations made in alternate states of consciousness; suggestions from friends, family, and well-meaning readers; newspaper stories (particularly tabloids) focusing on intra-family disputes and feuds; ideas generated as a result of responses of admiration or disapproval while reading the work of another writer; moral, ethical, and social problems apparent to a writer but not yet emotionally sorted through; handwritten comments over one sentence in length, written on rejection slips.

In the best-but-broadest sense, everything is material, like an untidy desk, eagerly awaiting the writer's attention for the sorting-out process to begin. More than a placebo but slightly less potent than a steroid, material is the writer's holy grail, the radiant aura surrounding a creative impulse, the assurance that this is the material--more than any other material, particularly previous material--that will transform the writer's life, craft, and career. It is the arcane book on knots, found by Annie Proulx at a yard sale, that inspired and prompted her breakout novel, The Shipping News. It is the inspiration for the poem, "Kubla Khan," that visited Samuel Taylor Coleridge's psyche and upon which he was embarked before a pair of door-to-door missionary workers knocked at Coleridge's entryway, frightening away the inspiration.

On the feeding scale, material ranks close to the bottom. It is less by far than a concept or a glimmer or a hint of story; it is deceptive and radioactive in its shimmery promise. It is all book tour and New Yorker appearance, but no story.

And yet.

It is no small thing to have material or, indeed, to have Moleskine notebooks, flash sticks, external hard drives, or three-by-five index cards on which to store such material. It is no small thing to embark on the intent of a night's sleep, mentally sorting through such material, scanning for the right trope, the right word, the key that will set the WM, The Writer Mind, off on a dizzying spiral of connecting thematic and dramatic dots. It is no small thing to note and record material, even with the foreknowledge that doing so makes one of a piece with those odd-looking men and women with the electronic scanning devices who roam the beaches and park sites just before dark, hopeful of finding something of value, often finding nothing more substantial than a beer opener or empty foil packet of peanuts.

Material is the entry ticket into the big tent of writing. The instincts to collect it, evaluate it, store it help provide the muscle memory for the technique of being a storyteller. It is inconceivable to think of a serious writer who has not amassed a trove of material, even more so inconceivable to think of a writer who has not been confronted by a well-meaning friend or family member who wonders openly what the value of such material is, how many actual stories it has produced, what revelations and new insights into the human condition it contains.

In truth, the material a writer collects is of a piece with the core samplings the earth scientist or archaeologist or polar cap specialist takes. Material is a core sampling of ideas, conversations, measurements, and observations of the world of reality and alternate universes of the imagination. Material is best interpreted by a writer.

Trouble

A part of you, the part that attempts to manage and direct things to give you the best shot at plying and enhancing your craft, has gone to great lengths to keep you busy, jealous of your time away from your work. This managerial aspect of you knows that the busy person has the best chance of getting things done; it also understands that leisure time is an enemy in which your thought processes engage in that dialectic between supreme confidence and equally supreme self-doubt. The effect of such dialectic is often the kidnapping or neglect of writing time, all because of The Trouble.

You know you are in Trouble if:

1. someone else's Moleskine, for whatever reason, looks more interesting than yours.

2. you discover that a casual acquaintance, not even a writer, is not only a fan of "The Wire," but has noticed in it an entire dimension you completely missed.

3. an individual you admire, in a quite casual way, pulls the rug from under a book you'd read and thought to be significant.

4. a beginning writer whose work you think shows some promise is approached by a publication you've been trying to get into for some time and is extended an assignment.

5. a complete stranger approaches you, begins talking about your unique approach to writing, then begins to make references which convince you the stranger has confused you with a writer whose work elicits no sympathy or empathy in you.

6. an accomplished writer recalls a remark you made at a party where you may have had too much or too little wine, then attributes that remark as the inertia for a new venture which you deplore.

7. someone asks you to give advice to a friend or relative who is as embarrassed as you are by the transaction.

8. someone of still-emerging talent is significantly successful in the execution of an idea or concept you'd bailed on for lack of interest.

9. someone in the investment or financial sector wants to help you provide a greater sense of security for you so that you can take even greater risks in your work.

10. a stranger or casual acquaintance tells you he or she has quit a secure career path to follow your example.

These are all scenarios that cause you to wax and wane, to argue in debates where you may have little or no standing, which is to say, these and other similar situations cause you to indulge the kind of thinking where there is no tangible product or plan. You are alternately fluffing a pillow and wondering if there are enough feathers in the pillow to make it worth fluffing in the first place.

There is some satisfaction in the notion of a possible scenario about supposition # 1 supra. Suppose, you posit, you were to arrange a one- or two-week swap of your Moleskine for that of a local friend or a blog friend. What inspirations would you glean from the laundry lists, complaints, and observations of another? What glorious satellites would you induce in orbit about you? What great values of industry and organization would you inherit?

Ah, you have reached the point in life where ideas do not need a seventeen mile linear accelerator to cause them to smash into one another, therein to produce the subatomic particles of story. You have learned not to think until it is time to undertake revision, that lovely conflation of the Twelve-step Program with editorial pragmatism. A fierce moral inventory.

You can almost see the personal ad in The New York Review of Books or The London Times Literary Supplement. Calif. writer ISO interesting, note-taking writer with Moleskine at least half-filled, for long or short term swap.