I led a creative writing workshop at the Royal Sutton Coldfield Literary Arts Festival on Sunday. The festival was a two day event across the weekend, and looking at the programme it was funny to see how many writers and workshop leaders there were participating that I knew.
One of those was Emily. I met her through Writing West Midlands as she facilitates the Spark Young Writers program, which I have been a part of for over a decade now. Emily was at the festival across the entire weekend with her typewriter, writing poems on demand.
Photography: @pericimen
‘Ask me for a Poem’ the sign says on her typewriter case, which she props up on the table.
And on Sunday I got my very own poem.
She starts by asking about what’s going on in your life. I told her that yesterday I had driven my youngest son Jack up to Leeds, back to his student house for the start of a new term at university. And I told her how sad I was feeling. It’s been lovely having Jack around over the summer, and I have such a great relationship with him and his brother, Matt.
But now he’s in Leeds, and I’m back in the West Midlands.
Emily picked up on this—the great relationship I have with my two boys, which I never had with my own father—and she got to work.
You can see the poem she wrote for me below:
We got to talking about the restriction working like this puts on her. A poem on demand, written on a machine that does not forgive, that has no delete key. But it is the restriction that frees her. The person who asked for that poem is standing there waiting expectantly.
The last thing she needs right then is a delete key, and the ability to edit.
Without them, she is free to write the poem that is right for that moment, for that person.
I told Emily a Lawrence Block anecdote. Block is an American crime writer who has been writing for seventy years or more. He tells the story about how, when he used to work on a typewriter, he would buy the most expensive typing paper he could find, not for the quality, but because he would be so reluctant to waste any of it.
No ripping partially finished sheets of type out of the typewriter and screwing them up and tossing them over his shoulder. No, he was writing a novel, so he was already using up a lot of paper. He couldn’t afford to waste any, so the words had to be right the first time.
George R. R. Martin writes in WordStar 4.0, a word processing software from the 1980s on a machine that is not connected to the internet. No spellcheck, no autocorrect, no distractions.
That’s the opposite of my working practice. Here I am writing this blog post with several applications open on my computer, a multitude of tabs in my browser, and the ability to delete and correct as much as I want without wasting a single sheet of paper.
Neither Block nor Martin removed the difficulty—they reinforced it. They used the difficulty as an aid to create.
Emily’s typewriter does something similar; it doesn’t make writing a poem for a stranger easy—it makes retreat impossible.
Right, where’s my typewriter?
You don’t need a typewriter or a computer manufactured years ago to set your own restrictions.
Try one of these suggestions:
Write with pen and paper.
Set yourself a word count and a time limit in which to get it done.
Use a software such as Freedom to block access to the internet.
Write in a different setting, for example a cafe.
Best wishes,
Ken
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