Pilot, Diamine, Stalogy, and reckoning.
Depending on your interests, this is a long or short entry.
Hey there:
One of my Christmas presents this year was the Diamine 2023 Inkvent calendar — this was my third Inkvent, and I spent a happy afternoon putting it all into my swatch book.1 Here’s a summary from an ink blogger who does this a lot more often, and has nicer sample swatches. Day 25’s ink isn’t always among my favorites, but Raise A Glass is definitely up there — a swatch like this one really shows it off. Here’s hoping cleaning the microglitter out of my Metro won’t suck later!
Along with the ink’s name, which is usually holiday-related, Diamine Inkvent bottles have a descriptor on the side that tells you what the ink does. Regular means, well, regular. My two favorites in this category are Weeping Willow (day 13) and Fireside Snug (23). I think the difference between the descriptors Shimmer and Chameleon is that the former only has one shade of glitter, and the latter (e.g., Raise a Glass) has at least two. One ink, Glacier, is labeled as Star Bright, which seems to mean SO MUCH GLITTER IT’S BASICALLY UNICORN PUKE. There are two inks this year that are Scented: a cherry2 pinky-red Sweet Dreams, and a cinnamon warm brown Cinnabun.3
I haven’t looked this year to see if the rules have changed, but usually Diamine Inkvent inks are calendar-only until part of the way through the subsequent year. If I were to buy then, I’d probably consider Weeping Willow. I’d need to take a closer look at some of my Sailor inks because I’m fairly sure I have at least one that’s similar, though.
Anyway, if you’re here just to read about just pens, ink, and paper, thanks for reading, you can skip the rest of this entry’s nattering. See you next time — maybe it’ll be when I finally get around to whatever ink it is you want to see.
Thanks for reading,
E
Hi again:
I’m very aware that as a literary writer4, I’ve been working off-grid for roughly eight years5, a.k.a., several first drafts of different novels, a few stories, some CNF. It’s often felt like a fairy tale curse: an onslaught of obstacles, predictable and unpredictable6, will keep you from putting your work into the world.
I’ve tried many things to combat this curse. The most external ones: I helped start Barrelhouse Write-ins during the pandemic, I kept going to AWP and Writer Camp and Conversations and Connections and to readings when I could. I’ve had great times, but the curse doesn’t lift.
Last year, I decided to try to stop writing fiction altogether. That didn’t work. It really didn’t work. It’s the only big decision for 2023 that I would change. If you worked with me in 2023: yes, really, the only one.7
Anyway, after that mistake came some liminal space, and looking for whatever seems to at least not make things worse.
So! I’ve spent a lot of time reading lately. The old fashioned kind of reading8, where I’m not just skimming because life is too short blah blah blah. Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting was not at the top of my TBR pile until I read this review (gift link), and it actually delivered on Serious and Funny. I read Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song after checking out its negative Goodreads reviews9. It was so harrowing (in the good way) that I had to chase it with two books about Dune (A Masterpiece in Disarray and The Spice Must Flow, both worth your time if you’re a Dune nerd) and also Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers (which was pretty much what you’d expect). Then…I found out that Geoff Ryman published a novel this month, so I read that next10 and please, someone else read it because I want to talk about it. I also did a lot of rereading. It felt great.
Then, I ran an ink cartridge from installation to empty in one writing session.11 It happened over an afternoon where I was thinking about a character who considers themselves kind and empathetic — even a balm to the sadness in the world — but has an enormous blind spot. That character has been on my mind for a while — let’s just say they’re a mascot for the year — and something about them and about the world they live in clicked. On one hand it was frustrating because it was a lot to uncover at once and I only had until the end of the afternoon to write down everything I could. But on the other? It felt great.
However, none of this is new territory. It feels great, but that’s literally all it is right now. So, my wish for 2024 is more complicated than it looks. I know that I need community, but my limits are often a surprise to others. I know that I try to be a good person, but I don’t try to be a nice person. I know both of these really get in the way.
And of course, I worry some new obstacle or other is waiting around the corner. But worrying changes nothing…so, here goes.
Until next time12,
E
P.S. I had several conversations with people this year that helped so much with thinking about all of this. Some of you are on the mailing this for this Substack. If I haven’t said this already: thank you.
Looking through my swatch book…no two Diamine Inkvent inks are ever exactly alike, but one year of calendar offers a good range.
This bumps up against a hobby I picked up this year: fragrance samples. I was not surprised there was a cherry ink because cherry notes are in. I think we’ve got one more warm season before cinnamon does the same thing.
As with any other scented ink I’ve ever owned, the scent stops somewhere between 10 seconds and 5 minutes after it’s on a piece of paper, and you’re better off just huffing the bottle. (Which is probably how I got into fragrance samples.)
Sometimes I think about driving down to the campus of my MFA program, knocking on the door of a professor who still teaches there, and asking her: “When you suggested that I was a dilettante, even though I wrote stories long before I met you and now, apparently, long after, what did you think suited me instead? I’m not angry — I genuinely want to know.”
It’s not something I’m ever going to talk about in my Internet front yard, but another part of the general suck of this curse has been a couple of people decide it’s now okay to treat me poorly. Happy to discuss in person if that’s your jam. (I’m not scared. I just suck at time management, and it’s too easy to squander my time this way.)
Parenting stuff, health stuff, relationship stuff, organizational stuff, miscellaneous stuff…then add a big huge “I’ve never been comfortable poking at the agency of people who are close to me” cherry on top of it all. It’s been wild.
Related: I’m not going to AWP this year — genuinely angry about that, and sorry to miss you.
That said, I do nearly all of my reading on my iPad. Easy to carry around, easy to adjust font size and type, easy to read in dark mode which has become my preference over the years. I love the smell and feel of books as much as anyone but books only being available in paper format is not good, fight me.
This is a much more typical way for me to find books to read than NYT reviews. Some random person’s bitching has driven me into a novel’s arms so many times.
You can read Ryman’s almost-25-years-old-but-ahead-of-its-time novel 253 online here: https://www.253novel.com/ My own favorite of his is Was, and I’m overdue for a reread of Air. Do you prefer short stories? Got you.
An empty cartridge is always this odd combination of expected (huh, the pen is getting a little scratchy) and surprise (did I really write that much?)
If any of this reads as too coy or cryptic, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ASK. I’m absolutely one of those people who loves small group conversations, but shuts way the hell up in a larger room, which is what this Substack is.