Ah, the comforting sounds of a Super Sterling typewriter
I bought a 1960s model Smith-Carona Super Sterling typewriter in October of 2017. Why would an action/adventure writer with three Macs, an iPhone, and an iPad Pro need a typewriter?
The 1960s Smith-Corona Super Sterling typewriter. My “new” writing tool of old.
The answer is simple. Typewriters themselves are time machines with special powers. Using one to write drafts changed the metering and rhythm of my writing. And using a typewriter has slowed me down while drafting a story.
The one I bought is the same model my dad bought while in school at Perdue. The same typewriter I used after promoting myself from my red toy typewriter to Dad’s. This typewriter is the same color, same everything.
Julia Cameron
In Julia Cameron’sThe Artist’s Way trilogy, she says writers are buying old typewriters. They are making a comeback. But she stands by her rule that one must continue to write Morning Pages by hand. These are three pages of an open-minded stream of consciousness. Why does she discourage typing Morning Pages?
Because when using a keyboard, our human brains do not delve deep enough.
I know there are writers who go even further and write their books by hand. But limits exist about how far back I need to go with this venture. In med school, the professor would have awarded me with an A in Graduate Level Bad Handwriting on the first day of classes. But I say, four years and almost 30 composition notebooks filled with Morning Pages have done wonders for me.
The intimacy of writing drafts on a typewriter
Now you might think having a typewriter vs a computer is akin to John Henry vs. the steam engine. But guess what I realized after four days of having a typewriter next to my MacBook Pro?
Writing my novel, blog posts, and social media stories all became more intimate.
From age 10 onward, I used Dad’s typewriter to compose stories. One of my top lifelong dreams became to live the life of a writer. Using my dad’s mint green machine put me well on the way toward success. Or, so it felt.
There is excitement in feeding a blank piece of paper around the drum of the machine. There is a click and echo the machine makes when you push back the rollers to straighten the paper. The feeling is exhilarating. With the paper aligned and snapped into place, there is no sound quite like scrolling the drum knob to get far enough down the page to type.
Using a typewriter is changing the clarity of what I write.
When typing, I do not stop and bother with typographical errors. No one ever will see this page except me. I am in rough draft mode.
The mission: Get the story on paper
The mission is to get the story on paper. Not to write and edit. I’m not out to waste half a bottle of whiteout. What develops on the page is intimate. Already. My writing is better. I think more clearly because part of my brain still wants to type the perfect sentence. No grammar mistakes. No typos. Perfection.
To prove Ernest Hemingway wrong. The first draft of anything is not always “shit.”
Time travel is possible; writers do it almost every day
With the clicking and clacking, I exist as one with the psyche of my characters. My story takes place when I was a tween. Though I have not visited my own way of thinking in those days in decades, the feel of the keys, like an old song, opens doorways. Monsters, or as one of my characters from Louisiana calls them, “Haints” run wild.
We are all in the same plush woods of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The same typewriter puts me in a chair by the window overlooking the parking lot between our housing units. Some of the play I had as a kid seeps into the scene from I do not know where. Much like Dickens experienced with Ebenezer Scrooge returning to his boarding school. I understand how much innocence is since lost. I stand resolute in a far simpler time. An era I had no comprehension of how much Time would mangle.
But now that the weight of modern life has weathered me almost beyond recognition, I know which keys tighten the screws of my characters. As a writer, I delight in this. I am my antagonist. Life is making more sense now. This is an experience I need. One that will help me let go of the past. What I need in order to move forward in my life at long last.
Conclusion
My Super Sterling typewriter itself is a time machine. Fewer and fewer exist these days thanks to computers. At least companies can make turntables for vinyl records once more. Making all the parts for mass production would lead to a typewriter no one could afford in this day and age. Even if they did, I would not buy one. There is a spirit that lives in these old machines. An energy field writers may tap into. And the reward for doing so is bliss!
Novel Writing Tips: Let the Images do the Storytelling
Julia Cameron has an exercise in one of her books where she asks you to list your favorite authors and then write something you feel they would tell you as writing advice if they were sitting at the coffee table with you. So far, I’ve come up with 16 and over the next few weeks, I’m going to share some of them.
I feel funny doing this, being an unpublished author. One dealt a setback Friday at that. But one determined to persevere regardless.
But as I’ve seen on YouTube, the Net is full of unpublished authors giving all kinds of advice about the publishing industry.
What I’m offering is a little different. Almost like telepathy. In someways I can hear each of these authors, and in some cases, multiple authors, whispering, saying, sometimes SCREAMING, their advice at me as I sit across the table taking copious notes.
Today’s advice:
“Keep the writing simple and let the images you compose do the storytelling.”
Keep the writing simple. A variation of KISS, but on the eve of the release of the movie Swallows and Amazons, this seems fitting.
Now you may ask how in the Devil can I ascribe this to Earnest Hemingway, Arthur Ransome and Zelda Fitzgerald.
Read most anything from Hemingway. It’s simple to read. Easy to understand. But draws you into complex thoughts because of what he says.
Read Swallows and Amazons. The words are pictures. All of them. Simple scenes. Ones that sail you away on an adventure.
Zelda writes like this, too. Her letters to Scott. They lift you away with the purest of love.
I can hear all of them telling me, not yelling, well Hem might yell, not in a whisper, but in simple terms, Zelda might use a little Southern directness, but their point would all be the same.
Good creative writing is about putting images in the mind of a reader and letting them interpret for themselves the abundance of the details. This gives the reader a chance to escape and the ability to leave where they are and be transported to somewhere else, which is what they seek when they read fiction.
It’s not about barebones writing. I think I’ve learned that mistake. I’ve learned there is a balance there, too. Readers don’t want news writing, either. Not when they’re reading fiction. Just the facts ma’am worked in the papers, but it doesn’t work on the pages of a novel.
The graves of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald’s parents are in Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery, Alabama.
The grave site of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald’s parents and family members in Montgomery, AL.
They are marked as #28.
They are not easy to find unless you know what you’re looking for.
How To Find The Sayre Graves
Oakwood Cemetery section. How to find the Sayre graves, the parents of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald.
Heading east on Upper Wetumpka Road in Montgomery, go past the Montgomery Police Department and down the hill toward Alabama Public Television and Paterson Field.
The last three entrances to the cemetery are important. The third one leads to Hank Williams’ grave on top of the hill.
The first one, St. Ann’s Street, is the entrance to the section leading to the Sayres.
Once you pull in at St. Ann’s, take the first left onto Stella Street. At the first right, turn north on Clarmont Ave. and go up the hill. The first right near the top of the hill is also Clarmont, but go straight another 20 or 30 yards. Then stop.
Off to your left, three rows in, follow the path of Clarmont to the west. You will see several tall and full trees, and there are two obelisk-like markers to the west in the next row of the Sayre resting place.
Once you are three rows deep, turn to your right and the Sayre site should be to your left.
Clearly marked at the front of the site is a memorial marker to F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, who are not buried there.
Photos of the Site
I’ve included photos of Minnie Sayre’s grave, as well as Anthony D. Sayre Sr’s resting spots. Minnie is buried on the far left and Judge Sayre is three graves to her right. Zelda’s brother Anthony Sayre Jr lies immediately to the left of the Judge.
Marker for F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald in Montgomery, AL
It’s taken longer than it should have, but last week I read The Barrowfields by the new author, Phillip Lewis.
The book starts out a little slow, but once you immerse yourself in the story, and that becomes easier to do with each passing page, Lewis takes hold of you with his quality, rich characters.
I enjoyed this book and will read it again. There are few on the New York Times Bestseller List I would say that about. It seems of late the publishing industry is all about a bang for the buck that lasts three weeks and no more. My pen-pal, Amor Towles, currently on the list for 32 weeks with A Gentleman in Moscow, remains there because his book is of substance. Something someone will want to read again.
The Barrowfields is of that same ilk
Lewis blends a rich knowledge of literature, books and North Carolina lore together for a superb recipe of a tale. He takes us through his father’s courtship of his mother and the relationship with his grandparents. Then we see the main character seek to recover from the events of home that linger. He seeks to escape his past but like none of us, is able to do so. It comes racing back into his life and he is compelled to deal with it.
I am an active reader so there are a few lines from the book I underlined as I read.
A beguiling optimism is often the first step toward folly. Page 29
“I write, because it’s one of the only things that seems real to me. It’s the only way short of death to make time stop.” This was not a simplified explanation for a ten-year-old. This was his truth. Page 45
As a fellow writer, I understand the perspective of Henry Aster’s father about writing.
And I so much would like to meet a woman as grounded as Story. She was a dear and though she herself is dealing with her own familial emotional baggage, she makes the story come alive and enjoyable.
I encourage you to find the book and give it a read. It is one you won’t want to take to Half Priced Books in a three weeks along with your current Grisham, Clancy, Patterson, Steele and the like. No, you’ll want to keep this with your Towles and Lees and Patchetts.
This book also helped me with my writing. The language is rich and colorful and immersive. I look forward to the next book by Phillip Lewis.
About The Barrowfields
A richly textured coming-of-age story about fathers and sons, home and family, recalling classics by Thomas Wolfe and William Styron, by a powerful new voice in fiction
Just before Henry Aster’s birth, his father—outsized literary ambition and pregnant wife in tow—reluctantly returns to the small Appalachian town in which he was raised and installs his young family in an immense house of iron and glass perched high on the side of a mountain. There, Henry grows up under the writingdesk of this fiercely brilliant man. But whentragedy tips his father toward a fearsome unraveling, what was once a young son’s reverence is poisoned and Henry flees, not to return until years later when he, too, must go home again.
Mythic in its sweep and mesmeric in its prose, THE BARROWFIELDS is a breathtaking debut about the darker side of devotion, the limits of forgiveness, and the reparative power of shared pasts.
My favorite shot in the short film, “Zelda, Almost Home.” The tunnel leads to Riverfront Park in Montgomery, Alabama.
A short film about Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald and a ghostly return home.
The premise for the short film Zelda, Almost Home is quite simple: Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1900, lived a wild and tumultuous life with the author of The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, whom she met in 1918. What if she returns still as a ghost?
The inspiration to shoot Zelda, Almost Home came from watching Vincent Laforet’s Reverie on YouTube. You’ll also notice there’s a hat tip to Damien Chazelle and his film La La Land— Zelda walks in front of a mural. Simon Cade from DSLR Guide has been a big influence and coach as well. (This is my first short film. I’m 51 years old.)
Come to find out, there are ample stories around Montgomery already to suggest the premise for this film is dead on. The halls of Baldwin Middle School are full of stories alleging apparitions of Zelda. As I talked with F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum Executive Director Sara Powell last Friday, had two more accounts, recent ones, as the museum prepares to open upstairs rooms as a bed and breakfast.
So as you read and watch the film, please know, that it is grounded in much less fantasy than you might first suspect.
The Making of Zelda, Almost Home
One of the first things any viewer will note is the music, Almost Home, composed by Moby and used with permission from his website, MobyGratis.com. He offers free use of his material provided it’s used for purposes like this—non-commercial and creative expression.
The film is shot entirely in Montgomery, Alabama, from June 22-25, 2017. And that is part of my commentary for shooting this, there are almost no films about Montgomery that are actually SHOT in Montgomery.
It is all shot with a Canon D60, part with a Nifty Fifty lens, and part with an 18-135 mm. The camera for the most part is mounted on a Neewer Image Stabilizer. Shots from the car the camera was mounted on a tripod.
Shot List
The intersection of Zelda and Fitzgerald, Montgomery
The street sign on the corner of Zelda and Fitzgerald in Montgomery, Alabama.
The opening shot is designed to give homage to Montgomery for honoring Scott and Zelda, while also having our Zelda set the scene that she was full of life when she lived here. It is not hard to imagine the real Zelda spinning around her street sign with glee.
Five minutes after we left the scene, I drove back through and someone had called Montgomery Police to investigate what we were doing. A patrol car was sitting where I’d been parked and was using the lights of the car to light up the street sign.
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum, Felder Avenue
The house on Felder is now a museum. They have a fascinating collection of Fitzgerald memorabilia and are open every day of the week except Monday for tours. And they are in the process of opening an upstairs suite as a bed and breakfast so those seeking inspiration for their writing or filmmaking can soon stay in the same rooms as the Fitzgeralds for nine months back in the 1920s. This is said to be the longest the two lived anywhere together. And it was the last place they ever lived as a family.
Winter Place, Goldthwaite, and Mildred
It is often said that Scott and Zelda met at the Montgomery Country Club. But lore now suggests in fact that they met at Winter Place on Goldthwaite. Part of the tale goes is that Zelda’s daddy, Judge Anthony D. Sayre, who lived four blocks away, would not have approved of her being at Winter Place so saying they met at the country club was much more proper.
The McBryde-Screws-Tyson House, Mildred
Christian Lowry, the owner of the house, tells the tale that Zelda was friends with the girls who lived there at the time. He says Zelda used a ring she’d been given by Scott to carve their initials in a second-story window. Mr. Winter, who owned Winter Place across the street, is said to have had a thing for Ms. Zelda when she was younger and so as an admirer when McBryde-Screws-Tyson lies vacant, he sent men into the home to extract with window pane Zelda carved initials into.
The McBride-Screws-Tyson House in Montgomery, Alabama.
It is hoped, that since Mr. Winter was something of a packrat, as Winter Place goes through renovation, the original piece of glass will be found and hopefully returned to its rightful window.
But this is the sentimental importance of this shot in the film.
*I have been spelling McBryde with an I instead of Y. That’s now corrected on June 30, 2017, though I can’t change it in the YouTube post.
The Train Shed
There are stories about Zelda and the train shed in Montgomery. It was the prime way in and out of town for Zelda and Scott. But it is also said that she dressed down one day and walked around with a tin can seeking donations. News of this, of course, stirred Judge Sayre. Which is probably what it was meant to do.
The Riverfront Tunnel
The Riverfront Tunnel has changed over the years. Only recent efforts by the city to bring nightlife back downtown has led to the amazing lighting in the tunnel. The colored lights and the depth of the shot make this one of my favorite scenes in the film. I thought about going back and having Zelda walk perfectly framed up the lighted tunnel but then it’d be too staged and too fashioned, something the true Zelda would not allow.
Tallapoosa Street
This is one of the apex locations in downtown Montgomery, connecting with Commerce Street, critical to the city’s past and present.
The Alley
Over the past 15 years, the Alley has really come to life as an attraction in Montgomery, and wherever there was a party in this town, well, it’d attract Zelda.
Tallapoosa and Commerce Statue of Hank Williams
The Hank Williams Statue is now the gateway into the Riverfront Park area of the downtown area.
RSA Tower Fountain on Dexter Avenue
David Bronner has built a series of buildings throughout Montgomery over the past 40 years. The fountain this Zelda moves around was not here when the real Zelda lived. But my character couldn’t resist the temptation to play. She really wanted to get into the water like the real Zelda would have done in New York minute.
Catoma Street view of Troy State
Troy State wasn’t located here back in the day but is an important part of the downtown scene, connected to the Davis Theatre and across the street from the Jefferson Hotel where Scott and Zelda are said to have stayed, as well as being near the Rosa Parks Museum, which I believe back in the day was also the Empire Theatre, one of the first air-conditioned places in the hot of the South.
Sunny Paulk Civil Rights Mural, Lee and Montgomery Streets
Hat tip to La La Land and having Emma Stone walk past the You Are The Star Mural. Montgomery has a beautiful Civil Rights Mural here and we just had to include it. Zelda was gone before all of that came to be and so it was fitting for her to just walk past.
Oakwood Cemetery, Plot 28, graves of Minnie and Judge Anthony D. Sayre
There is a memorial plaque for Scott and Zelda, their daughter Scottie Smith, and Zelda’s parents, Minnie and Anthony D. Sayre in Oakwood Cemetery. When we arrived for shooting, the sunset was alive with color and emotion.
The first shot is of Zelda mourning over the plaque. She then runs her hands over the stone above her father’s tomb. Out of love and emotion, the Zelda character in the film lies down on the stone above Minnie and puts her hand on Minnie’s name. By then it was too late to see, but the poignancy should not be lost. Zelda would dearly miss her Momma for many reasons all of us would.
Old Alabama Supreme Court Building, Dexter Avenue
Justice Sayre served on the Alabama Supreme Court from 1909 to 1931. Zelda would visit this place and miss her daddy.
Old Alabama Supreme Court Building.
The Alabama Capitol
The Capitol is just a stone’s throw from the Old Supreme Court Building.
Chris’ Hotdogs, Dexter Avenue
Chris’s Hotdogs is 100 years old this year. I don’t know if Zelda ever went there to eat before she left town, but the odds are pretty good that she would have. They have served every sitting Alabama governor since they opened. It makes sense the lead Flapper Girl would have been a customer, too.
Court Street Fountain
Many a girl like Zelda has climbed the fence at the fountain to wade into its waters looking down Commerce Street toward the Alabama Riverfront and up Dexter Avenue toward the Capitol.
Sunroom window, The Fitzgerald Museum
The sunroom at the museum would hold special value to Zelda. Scottie, their daughter, wrote about its importance during the Christmas the family spent in the home. As a ghost looking back, she would totally take time to look into this room and remember the gem of joy they experienced there as a family for one of the few times ever.
The Museum at night, Felder Avenue
Day or night, the museum is a treasure of Montgomery.
My Own Zelda Ghost Story
So, the night before we began shooting while walking up the drive to the museum, a white and tan cat came running out of nowhere and up to me. I am allergic to cats and don’t care for them. This one, as I was standing in the drive looking at shots, avoided my Zelda actor, (Angie Tatum Weed) and began curling around my legs. I finally said, “Hey Zelda!” and the cat stopped.
Even before I reached Week Four of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, where she says to stop reading for a week, I had scaled back my time on Social Media sites like Twitter and Facebook because the noise from the Petulant Left–largely haters of President Donald Trump, largely haters of anything that goes against Judeo-Christian principles of the past 2,500 years–has become too shrill to bother with.
One of my true friends sent me this picture of the sun setting in Mariposa, CA this past week. It’s just amazing.
And thanks for Julia Cameron, thanks to Rick Warren and The Daniel Plan, and God and myself, I’m doing a reset of my life regardless.
I am focusing my life on what’s most important–God, me and what I put into my body so that I might continue to serve him.
I just went through the worst year of my life. Surgeries from severe pain, opioids, doctor appoint after doctor appointment, and more and more pain.
To boot, the person I have been most in love with my entire life copped out on me, succumbed to the threats of her daughter and mother–they are the ones who decide who she’s in love with, not her–and a week before Christmas she walked out of my life. Boom, gone. She lied to her kids and mom for four years about me. Treating me like a mistress. Hiding my contact information in her phone under the graduate college she’s attending so in case I called and they were around, they’d see the school calling, not me.
Shame on her for lying to her family. Shame on me for letting her treat me like that. It won’t happen again.
That led me to write a perfect iambic pentameter Shakespearean Sonnet Tuesday night expressing in very poignant terms how I feel about what my friend did. For now it’s folded over and put into the book. The temptation is there to record audio, then lace it with video of all the places we went in the past four years so that those who need to know she’s a balled-faced liar will finally know the truth as she parades around as some sort of super Christian. That’s not meant as judgmental. It’s just the truth.
But as importantly, I’ve stopped looking at the news feed on Facebook and the top hits on Twitter. Most of it is rage at the president. Hate.
I have no time or inclination to listen to that bull any longer. President Obama did a lot to wreck this country and Trump is trying to fix some of it. He’s also trying to make America safe and why the Petulant Left is in favor of leaving the country vulnerable to people who like to commit mass shootings or blow things up is beyond me. That’s not us, they say. Well, I’d rather be alive than have been shot or blown up by a terrorist, or have a family member or friend who was.
Such craziness.
I’m focusing on God. My healing. Eating healthier. Walking. Getting my life back on track. If you or your noise is set on being a distraction to that, I really don’t need/want/like you being in my life at all. So, like Julia Cameron talks about in her book, I am putting new, healthier boundaries in place. And walking every day with my Lord. Much closer than ever before.
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