Writing

System D

By Anastasia ⋅ December 11, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

This is a cold war era joke.

At a press conference, NASA is presenting new inventions. One of them is a pen that will work in zero gravity. The next day, with the international press assembled, the Soviets respond. “The Americans have come up with a great new device. The engineering is astounding. The pen works great. We, however, have been using a different solution.” Here, the speaker holds up a lead pencil.

Since my desire to pursue a given idea is inversely proportional to the amount of equipment I’ve purchased for it, I’m holding out on buying more drawing equipment until I know this comic thing sticks. But tracing pencils without a light table is miserable.

So, here’s my own System D (which I’ve shamelessly stolen from the MAKE blog). As you can see from the photos, the pencil drawing is taped to the screen, the blank sheet’s taped over it, and the desktop color is turned to white. Works like magic. Now, if only I could figure out how to talk my laptop into not going into PowerSave mode and turning off the screen.

J has his own System D for going to sleep. He reads my Joyce and my Borges and conks right out. I don’t think he means as a criticism. Wilfrid Sheed doesn’t seem to think anyone has to:

“Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail,” is how Sam Johnson, blues singer, described the writer’s life. Then there was Joseph Conrad, comparing writing to carrying heavy bales under a low rope on a hot day. (I’ll admit reading Conrad can be like that, for all that it’s worth it. If “easy writing makes damn hard reading,” your hard writing can be a real mother.) [From “The Company of writers,” The Good Word & Other Words]

New strip going up tomorrow. Good night and good luck.