It's the Intermission
A Creative Coffee Break

Note: This entry is for Mac users. In fact, it’s only for users of Leopard (AKA OSx 10.5.x).

I did a little review this week on the submissions I made this year, and in that process revamped my tracking system. It’s not just because I’m a data geek that I feel it’s important to track submissions. Once upon a time, I sent a submission out to a place I’d already sent one to some months before. The theatre had a strict policy of only one submission per twelve-month period. My submission was shredded. No matter how nice they were about it, I was embarrassed by my mistake. What an amateur…

And so, I keep track of the scripts I send out. I used to design databases for a living, and while I enjoyed that for a long time, it was work. There’s nothing fun about creating some complicated system for personal use. Well, sometimes. Except I’m too busy. So, off the shelf software was where I began.

I used to use software called Power Tracker than ran on OS9. I received it as a freebie the first time I bought Screenwriter in a very early iteration of that software. Power Tracker was built to track screenplay submissions, and handled stage play submissions, too. I chugged along with that until Apple abandoned OS9, and I needed some other way to track my submissions. I remembered we had a copy of FileMaker Pro somewhere. The Beloved had won a copy of it in a raffle at MacWorld some time ago.

Bento is a neat, cheap, and unsophisticated data management tool.

With FileMaker I went a little overboard designing reports for myself. I like slicing and dicing information in every which way. The only problem with FP really was it was at least two versions old, and not supported by Leopard. FileMaker 7 crashes in Leopard. Some days, FP7 crashes a lot. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to spend nearly a couple of hundred bucks to upgrade, when I only use FP for my little tracking program.

Excel is a great option. MBH uses Excel, I think, to track his submissions. Very easy to sort, group, see what you’ve done. I thought about that. And then I downloaded the trial version of Bento.

Bento is not FileMaker lite. It’s hardly a database. Yet, I think Bento may be my new solution to my script tracking. If not, I’ll just move over to a spreadsheet, and keep an even simplier list.

Within about an hour, I transferred my data from FileMaker into Bento, and using it in conjunction with Address Book, and iCal, I got back to not thinking about software.

How I set Bento up:

My data is now found in these places…

• Submission places (theatres, grants, festivals, workshops, etc.) are kept in Address Book.
• Submission deadlines (for festivals, workshops, competitions) are kept in iCal
• A list of “projects” or scripts is contained in a Bento table.
• A list of submissions made is contained in a Bento table.

Within my Bento, the primary table and display form, is the list of submissions, or the “what’s been submitted” info. That table is linked to the Address Book, which holds the “submitted to where” info. The submissions table is also linked to the Bento projects/scripts table.

A secondary table, or display form, is a list of upcoming deadlines for things I might want to submit something to. This form contains some Bento fields so that I know if I have made a submission to this.

In an ideal database world, the Deadlines table/form would be able to automatically link data to the Scripts Submitted table/form when I click on “Submission Sent.” Bento doesn’t do this type of task. The deadlines table does not contain the theatre name or the dates associated with it. These two data items exist in iCal alone, and Bento doesn’t allow more sophisticated manipulating among Bento tables or forms. There is no Apple script for Bento, or programming code in Bento. A downside of this psuedo-linking is that I cannot search on the theatre name because the theatre name is stored in iCal, or, for the Scripts Submitted form, stored in Address Book. That’s just silly, and I suspect Bento will add that searching feature along with a few other features in the next version.

Below, are three screen shots that pretty much tell you everything about how I’m looking at the data. That’s it. Not as simple as Excel, but simple nonetheless. No special reports. Just a screen display, arrowing through the records.

The danger in looking at a product like Bento is that if you want a database, Bento is not for you. Even though you can attach Address Book and iCal to Bento, and manipulate these sources, Bento is not a true relational database product. If you need a lot of scripts, data sorts, reports and all that good stuff, again, a word of caution that Bento is not for you. I see a lot of folks trying to make Bento into a kind of cheap FileMaker Pro. That’s a lot like trying to turn a hard boiled egg into an souffle.

Bento currently costs $49. It only runs on Leopard.

To conclude…

• Fountain pens mean using inks of all colors and flavors for one pen.
• Piston filler pens mean an easy way to fill pen with ink.
• Bottled inks mean no consuming of little plastic ink cartridges which end up in the landfill. Unless you use plastic bottled ink. Oh dear.
• Vintage fountain pens mean a form of recycling/re-using something that still performs.

A correction to my first post, Nothing But Pens: My pal, MBH, doesn’t throw a box of Bic pens in a drawer for a year. He throws a box of PaperMate pens in a drawer to age them. Some special, skinny kind of PaperMate, as he’s tried to explain to me, but his explanation goes over my head.

All those other fountain pens I wrote about are finding their way to new homes. I have a thing about releasing stuff I will not utilize. I’m not using those pens anymore.

I have found the pens I love.

The utilitarian Reform 1745 lead me to Pelikan fountain pens. My new found fountain pen friends waxed on about a Pelikan’s dependability, and smooth operation. First I tried on an M 200, and my pleasure at writing with a fountain pen increased two-fold. No skips on the page; my inky words wholly formed. Then I picked up a M 150, slightly smaller, slimmer, easier to stuff into my jeans pocket, to be my carry-around pen. A great arrangement, I thought.

I was happy for a time. These two fine pens that wrote so well for me, were not as fun to use as my scratchy little Esterbrook SJs, or even the Reform 1745. I thought a lot about three other Pelikans that might fit the, uh you know, bill. All three of these pens have since made their way to me. Amazing how that can happen.

Find the best writing tool is a subjective quest.

Someone offered me a terrific deal on a M 250 in the exact model and color I wanted. This pen provided me the most sensual writing experience yet. One of the other pens I wanted was a vintage Pelikan Tortoise 400, and one made its way to me from a friend’s personal collection. Again, my writing pleasure increased. The last pen was another vintage 400 of the traditional green-striated Pelikan variety. I bought it from a fascinating man, from my home state, who is an acknowledged expert on Pelikan pens. The green Pelikan has become the pen I can’t wait to write with every day.

These three pens in their weight, size, and balance are perfect in my small hands. I look forward to putting pen to paper using them. One at a time of course. The green is the pen at my desk; it is my first choice pen. The brown is at my desk too, holding an alternate ink color to reach for. The amber has become my knock-about pen, that stays in my pocket or my bag when I’m not home.

The pens make me smile when I pick them up. Yet, they do not require much but a little care for their use. I don’t have to think about them in the sense of “how do I get this pen to flow better? why is it skipping? why is it leaking all over my paper? why why why?” I don’t need more than these three Pelikans. So it feels in this moment.

These pens make me feel connected to a tradition of writing that my laptop does not provide. Mind you, I love my Powerbook. It is a great tool that functions well for my writing. While I will not go back to using a typewriter, I miss the sound, smell and feel of one. Re-discovering fountain pens seems to have satisfied that part of me that needs ritual in, and a visceral element to, the act of writing. These pens are a technology so perfect that even one more than 50 years old works beautifully even now.

The three pens that remain:

Black Cover is a website devoted to the search for “the perfect little black notebook.” He’s running a contest to win a new Picadilly notebook. Check it out and enter for yourself. (Yeah, this post is my entry!)

Previously mentioned this site last April…

Notebooks are good. Unless you use them for evil.

This year my quest for writing tools turned to fountain pens. Or should I say return to fountain pens? I hadn’t used fountain pens since I was a kid, and I was forced to fumble with a cheap Shaeffer ink-cartridge fountain pen. The ink was blue, and all over my fingers. Using that Shaeffer pen never gave me any satisfaction. So much so, I was greatly relieved when I reached high school where Bic pens were allowed. You know those skinny, yellow pens, don’t you? The ink still got on my fingers.

Pens are of a very personal preference for writers. Unless, of course, you’re a writer who doesn’t use pens, and I’m sure you stopped reading some time ago. My friend, MBH, says his favorite pen is a year old Bic. He buys a box of ‘em, stashes them in a drawer, and cracks the box open a year later.

An element of my quest has been for a pen that inks lightly on the planet…

Myself, I have tried in my later years to stear clear of disposable pens. Difficult task as some part of a pen always seems to be disposable and in need of replacement. An element of my quest has been for a pen that inks lightly on the planet, and so I used refillable rollerballs and ball points. Finally, the nagging voice at the back of my head wondered if not all fountain pens were doomed to failure like my old scratchy Schaeffer.

I read more than once about the Jinhao, an inexpensive smooth as butter fountain pen. I found one for under $10. To my surprise, it wasn’t scratchy at all. The ink, however, would stop flowing whenever I took a writing break, and it was a lot of work to get the ink moving again. Plus the pen was huge and weighty by my small hand’s standards. Thus, the pen was, uh, hand fatiguing. Not good.

Next, I got a PaperMate fountain pen. It reminded me of my Dad, who always had a PaperMate ballpoint pen in his pocket. He gave me one once, and I cherished it because, well, my Dad gave it to me. Gifts were a rare event in my family. Especially from Dad. I suspect he pinched it from his office. Anyway, the PaperMate fountain pen was lighter than the Jinhao. Slightly scratchy on the paper, yet not intolerably so.

Someone suggested to me that vintage pens could be inexpensive, and fun to use. And so, I ended up with an Esterbrook SJ to try. The Esterbrook made the PaperMate feel like a PaperWeight. And then I had three more SJs in different colors, because Esterbrooks are like potato chips. You end up craving more than one. I spent quite a bit of time on pen sacs, renew points, restoral tools, and talking Esterbrooks. I stopped when I realized the pen had become something other than a tool for writing. Freeing myself from the Esterbrooks was a NOS Reform 1745 fountain pen.

Left to right: Jinhao 450, PaperMate, Esterbrook SJ, Reform 1745

The Reform 1745 was made in the 1980′s. Like the Jinhao, the Reform cost me $8. It wrote much more smoothly than the inexplicably addictive Esterbrooks in my possession.

The Jinhao and PaperMate fountain pens used converters in place of ink cartridges. The Esterbrook had a lever mechanism to fill the pen with ink. So far so good on my treading lightly scale. The Reform pen, however, had a feature I’d never imagined before in my fountain pen ignorant state: a piston filler. While all four of these pens allowed me to use bottled ink, the piston filler changed my life. I relaxed, and stopped thinking about pen sacs, how to get the lever up (it was always awkward for me), or taking pens apart to get at a converter. The Reform became something I used, and didn’t think about.

Until I began typing up what I’d hand-written with the Reform. It was then I noticed how much the ink skipped on the page, and left the words malformed.

There’s more… just taking a breath.