Jane Rawson

I used to be a photographer, back in the days of film and paper and chemicals and darkrooms. I loved everything about taking, processing and printing images, but I couldn’t get excited about high-end cameras, light-meters and so on. I preferred keeping the instruments basic and using my eye and the darkroom to do the work. Once everything went digital and the gear – including Photoshop – became even more important, I lost interest. Same with music – I’ve always owned pretty crappy instruments, and when I record stuff it’s at the lowest end of lo-fi (and also appallingly executed).

These days I’m a writer, and lately I’ve realised I’m always, at some level, searching for a piece of magic gear that will fix my problems. Usually it’s notebooks or pens. If I just had the perfect fine-point pen and some kind of ironically retro notebook, I know I could write a killer piece of literary fiction. This week I got a typewriter, because that’s going to make all the difference. And today I was wondering if I should start using Scrivener…

I’m pretty sure WG Sebald used one of these…

How about you? Are you waiting til you find the perfect implement before you start your next story?